AMSTERDAM - Starting July 1, marijuana will be the only leaf that can be smoked in public places in the Netherlands. Cannabis devotees aren't celebrating.

Local pot smokers, who usually cut joints with tobacco, and owners of the coffee shops where they are allowed to light up will have to change their habits when the nation implements the indoor tobacco ban.

Puffing a pure marijuana cigarette in public will still be permitted; smoking one with tobacco will merit coffee shop owners a $466 fine.

"Every customer will have to learn how to smoke pure," said Robert Kempen, co-owner of The NooN and Mellow Yellow in Amsterdam, which sells marijuana and hashish. The rule makes him "sick to death," he said, rolling himself a joint.

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Cannabis will be exempt from a Dutch smoking ban that comes into force in two months. Restrictions on smokers in cafes and restaurants will not apply as long as cannabis is consumed neat, without tobacco. The exemption follows fears that many of Amsterdam's lucrative "coffee shops" would be forced to close if soft drug users had to smoke elsewhere.

Liberal Dutch policies, introduced in 1972, on the sale and use of cannabis have generated a trade valued at more than $6.1 billion Cdn a year. The coffee shops, which draw millions of tourists each year, allow users to buy cannabis over the counter and smoke it without fear of arrest.

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AMSTERDAM - The Dutch interior minister wants police officials to stop using soft drugs when they are off-duty as it tarnishes the image of the force.

The use of some soft drugs is tolerated in the Netherlands and the sale of cannabis in small quantities for recreational use is permitted in government-regulated coffee shops.

"The minister does not want police officials to use soft drugs, such as cannabis, not even during their spare time.

"It does not fit with the presentation of the police to the public," a spokesman said Thursday.

There are 25 regional police forces in the Netherlands, some of which have implemented a no-drugs policy for off-duty officers while others have not, he said.

"We should have one rule for the whole force," he said.

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Canada Is Main Competitor In Race To Develop Marijuana-Based Medicine

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -- Drug company Echo Pharmaceuticals expects to sell the world's first cannabis pill within five years, targeting a $5.85-billion global market, its chief executive said.

The privately-held Dutch company faces competition from Canada's Cannasat which is also developing a pill. In 2005, Canada became the first country in the world to approve a cannabis-based spray produced by Britain's GW Pharmaceuticals as a treatment for multiple sclerosis patients.

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Reuters - Drug company Echo Pharmaceuticals expects to sell the world's first cannabis pill within five years, targeting a $5.85-billion global market, its chief executive said.

The privately held Dutch company faces competition from Canada's Cannasat, which is also developing a pill. In 2005, Canada became the first country in the world to approve a cannabis-based spray produced by Britain's GW Pharmaceuticals Plc as a treatment for multiple sclerosis patients.

U.S. regulators granted approval for a clinical trial for GW's under-the-tongue spray called Sativex, but the company said in July that European regulators had requested a further clinical study before approval.

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Not Quite Anything Goes in the Netherlands These Days. Many Dutch Think Their Open Lifestyle Has Gone Too Far; Others Say New Restrictions Have.

Amsterdam

The vacation sort of just flew by.

After dropping their packs at a hostel, Ryan Ainsworth and his buddy Richie Bendelow found a shop selling 500 herbal potions that promised to make them high and happy in 500 ways. But the young British tourists went right for the hallucinogenic mushrooms, packaged in clear plastic containers just like the ordinary ones at the greengrocer back home.

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A man being held in a Dutch police cell on suspicion of growing cannabis got an unintended treat in his lunch -- a piece of hashish-laced cake, a spokesman said Thursday.

"It was an accident," said Alwin Don, police spokesman in the southern province of Zeeland.

The hash cake had earlier been seized by police in an unrelated investigation and stored in a refrigerator -- close to lunch packets served to suspects being held in cells at the police station in Goes, 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Amsterdam.

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Police in Amsterdam are complaining at new rules that ban them for smoking cannabis while off-duty.

Officers have been told they need to set a good example to the public in the Dutch capital famous for its liberal drugs laws and red light district.

Amsterdam's police council chairman Frank Gittay said: "Until now police were only banned from showing up for work stoned or drunk.

"But now we are telling officers they should also behave like the police at all times, and that means not taking drugs and not getting excessively drunk whether on of off duty."

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AMSTERDAM -- Cannabis connoisseurs in their thousands have descended on the Dutch capital of Amsterdam this week to sample and select the winners of the 20th annual Cannabis Cup competition.

"There's a lot of good competition this year," said 'Herbal Santa' a longtime marijuana smoker from Orange County, Calif., who only provided his name as Jim when asked.

Organizers said they expected about 3,500 participants.

The week-long Cannabis Cup is spread out at various coffee shops throughout Amsterdam, although the main events are held in a club on the outskirts of the city, tucked behind a McDonald's fast-food restaurant and a do-it-yourself store. The event coincides with the annual U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, allowing participants from across the Atlantic to spend a week's holiday in Amsterdam.

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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands: The Dutch Health Ministry announced plans Wednesday to extend its experimental medical marijuana program for five years, despite setbacks.

Under the program, launched in 2003, standardized marijuana is grown by government-licensed growers under controlled conditions and sold by prescription in pharmacies.

But few patients, even armed with a doctor's prescription, bought the regulated weed since they could buy it at a third of the price in "coffee shops," where it remains illegal but tolerated if sold in small amounts.

