During my senior year of high school I remember when a friend, Trevor, returned from Amsterdam. A committed stoner, he made good on his word to go there once he was 18. I knew about coffeeshops, but not the name of any. That changed when Trevor got back, as he proudly wore a Baba Coffeeshop T-shirt. Ever since, I have carried a mental picture of that name splayed above the eight-armed elephant logo. Many coffeeshops, not only Baba, deal in memorabilia. There is an array of products branded with their logos. ‘We don’t have ads’, commented Linda, a server at No Return. ‘What we do is like the merchandise, [like] T-shirts, sweaters.’ Coffeeshops also sell sweat pants, scarves, hats, key chains, coffee cups, plates, ashtrays, grinders, lighters, rolling papers, small containers to carry cannabis, and more. They even sell copies of their cannabis menu and give away other print materials, such as posters or flyers. Customers take these home and put them up on their walls, thereby spreading the word about coffeeshops.

The problem with coffeeshop memorabilia is it can be a violation of the rule banning advertising, the purpose of which is to minimise the proliferation of cannabis use.¹ Consider what Jack told me happened at Alike All Over:

A picture of a cannabis leaf on that flyer, that can get us shut down. That was the last offence we had. A couple of years ago we got in trouble for that, and these things do stand against you [affect sanction for further violations].

The easiest way to avoid such problems, though not the most profitable, is to shun advertising. This is the reported strategy for 85 per cent of coffeeshops. When asked if their establishment advertises, common responses were ‘No, it is not allowed’ (Adam), and ‘You are not allowed to advertise’ (Lola). In response to being questioned about why Eye of the Beholder does not advertise, Imran responded with his own question: ‘We are not allowed to advertise, so why take the risk in that way?’

However, some personnel understood that the rule against advertisement is nuanced, not unconditional. That is, the ban restricts the use of certain information items in certain ways.² The two key factors are an advertisement’s content and location. By content, I mean images and words. ‘Weed leaves are not allowed’, explained Lizzie. Nor is ‘cannabis’ or its synonyms. The word ‘coffeeshop’ cannot be coupled with the business address or phone number. ‘We don’t even use the word “coffeeshop” on lighters’, reported Gwen. With respect to location, what could be considered an impermissible advertisement is not categorised as such if it is only visible from within the coffeeshop. Ruben told me of a time the police accused The Mighty of wrongly displaying “T-shirts with our phone number and address on them. It said “coffeeshop” and the phone number and the address’. The business argued in court this is within the rules. ‘We won’, remarked Ruben, because ‘the T-shirts were in a poster frame and you couldn’t see it from outside. We were not advertising them in front of the window, so you had to come inside to see them.’

Returning to content, Max clarified that advertisements are allowed to have ‘coffeeshop’ or the address and phone number. He mentioned this when trying to change police officers’ minds about what is permissible:

The guy [officer] comes [over to me] and he says, ‘We have a problem’. I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ He says, ‘This!’ and he showed me the match books that we have. I said, ‘I’m allowed to sell gift matches to the people. What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘No, look!’ It said ‘Coffeeshop’ and featured our logo. I said, ‘Now listen, you have to read the letter from your boss again because, actually, there are two things that I can do: I put my name on there, or I put my address and my telephone number on there, but you cannot do them both. So that’s my logo and it says ‘Coffeeshop Everybody Amsterdam’ – that’s it.

His coffeeshop also had a conflict with police over a flyer’s content. When the officers first discovered the printed material, they thought it merited closing the establishment. Luckily for the coffeeshop, Max talked them out of pursuing that punishment. He argued the flyer would not leave his coffeeshop and was therefore not a violation:

On the old flyer, it said our address [and ‘Coffeeshop’], but we are not allowed to advertise [this way]. We put these flyers in the cellar. The police came in and then this smarty pants – because you always have like two detectives, and the rest [are] from the police school – this guy from the police school goes into the cellar, and he went: ‘Yeah! We got them! We got them!’ So that means for us, they can close us for a week, and then he comes with the flyer. ‘Yeah, but what’s the problem?’ I asked. [He replied] ‘Your address is on here.’ So I said, ‘Oh great, then you’ve got me. Yeah, you’ve found a kilo of coke, you know? I’ve got all prostitutes in the cellar, what were you making a fuss about?’ Then I also said, ‘The flyer I can keep wherever I like. If I want to keep it as memorabilia [but not distribute], just to have it, I can put that in my cellar.’ So then the guy, this was the funny thing, he said, ‘I’m going to take it all!’ I was like, ‘You’re crazy’.

Other than the ban on nuisance (examined in Chapter 6), the rule against advertisement is the most ambiguous. This has both good and bad effects. From the perspective of government officials, including police, it is good because personnel tend to interpret the rule as a ban on all advertisement and so fully refrain. But for personnel who know how to play within the rules, the vagueness opens loopholes through which to push their advertisements.³ The best example is a series of flyers distributed by jointly owned coffeeshops: the original Dampkring on Handboogstraat, the second Dampkring on Haarlemmerstraat and the Tweede Kamer.⁴ These flyers consist of public awareness announcements about improper ‘coffee use’, paired with the coffeeshop’s name, and a striking photoshopped image, such as smoke rings hovering above a coffee cup, with a solid black background (Figures 2.1–2.5). In order that customers notice these flyers and take them home, they are placed at conspicuous spots that lend themselves to discovery, such as near the dealer counter or front door. They are also stacked in a way to encourage the customer to ‘take one’.

While having coffee, I listened to two employees discuss these flyers with a customer who admired them. One of the workers explained that coffeeshops cannot advertise, so these flyers are actually ‘invertisements’ – material designed to ‘bring out information’ about cannabis use. The other employee referred to these lessons as ‘The Hints’, an example being not to smoke every day. Then he pointed out that the flyers do not depict or spell out cannabis in any way because ‘we are not allowed to talk about the product’. Instead the flyers refer to ‘Amsterdam Coffee’, though everyone knows this really means ‘cannabis’. For example, the back of one flyer reads:

You won’t solve your problems by having an Amsterdam coffee. You should only use it for enjoyment.

Foreign countries have different law-systems. It is illegal to take Amsterdam Coffee or related products abroad.

In the Netherlands the sale of small quantities of Amsterdam Coffee is only permitted in ‘tolerated’ coffeeshops. You should therefore never buy Amsterdam Coffee on the streets.

There are different strengths of Amsterdam Coffees, so ask the coffeeshop staff for information. If you don’t know how strong it is, take a ‘sip’ and then wait for a few minutes before continuing.

Combining alcohol and Amsterdam coffee can result in unpredictable effects, so be careful, particularly if you do not have much experience of ‘drinking’ Amsterdam Coffee.

Hearing all that, I decided to join the conversation. If they cannot advertise, I asked, what do the police think of these flyers? The employee quoted above answered that officers examined them, but saw nothing wrong’; one even described them as ‘smart’. He added that their coffeeshops always work around the rules to see how far they can go. His colleague joined back in, saying more or less (i.e. paraphrased): ‘In the back of our heads, the coffeeshop name is on it and all over the world, people know the name because of the invertisement. But it’s not advertisement. This [invertisement] is allowed by law, and we stick to following those rules.’ They were so confident of this that when the second Dampkring opened in 2008 a massive invertisement image was painted on its exterior wall.