1 - The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2021
Summary
Amsterdam, 2017
These days, arriving at Amsterdam's Central Station, many tourists will be overwhelmed by the distinctly sweet, herbal scent of marijuana or hash. Since the late 1960s and the Flower Power days, Amsterdam has been known the world over for its Red Light District and hash bars or coffee shops, where patrons can ‘legally’ purchase marijuana and hash in small amounts. In the last forty years, the city has become known as a modern-day ‘Sodom and Gomorra’ for its toleration of prostitution and use of cannabis. In Quentin Tarantino's Oscar-winning Pulp Fiction (1994), one of the many eclectic dialogues between mobsters John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson captures Amsterdam's liberal drug policy in a nutshell.
Jackson: ‘Tell me about those hash bars again. It's legal now, right?’
Travolta: ‘Yeah, it's legal now, but not 100% legal. You just can't walk into a restaurant, roll a joint and start puffing away. They want you to smoke at home or in certain designated places.’
Jackson: ‘And those places are… hash bars?’
Travolta: ‘Yeah, it breaks down like this: it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it, and if you are a proprietor of a hash bar, it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry it, but that doesn't matter, now get a load of this. If you get stopped by a cop in Amsterdam, it's illegal for them to search you. Now that's the right cops in Amsterdam don't have.’
Jackson: ‘Oh man, I’m going, that's all there is to it. I’m fuckin’ going.’
Otto Copes, 1629
More than twenty years since Pulp Fiction was released, a growing number of states in the United States are legalizing the use of cannabis. No doubt, Amsterdam and the Netherlands’ liberal policy on drug use have played some role in this development. In the Netherlands, toleration of the use of drugs and other vices, including legalized prostitution, has a longer history; a history that is embedded in the way in which Dutch municipal authorities, schoolteachers, moralists, and parents raised their adolescent children in the Golden Age, in the heyday of abundance and affluence, an era when moderation was a necessity, not an option.
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- Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll in the Dutch Golden Age , pp. 9 - 30Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2017