Grey Area: Regulating Amsterdam’s Coffeeshops

By Scott Jacques.

“My first trip to Amsterdam was for a couple of days in the autumn of 2003. A second-year student at the University of Georgia, I was studying abroad at Oxford, just a few hours by air from Amsterdam. Years before, I had learned how to smoke marijuana and enjoy its effects, probably too much so. For stoners like my former self, visiting Amsterdam’s coffeeshops is a recreational pilgrimage. There a smoker can purchase cannabis and get high without fear of legal trouble, despite it being an illegal activity. This was a welcome change from the accustomed stress of acquiring weed in the United States.

UCL press. (2019) 186p.