So the government came up with a utilitarian scheme for “hashish coffee shops” which were allowed to sell small amounts of marijuana to anyone over 16.  They were tightly controlled—absolutely no hard drugs, no underage customers, no advertising—and the rules turned out to be easily enforceable since the proprietor, like the tavern owner, had an incentive to keep the lid on or lose the farm.

Today in Amsterdam it’s still against the law to smoke marijuana, but if you stop a police officer on the street and ask him where to buy it, he’ll probably give you a choice of half-a-dozen modern-day speakeasies within walking distance.  Along the Warmoesstraat near the Centraal Station, you’ll see an occasional storefront with a potted plant in the window, and at the bar inside might be a college professor or a journalist, a couple of dismayed tourists from Vermont, and seated around tables covered with newspapers, comics, and chessboards you can find college kids, bricklayers, office workers and visiting Germans. Ask to see the menu and the waiter will pull a three-ring binder from under the bar that looks like a wine list, but the plastic pockets contain samples of everything from Jamaican ganja to Moroccan hashish at bargain prices. At the bar a Dutch insurance salesman splits a cigarette with his thumbs and dumps the tobacco onto an EZ-Wider rolling paper. He crumbles some hashish, sprinkles it on the tobacco, rolls it, lights it, and offers a hit to the total stranger sitting next to him.  At a glance, the place looks like any other small-town college hangout, but the laid-back atmosphere contrasts sharply with the noise from the saloon across the street where they’re serving alcohol.

There are some 1200 of these clubs scattered through Holland, over 150^ in Amsterdam alone.  And despite continuous international pressure to shut them down, the Dutch have held fast. Their original objective was to keep youngsters away from hard drugs and by that measure the program has been a smashing success. Today the average age of a heroin addict in Holland is 36.  It was 25