LETTER FROM AMSTERDAM ISABEL CONWAY THE THICK pall of sweet-smelling pot smoke, which has hung over the Netherlands since the first "coffee shop" opened its doors in 1972, will be all the stronger now that cannabis consumers are banned from "diluting" their joints with tobacco.
A peculiar state of affairs has been created for Amsterdam's famed marijuana coffee shops as of yesterday, when the Dutch introduced a public smoking ban in compliance with EU law to protect hospitality workers' health. Users can still light up joints filled with pure cannabis - which pack a far more potent punch - as long as they don't contain a trace of tobacco.
The new rules have been called "absurd" and "unenforceable", amid warnings that forensic laboratories may not be able to cope with the flood of suspect tobacco-laced marijuana joints confiscated by inspectors.
"It's the world upside down: in other countries they look for the marijuana in the cigarette; here they look for the cigarette in the marijuana," said one coffee-shop manager.
It has been claimed that the ban will force small coffee shops to close, as smokers unable to light up joints mixed with tobacco will stay away.
There were once more than 1,200 cafes, where anyone over 18 could exercise their legal right to consume up to five grams of marijuana.
For decades, weed-lovers from around the world have been drawn to Amsterdam. Today, however, the number of cannabis outlets in the Netherlands has declined to about 750, chiefly as a result of pressure from neighbouring countries who disapprove of the liberal Dutch approach to recreational drug use.
The Netherlands is one of the last EU countries to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, and political support for an exemption from the smoking ban for soft-drugs cafes was urged.
Members of the Labour Party (PvdA) coalition government partners took the view that, as they had "chosen this soft-drugs policy, smoking should be permitted in coffee shops".
"A coffee shop where you are not allowed to smoke is like a swimming pool in which you're not allowed to swim," said the Green Left Party (GroenLinks).
Under the new law, cutting cannabis with tobacco could land coffee-shop owners with a fine of up to €2,400.
New strategies adopted by the coffee shops to entice tobacco-free custom include vaporisers and waterpipes, as well as a larger selection of cakes and cookies laced with cannabis.
One gadget introduced in Amsterdam's Any Day Coffee Shop works like a vaporiser used for medicinal purposes, transforming the cannabis into vapour, which is then inhaled.
"The vapour broadens the user's thoughts without rendering him apathetic," its creator, who declined to be named, said.
"People will thank me for having changed their lives."
Some of the coffee shops, which provide a menu of coneshaped joints with names like "Shiva Skunk" and "Northern Lights", are substituting herbs such as coltsfoot, a common plant said to taste like oregano, for tobacco.
The Dutch smoking ban, which has already been defied by hundreds of owner-run small cafes - 400 have sought a court injunction to lift the ban, claiming they will have to close - is more liberal than elsewhere.
Restaurants, cafes and coffee shops here are allowed to set up a separate room or glass partition, where smokers are cut off from staff and other customers. As long as they are partitioned and no service is offered in these areas, they stay within the law.
One Dutch bar has come up with the novel idea of a model train that can be loaded with drinks and which runs on tracks through a tunnel to the smoking room, where orders are made via intercom.
Just before midnight yesterday, Zoe, who works in an Amsterdam coffee shop popular with British and Irish tourists, stuck up a couple of no-smoking posters.
"We received no guidelines or instructions from the authorities so it's a case of wait until the first bust," she says.
"We explain that you can smoke pure weed; what we don't say is that this smoking ban is the Dutch government's sneaky way of getting rid of more coffee shops."