The First Cannabis Café

Reason.com published a fascinating article about the first medical marijuana restaurant in America.

On November 13, a clot of journalists stands in a hailstorm outside a Portland, Oregon, business called Rumpspankers Beyond Broth. We’re awaiting a press conference rechristening the business the Cannabis Café, the first restaurant where patients licensed by the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP) can publicly use marijuana.

“Welcome to freedom!” says Madeline Martinez, all good cheer as she finally presents the café, a cavernous room of dinged-up furniture and paper lanterns. As the executive director of Oregon NORML, Martinez previously hosted bimonthly socials for marijuana patients in the ballroom above Rumpspankers, but a seven-day-a-week place to congregate and medicate? That is her dream come true.

It sounds like a wonderful idea. I would imagine some folks who require marijuana for their conditions also suffer from loneliness. Their caregivers could deliver them here once in a while.

But those who show up on Cannabis Café’s inaugural day seem relatively hale. A 20-year-old says he uses pot “because I tore a muscle in my hamstring.” A 48-year-old woman with fibromyalgia is here as much for the social aspect as for pain relief. “It’s really nice to know you’re not alone,” she says, smiling at a 39-year-old man with a pacemaker, who smiles back.

The only person not smiling is the one who appears the sickest. Outside, the hail has changed to rain, and at a table at the end of the stairwell sits a man, visibly ravaged by illness, thin and out of breath and leaning on a cane. He is looking at the line of people waiting to get in, nearly all of them young men, joking and laughing. Asked whether he wants some help up the stairs, he shakes his head, too weak to answer.

What's your opinion? Is this burgeoning movement going to be ruined by fakers like the guys on line for the first day's action? Should that ruin it? Would it be a bad thing if we allowed marijuana cafés like they do in Amsterdam?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Cleaning Up Amsterdam

CNN has been reporting over the last couple days that Amsterdam is undergoing some kind of clean-up.

Amsterdam unveiled plans Saturday to close brothels, sex shops and marijuana cafes in its ancient city center as part of a major effort to drive organized crime out of the tourist haven.

The city is targeting businesses that "generate criminality," including gambling parlors, and the "coffee shops" where marijuana is sold openly. Also targeted are peep shows, massage parlors and souvenir shops used by drug dealers for money-laundering.

"I think that the new reality will be more in line with our image as a tolerant and crazy place, rather than a free zone for criminals," said Lodewijk Asscher, a city council member and one of the main proponents of the plan.

I'm not sure if I understand how this initiative is going to make Amsterdam more in line with their "image as a tolerant and crazy place." Is the Councilman talking about keeping the tolerant and crazy places limited to certain areas of the city? Or is he just giving lip service to the tolerant and crazy idea while his real agenda is something else?

Besides, I thought closing businesses like these is what generated crime. Isn't that how it works in America?

What do you think? I've never been to Amsterdam, what's it like first hand? Does legalizing things like prostitution and drug use take some of the pleasure away? Isn't part of the thrill the fact that it's clandestine?

Over on the Kickin' and Screamin' site there's a post entitled THE PRICE OF MORALS-FREE LIBERALISM. I guess his opinion is right there in the title.

What's your opinion? Is Amsterdam an example of failed liberalism? Or is something else going wrong over there? Prohibition against alcohol in America failed, does that mean that other prohibitions fail in the same way? Are they all manifestations of liberalism?

Please let us know what you think.