Dutch police are to regularly take samples of the cannabis products sold at coffeeshops to monitor levels of the psychoactive substance THC. The move comes after the cabinet agreed Friday to consider marijuana with THC levels over 15 percent as a hard drug.
Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten said the THC content of the cannabis samples would be tested at the Dutch Forensic Institute. He stressed that it was the responsibility of the coffeeshop to monitor the levels of THC in the products they sell.
In a statement released on Friday, the government said it wanted to reduce the consumption and production of strong cannabis. The measure will not affect the drug’s current listing under the Dutch Opium Act.
(lo)
© Radio Netherlands Worldwide
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Back in the 1970s, I met a Lebanese hash maker, he called the highest grades as hashishISH (his emphasis). He described the process and the quantity of the different grades of hash that got the user well stoned. Also described the cultivars and the impact this has on potency. He had access to stuff like what we call skunk now AND had made hash from that. The top grade from that stuff was so strong a piece the size of a match head would last the user for four hours of being totalled. That sounded like 30%. Lets face it, all the cannabis cultivars we have today has been floating around mother earth for thousands of years. Describing even the strongest of these as a "hard drug" is pure politics and nothing to do with reality on a clinical medical level. Strong cannabis will not go away but these laws will put it into the hands of people who only really want to sell drugs like heroin. Sure they might get it for a customer but the tragic truth is that it is impossible to sell cannabis the way heroin is marketed..... I thought the Dutch had learned these lessons in the prohibition years that preceeded Dutch coffeeshop laws. Part of the magic of cannabis for experimenting youngsters is the very wide difference in the effects - there is no real need to fall into heroin experiments if skunk, or hash from skunk is available in a coffeeshop. Keep the faith, Max Harmreduction