Storing excess grams

When a deliverer arrives with product in tow, proper accounting calls for the addition to be logged and added to the total. Like many technologies, accounting is both a way to maintain and to escape control.¹³ By keeping track of what comes in and goes, personnel know with certainty how close they are to exceeding the 500 grams limit. And when they see there is too much, they can take remedial measures to reduce the risk of being caught in violation by police.

One way to prevent too much cannabis from being inside the coffeeshop is to tell the deliverer to stay outside until enough of the existing supply is sold to replenish. Adam provided an example:

They [runners] come twice a day. Basically, every shift orders its new stock that they need, and we have to make sure that we stay under 500 grams. Well obviously they don’t just ‘try to’: they do. You can see everything on the scales, on the computer, to tell you how much. Sometimes they bring a bit too much and then they wait for another half an hour, until you have sold enough.

It makes sense that personnel have deliverers bide their time off the premises, but that puts them at risk of prison time. This is because, remember, possession of large quantities of cannabis outside a coffeeshop is a de facto offence. From what I heard, though, deliverers are rarely apprehended. Two circumstances heighten the risk. One is when the police set up a road block. ‘They close off the street’, Selma told me, ‘and everybody who goes in and out has to show their ID or passport. Then if they think you have something on you, they have the right to search you.’ Luckily for deliverers, road blocks are rare. In Luca’s words: ‘Those are things you have to watch out for. This past weekend, they put it on the news that they were going to stop all people on bikes and check their bags. That is not very often. It is the first time I heard of it.’

The more likely problem for deliverers is a surprise police inspection at the coffeeshop. If caught at the wrong moment, such as outside the door, the person with the delivery is in hot water. If inside, the coffeeshop is at risk of exceeding the 500 grams limit. To prevent such an occurrence, personnel call to warn deliverers when the police show up. As Mike explained: ‘If the police come, the first thing you have to do is call him [the deliverer]. I know for sure it happened in the past. The runner was about to come, the police came inside and the first thing you do is call him.’

Whereas those troubles are situational, the 500 grams rule presents a constant problem. Breaking it jeopardises the coffeeshop’s survival, but keeping the supply elsewhere puts individuals at risk of serious punishment. To quote Sophie: ‘The big problem is that we have to get supplies in a half legal and half illegal way.’ As a solution, personnel store excess stock in secret places. Finn gave an example of such practice:

Especially [on] busy days like the Cannabis Cup¹⁴ in November or New Year’s Eve, we might stash an additional 200, 300 grams [on site]. The additional inventory that I need for logistical reasons on those days is harder to find for the police.

Another coffeeshop I frequented is Everything. On a couple of occasions I observed personnel secretly store cannabis inside the back of a small vending machine.¹⁵ These machines hang on the walls of many coffeeshops. They are about 0.5 to 1 m in height and width, and 0.25 m in depth. A glass pane reveals different items for sale, such as lighters, rolling papers, grinders and other provisions. Below each item is a price listed in euros. If a customer wants to buy one of these items, he or she presses a button to select the product and slots in the appropriate amount of coins. The product can then be collected from the hole in the bottom.

Within the machine is an area visible only when opened from the side with a key. This is the space from which items drop into the take-out port, but also where Everything stores excess cannabis. As I watched covertly, I saw an employee enter the coffeeshop and unlock the machine. He reached inside and pulled out a stack of cash. He quickly shuffled it into his large, bright blue Albert Heijn shopping bag – common in the 1012 because ‘AH’ is the largest Dutch supermarket chain; several of its locations are scattered in the vicinity.¹⁶ Then the runner unloaded 10 to 20 containers into the back of the vending machine, locked it and left. These containers looked exactly like those stored behind the dealer counter: about a fist or two in size, made of hard plastic, with a re-sealable cover to keep the cannabis fresh, with a different container for each one. I think it is safe to assume that the containers in the vending machine find their way behind the dealer counter, but are stowed in the meantime so the visible gram total stays under 500.

Coffeeshops also store extra stock in adjacent space outside the legally defined confines of the coffeeshop. Technically this is off the premises and so not checkable by police. Mike told me about such a spot:

In the boxes [out of which the cannabis is sold], there is always less than 500 grams. But, for example, it happened in the past they had it in the basement because the runner comes. What happens is you have to guess [what] they are going to sell in half an hour, so that he brings you [all] the weed [you will need]. If he comes with more [than you end up needing] and you have 510 grams in the coffeeshop at that moment [for example,] the first thing you do is take the 5 or 10 grams more into the basement or somewhere else, never into the boxes. It is like everything [is] hidden.

Off-premises stash spots reduce a coffeeshop’s risk of being found in violation of the 500 grams rule, but do increase the risk of serious legal trouble if discovered by police. The danger is to whoever occupies or owns the space. Unless restocking is totally outsourced, coffeeshop owners and managers have to decide on the safest place to keep their stock until delivery time. Unlike deliveries, off-site storage places are not a visible part of working at a coffeeshop. Thus some personnel genuinely know nothing about it, or little more than that. Lola, for instance, told me: ‘The boss, he buys [the stock], puts in a place that nobody knows, and then every day he gets [some of] it back and you have a supply for the whole day.’ When I asked Mike if he knows the off-premises storage location, he answered: ‘I don’t really know, but I can guess it is at the house of this guy. That sounds to me logical. But I am not sure. I never ask. I have no sure information, but that is what I think.’

Again this withholding of information – from personnel and from me – is evidence that the proverbial back door of coffeeshops is risky business. A degree of common sense dictates, after all, not to tell a stranger where a large quantity of a valuable, illegal goods are stored. A few personnel gave details, however. In line with Mike’s guess, the only off-premises stash spots I learned of are private residences. ‘I am not supposed to have more than 500 grams in the shop, so I have to keep it at home so it is not here’, Maikel admitted. Max thought that was a bad idea, noting, ‘As a coffeeshop owner, it’s best you don’t put stuff like that in your house’. Yet he acknowledged that Everything’s supply is ‘always in a safe house’.

For ‘eight to nine weeks’, Selma kept Man in the Bottle’s supply in her home. To contextualise the experience, she starts with a description of how it came to be there:

I started working here in April, and then in May I heard they [owners] were going on holiday, so they were planning to close the shop for six weeks. That meant they would fire me and then hire me again after six weeks, when they came back again. And I couldn’t handle that – six weeks, no job, no contract, nothing. Then I wanted to go and talk with my boss to say that ‘OK, for me it was no problem if he wants to close for six weeks, but then I just need some money for this period, and then I can start working again and I would pay it back’. While I was saying this, I asked him is there no option to stay open and he was like ‘Yeah, if you want to keep all the stuff in your house. I trust you. Then we can just stay open’.

For me to make the decision to do that was pretty easy because I would just be able to work every day and earn my money and get extra money. I had a total going through my house [of] 18.5 kilos because we had some stuff coming out of Finland. It became a big mess in that corner [of my apartment] because I made upstairs a nice table with a scale and everything. I had one box like this [c.16 x 12.5 x 10 in, about the size of a banker’s box] and I had hash in there and then, you know, those big blue garbage bags, I had three really big blue garbage bags and my colleague was already telling me ‘It’s a lot, a kilo of marijuana is huge’. I didn’t know how it would look like and it was just very big. For the moment I had my sister coming over one day and I was like ‘Yeah, I want to show you something, look at this, look at this’. Yeah, it was really nice. Still, it was strange because I really felt I was doing something not right.