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I am in Haarlem, smoking and typing in Willie Wortel's Indica, in the midst of our 20th anniversary celebrations and activities.

We decided to keep it low profile, no publicity, no press, the times just are not right for joyful events in and around Dutch cannabis coffeeshops.

I am proud and happy we made it this long, we have had all possible resistance against our existence, but we always stood up and survived, no matter the size of the adversary.

I am seated besides the Marble game, a game for our customers, they can win raffles for the lottery we have scheduled for next Monday. We have been giving out raffles all week, with every 10 euros in cannabis purchased.
The prizes are: A bicycle, an I Pad, an LED tv, a videocamera, a super small videocamera, a few bongs and glass smoke pieces, pool queue's and more...

We give away a gram of Juicy Power to every client today, until the 1000 baggies are finished, and we gave away 1500 gift packages with smokers paraphenalia and a few thousand raffles so far.

Today and tomorrow we have a few skill games up and running, in both the Indica and Sativa coffeeshops, enabling every customer to gather some more raffles for Monday's lottery.

Nothing but good news, one would say, but yesterday's newspaper ruined the day and my entire anniversary week.

The local newspaper produced a huge article, stating:
"Nine out of sixteen Haarlem coffeeshops to be closed."

It explained that, in case the distance criteria for/between coffeeshops and high schools were raised to 350 meters, 9 of the 16 coffeeshops in Haarlem would be closed for being too close to a high school.

The Mayor had a reaction:
"Haarlem is not a 'free state' , if this becomes national policy, we have to comply. I would not be happy about it, because we would have to compensate for the coffeeshops closing, that would cost the City millions of euros, because they are all successful enterprises. I suggest the Haarlem Coffeeshop Union (THC) to start legal procedures as soon as one of them has to close."

That is a decent political answer, but we know he is not in favor of applying the new distance criteria, we had a great talk with him in Haarlems City Hall last December, during which the Tomahawk of War was changed for a Peace-pipe.

The article in Haarlems Dagblad showed the facades of the 9 coffeeshops under threat, with a lot of anti-cannabis jive from a school principal, the one of the high-school causing the closure of 6! coffeeshops within its radius.

We are not really in panic, because we have the right to move our coffeeshops to a new location, even if the 350 meters come in effect, and the City would have to pay the bill for all this.

Haarlem will not lose any coffeeshops, but it would be better if things would just stay as they are....

The shops under threat are:

Empire, Willie Wortel Sativa, High Times, Maximillian, Easy Going, Regine, Take Away, Theehuis and Liberty.

We just renovated the Sativa, with a double door entrance to kep under 18's out and a pooltable in the huge smokers area, new toilets, walls, floors and decoration. The High school in our 350 meter circle is The Luzac College, they opened up a few years after we opened the coffeeshop there, so we can defend our claim to stay put for this reason.

I will keep you updated on this, we (THC) are preparing a press release.

I feel offended by all this, we have taken every possible precautions to make sure under 18's can not get into a coffeeshop, we even use mistery shoppers (under 18's) to test our staff, the Mayor and the Police applaud this, so what the....?
No matter what we do or say, we will always be treated as unreliable and slightly criminal by all authorities. This has to stop, we have been hassled long and hard enough.

I think we need the smartest Lawyer we can find, to file whatever charges he can cook up, to stop the discrimination of Dutch coffeeshop entrepreneurs.
So far, all those we had and paid were not as good as they seemed to be, we need a fricking Perry Mason copy.