On Amsterdam’s Hash Joints

Your article about the cannabis coffee shops of Amsterdam (“The Corner Hashish Joint,” Dec. 10) held useful insights into an approach to drug control that is gaining popularity internationally.

There are about 2,000 cannabis coffee shops throughout Holland, the nation with the lowest hard-drug-use rate in Europe. This system of tolerance has worked so well that 17 European cities and provinces this year signed the Frankfurt Accord to implement tolerance in their communities as a drug abuse reduction project.

Here in America the situation is more repressive. Hard line drug warriors espouse a program of harsh penalties, long prison terms and property seizure schemes that attack the basic principles of private property and personal freedom on which our country was founded.

Before 1937, cannabis was legal in the United States and was commonly used as medicine and for relaxation without any demonstrable social harm. There were 1,200 cannabis bars in New York City alone during the Harlem Renaissance and many more here in Los Angeles on Central Avenue. These clubs brought together whites, blacks and Latinos in a comfortable musical atmosphere until they were shut down by marijuana prohibition.

The Drug Enforcement Administration estimated that cannabis was a $50-billion industry in 1989, with tax revenue potential of more than $5 billion per year that remains untapped.

CHRIS CONRAD

Global Operations Director

Business Alliance

for Commerce in Hemp

Los Angeles