No more fun in smokeandapancakeland :(

[Scouse]

Teedles, I can't believe you voted for your new mayor!

Amsterdam to be new turnip-eating puritan stronghold

Well, maybe not. But I tell you - it's not going to be the tourist draw it once was.

Ah well. Looks like the "moral majority" (i.e. puritanical nazi-types) aren't just getting their own way in Blighty...

 

[Raven]

"Don't you understand? It's for their own good? We need to improve the lives of the common folk" Said the councillor from his leather chair, distracted from his glass of sherry.

 

[Chilly]

The city council says that some other businesses are also related to the decay of the city centre, including peep shows, sex shows, mini-supermarkets, phone and souvenir shops, and they will also be shut down.

What the fuck?

 

[TdC]

tbh I'd be glad to see some of the souvenir shops go, but for the rest...can you really blame them for desiring to get ties to organised crime out of the city?

 

[old.Tohtori]

It's a shame really, it all seems that we're moving towards an Equilibrium future instead of a bladerunner future

 

[Chilly]

Id much rather a Idiocracy future, imo!

 

[nath]

Yeah I'd love a coffee too but we really don't have time for a handjob now dude.

Love that film

 

[Scouse]

tbh I'd be glad to see some of the souvenir shops go, but for the rest...can you really blame them for desiring to get ties to organised crime out of the city?

I'd be happy about that - but how's closing legitimate coffee shops and ho-windows going to achieve that? Apart from putting a few hundred whores out of business (and I don't imagine they're capable of much else, which forces them onto streets elsewhere)...

Money laundering, extortion and human trafficking

How is closing tax-paying coffee shops going to help with prohibiting that?


Looks more like an underhand attempt to make Amsterdam "respectable" (whatever that is) more than anything else to me. Or am I just being naive?

 

[Litmus]

oh well at least Prague is the new Amsterdam

 

[TdC]

ofc it is -a double bladed sword if you will. the coffee shops, well, that's a problem created entirely by the tolerance policy the Dutch have in place. Weed in personal use amounts is tolerated, a coffeeshop is tolerated, however the amount of weed/hash a coffeeshop contains is technically illegal and growing the amount of weed it takes to stock your average 'shop is very very illegal and certainly not tolerated. Afaik, a coffeeshop does not actually pay tax -though I am not sure on this, but certainly none of the people I ever encountered paid tax. They paid a so called horeca licence, but that was it.

Setting up a weed growing facility to produce the amount of weed needed will get you jail, fines, your equipment confiscated and your plants destroyed. Growing one plant in your back garden will get you stoned ergo, supplying weed/hash to a coffeeshop is illegal and done by criminals. the money generated by the coffeeshop is "black" money and needs to be laundered (they used to do this through casino's, but I suppose there are more refined methods)

As to prostitution, iirc there actually is a association of prozzies, or guild or whatever they want to call it, and they actually pay tax and have control organs and things. Those who are a member ofc. Dodgy Debbie, the heroin addict down some dark alley working two-dollah blow-jobs certainly won't be, and I read in the papers that most of the women working in bordello's and such-like aren't because that makes them too expensive for the pimps or madams or whatever. I understand that most of the women tend to be eastern European or Asian, and are pressed into service for diverse reasons by organised crime.

Extortion I read tends to exist between criminals, or criminals to (shady) business men, often in real estate (perhaps due to the money laundering, I don't know exactly). Anyway, recently iirc there was a thing where the most famous bordello in Amsterdam was closed and it's assets seized because it was linked to a chapter of the Hell's Angels biker gang which was in turn using it to launder money gained from drugs trafficing. Oh well.

Anyway, it's somewhat complicated, and the Dutch have mostly themselves to blame due to the concept of the tolerance measure that they use. Personally I am for the complete legalisation and thus taxing of coffeeshops not to mention organisation and thus control of national product creation, rendering criminal effort to import stuff from elsewhere instantly moot, and to thereby keep the trade above ground where everyone can see it. Only problem being that ofc the massive reduce of profit will make the dealers go and do something else. The men I once apon a time purchassed, eh, coffee from were certainly not in the biz because of their philanthropic nature.

 

[Scouse]

Furry muff old bean! It seems you have the answer to most of it already:

Personally I am for the complete legalisation and thus taxing of coffeeshops not to mention organisation and thus control of national product creation, rendering criminal effort to import stuff from elsewhere instantly moot

Agreed.

However I believe they can't legalise because of some "federal" (maybe UN) legislation/resolution which says "western countries" can't, regardless of whether it's the right thing to do...

 

[lecter]

If they legalised weed/mdma etc here, subcontracted out to GSK/Wellcome etc. If the cost was set at todays levels the government would make a fortune. Plug a big hole in the treasury coffers.

Incidentally the revenue from cigarette sales is more than the entire budget of the NHS. Go figure.

 

[AngelHeal]

tbfh..

smoking is bad for you.:lol:

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

Incidentally the revenue from cigarette sales is more than the entire budget of the NHS. Go figure.

on what did you base this sweeping statement !

as you see below from my investigations it doesnt work out.


Total tax revenue from tobacco sales per year - £9.3bn
Total money spent on tobacco related illness by the NHS per year - £1.5bn
Total tax revenue from alcohol sales and excise duty - £14bn Total money spent on alcohol related illness by the NHS per year - £1.7bn
Again, as a drinker I have paid for any stay in hospital many times over while providing much needed tax income for the treasury


Total NHS budget 2006/07 £95bn

 

[lecter]

Must have misheard the statistic.

 

[Raven]

Its pretty much a well known fact that smoking brings in more money than has to be paid out through the NHS for smoking related illness, of those cases that are linked to smoking the link is pretty vague, cancer+smoker=smoking's fault!

No thanks to weed being legalised too, I am perfectly happy with what I get at the moment. Though I am only a very occasional smoker these days. The quality would drop through the floor if it was legalised. Uncle Gordon wouldn't like to see us thinking for ourselves now would he?

And no I don't care that, like DvD piracy it helps support the murder of kittens.