The cannabis menu

No matter how customers find their way into a particular coffeeshop, they probably want to see its cannabis menu. Yet the ‘no advertising’ rule restricts how coffeeshops display this information item. It can only be placed on the inside of the establishment, for instance; as Selma said of the menu, ‘The moment I would hang this on the door or on the window, it is illegal’. Even inside, the menu is only supposed to be positioned at certain places. Lizzie explained: ‘The menu is not supposed to be very visible. So [for example], when people come in, they always ask if you have a menu [at the drink counter]. I say that we are not allowed to move the menu [over here]. They have to go to the menu [which is located at the separate dealer counter].’ Some personnel, such as Ruben, think it is a violation to show the menu preemptively to customers: ‘You cannot even show the menu to people. They have to ask for the menu. It is illegal to have a menu on the bar. You can only have a menu on the place where you sell the weed. They have to ask for the smoking menu.’ For this reason, a few coffeeshops hide their menu behind a dark screen. The only way a customer can view it is to press a button below the blackout screen that reveals the options. But the vast majority of coffeeshops are less strict or creative. They simply put the cannabis menu on the dealer counter for people to look at as they please.

Cannabis menus are remarkably similar across coffeeshops. Pretty much all of them are a single page, or two pages at most. Other than maybe the coffeeshop’s logo, these menus have no pictures; they simply spell out what is available and give prices for a certain quantity.¹⁵ Commonly seen marijuana strains include Amnesia, Bubblegum, Cheese, Jack Herer, Northern Lights, Super Silver Haze and White Widow. For a gram, these and others sell from about €10 to €12. The lowest price I saw is €5 for vague varieties such as Colombia Outdoor, Jamaica or a ‘Salad Bowl’ of scraps dumped together. The highest prices tend to be €15 to €20 for varieties including Amnesia Haze, OG Kush and Head Band, though some coffeeshops sell the same product for less. Several coffeeshops offer discounts for buying larger quantities at once, such as 5 grams. More will be said about this in Chapter 4.

Hash is listed separately on the menu from marijuana, located either beside, above or below it. Caramello, Charras, Ice-o-later, Ketama, Super Polm, Water Works and Zero Zero are some of the most commonly offered types of hash. Compared to marijuana, there are fewer types of hash on the market, but they have a greater price range. At the low end, a gram of hash costs €4 for Afghan, while the highest price I came across is €70 for 100 per cent Sativa Ice-o-later. The normal price for hash is about €10 per gram.

Recall that there are a couple of other cannabis products on coffeeshop menus. One is pre-rolled joints, which are sold for €3 to €10 a pop, though a few coffeeshops sell packs of three for €10, four for €12 or six for €16. Coffeeshops sell edibles in the form of space cookies, space cakes, space muffins and space brownies. They cost €4.50 to €7.50 each, with €5 as the standard.

To help sell items, some menus include a short description of each option. For example, the place of origin is listed as Morocco, Nepal, Lebanon or the Netherlands. The means of production is specified as ‘bio/organic’ or ‘hydro’. The ‘flowering time’ required to produce the plant is given as between 9 and 16 weeks. Descriptions of smell and taste are ‘sweet’, ‘smooth’, ‘spicy’, and of the expected high ‘stoned’, ‘strong stoned’ or ‘very strong stoned’.¹⁶ A few coffeeshops advertise that the item won an award, like those given at the annual Cannabis Cup.¹⁷ Almost all menus specify whether each marijuana strain is indica or sativa. Jens described the difference between these two subspecies:

You have got two basic types: indica and sativa. Indica makes you stoned, sativa makes you high. Stoned is the sleepy feeling in your head with the heavy eyelids and the sedation where you just want to mellow out and feel like a couch potato. Sativas are the ones that lift you up, make you a little bit more energetic, a bit more like helium type of thing like you are puffing balloons, you have a really tweaky feeling. The sativas usually cost more because they are plants from closer to the equator, so they are used to longer summer cycles; they grow longer, and sativas flower in 12 to 18 weeks. Indicas, because they are used to colder climates and shorter summers, flower in six to eight weeks. So there is variation in having to keep the plant alive for 8 to 10 weeks longer than another, so the fact is that you pay more for the weed. They also run twice the risk [per growth cycle], of course.