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Decision Follows Teen's Fatal Leap

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- The Netherlands will ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the government announced Friday, rolling back an element of the country's permissive drug policy after a teenager on a school visit jumped to her death in an incident blamed on the fungus.

The decision will take effect within several months, said Wim van der Weegen, a Justice Ministry spokesman.

"The problem with mushrooms is that their effect is unpredictable," he said, and shops caught selling them will be closed.

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AMSTERDAM -- The Netherlands will ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the government announced Friday, tightening the country's famed liberal drug policies after the suicide of an intoxicated teenager.

Mushrooms "will be outlawed the same way as other drugs," Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin said. "The way we will enforce the ban is through targeting sellers."

Psilocybin, the main active chemical in the mushrooms, has been illegal under international law since 1971. But fresh, unprocessed mushrooms continued to be sold legally in the Netherlands along with herbal medicines in "smartshops," on the theory that it was impossible to determine how much psilocybin any given mushroom contains.

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The Dutch government will ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the justice ministry said yesterday, rolling back part of the country's permissive drug policy after a number of incidents, including the death of a teenager who had eaten them.

The ban will go into effect within months and does not need parliamentary approval, Wim van der Weegen, a ministry spokesman, said. Shops that continued to sell magic mushrooms would be closed.

Under the country's tolerance policy cannabis is technically illegal but police do not prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and it is sold openly in designated cafes. Possession of hard drugs such as cocaine, LSD and ecstasy is illegal. Mushrooms will fall somewhere in the middle. "We're not talking about a non-prosecution policy, but we'll be targeting sellers," Mr Van der Weegen said.

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THE HAGUE (CNS)- A new proposal from the mayor of Amsterdam is sure to be considered a bummer by certain visitors to the Dutch city: a three-day waiting period to buy hallucinogenic mushrooms. Mayor Job Cohen wants to require the wait period to allow mushroom buyers to fully understand exactly what it is they are purchasing, ANP news agency reported Tuesday.

The proposal seeks to prevent impulse purchases and follows several incidents that have occurred in the city involving tourists who have eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms.

In March, a 17-year-old French girl killed herself by jumping from a bridge in the city after having eaten mushrooms.

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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- The famously liberal Netherlands has been swinging toward the right, cracking down on immigration, religious freedoms and the freewheeling red light district. The next possible target? Magic mushrooms.

The death of a 17-year-old French girl, who jumped from a building after eating psychedelic mushrooms while on a school visit, has ignited a campaign to ban the fungi -- sold legally at smartshops as long as they're fresh.

Regulation of mushrooms is even less stringent than Holland's famously loose laws on marijuana, which is illegal but tolerated in "coffee shops" that are a major tourist attraction.

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Plans for a biometric security system in cannabis-selling coffee shops in the Dutch town of Maastricht have been dropped -- but they're still going to be taking smokers' fingerprints when they buy their stash.

Cannabis smokers in the Dutch town of Maastricht can breathe a bit easier. A proposed biometric security system the town's 15 coffee shops had planned on installing this summer has been changed due to its expense and threats to customer privacy.

Initially, the Maastricht coffee shop union's new security system required a customer to register and submit to face and fingerprint scans, which would have been stored in an electronic database. Despite the clear threat to customer privacy that the new system presented, the coffee shops felt it was the only way to protect their businesses from the stiff government penalties against selling more than the legal daily limit per customer, or selling to minors.

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People taking the rave drug Ecstasy show subtle but significant changes in verbal memory after trying the drug for the first few times, Dutch researchers said.

New users of the drug, which is popular at dance clubs, who had taken a relatively low cumulative dose of about three tablets of Ecstasy scored lower on tests that required them to memorize a series of words and then recall them later. A casual observer wouldn't notice this degree of memory impairment, which also would be no handicap to a person, but it's possible it could increase future risk of dementia or memory problems, said Dr. Thelma Schilt of the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam.

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AMSTERDAM - Could a smoking ban spell the end of Amsterdam's world-famous coffee shops, where smoking cannabis is one of the main attractions?

No chance, says local conservative politician and coffee-shop owner Michael Veling.

The Dutch may well follow other European countries in banning tobacco smoking in restaurants, cafes and bars, possibly as soon as the beginning of 2008, but Veling says it should still be possible to smoke dope.

He says the clientele who come to coffee shops to buy and inhale cannabis will find a way around any ban on smoking the tobacco products they routinely mix with marijuana resin or leaf in rolled paper "joints."

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- A Dutch court has added a new item to the list of activities eligible for tax relief -- drug running.

Judges in the central city of Arnhem recently declared that a professional fisherman convicted of smuggling drugs could deduct the cost of buying and shipping hashish to the Netherlands from his income on his tax return, national daily De Telegraaf reported Tuesday.

"We disagree with the local court, so we will go to the Supreme Court to appeal," said Tax Service spokesman Marcel Homan. He did not know when the Supreme Court would issue a final ruling in the case.

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THE HAGUE - A Dutch appeals court on Tuesday handed down a landmark ruling allowing an MS patient to grow cannabis for his personal use to alleviate the symptoms of his illness.

Although it is legal in the Netherlands to sell and consume small amounts of cannabis and hashish in licensed cafes, growing and trafficking the drugs are banned. Tuesday's ruling is the first time Dutch authorities have made an exception on the ban on growing cannabis for personal medical use.

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