Beyond Cannabis News Database

Magic mushrooms" will be banned in the Netherlands from next week after a court ruling Friday, in the latest sign of a hardening stance on recreational drug use by the traditionally liberal Dutch.

The ban will be in place from Monday after the district court in The Hague rejected a petition by a body representing vendors of the hallucinogenic fungi to halt a health ministry ban on their cultivation and sale.

The ruling comes days after authorities ordered dozens of Amsterdam's famous cannabis-selling coffee shops to close and two other municipalities announced they would close down all their cannabis cafes from February.

"This is bad news for us," Paul van Oyen, a spokesman for the vendors' association VLOS told AFP after the verdict. "We are highly disappointed."

The district court dismissed the VLOS's petition for an urgent interdict against the ban as groundless and unfair.

The ban, introduced by Health Minister Ab Klink and already passed by lawmakers, will now come into force on December 1.

The legislation forbids both the cultivation and sale of fresh hallucinogenic mushrooms, which grow naturally in the wild in several areas.

The world's oldest stash of cannabis has been uncovered in China.

789 grams of marijuana was found buried in the tomb of a shaman and was so well-preserved that it retained its green colour.

The drug is thought to be around 2,700 years old, with researchers warning that it should not be smoked due to its lack of odour.

An article in the Journal Of Experimental Botany revealed: "[It is] the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent."

Bridles, a harp and archery equipment were also found in the tomb

Police raided a 79-year-old widow's Highland cottage after mistaking her tomato plants for a cannabis factory, it was reported.

The officers burst in with sniffer dogs and took samples of the plants for analysis.

Lulu Matheson, who has lived in the property in Shieldaig for 53 years, said she was shaken up by the encounter.

Mrs Matheson told the Daily Mail: "I got a terrible fright and I couldn't understand what they were doing here because I knew we had nothing more than tomatoes in the window. I don't know what the neighbours must be thinking."

Her 47-year-old son Gus, a former driver, was looking out of the window when he saw police cars stop outside.

He said: "I wondered what on earth was going on. I opened the door and they more or less barged past, saying that I was growing cannabis on the windowsills.

"I started laughing because I knew they were tomato plants but it wasn't so funny when they frisked me and then started tearing the house apart."

A bid to block the upgrading of cannabis from a class C to a class B drug has failed in the House of Lords.
Crossbencher Baroness Meacher's move to keep the current classification was rejected by 116 votes to 64, a Government majority of 52.

The Government is proposing to reclassify cannabis, against the recommendations of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

HOLLAND is pioneering cannabis plantations to supply the drug to coffee shops in a bid to cut out criminal gangs.

Dozens of Dutch mayors voted for the scheme at a "weed summit" to discuss how to enforce their relaxed drug laws.

Cannabis can be legally sold at licensed shops and people can carry up to five grams without prosecution. But cultivation and dealing is outlawed, which has created an illicit two billion Euro (£1.7bn) annual trade. The plantations would supply cannabis legally.

Amsterdam is to close one in five of coffee shops because they are within 250 metres of schools.

Amsterdam Council plans to shut 43 out of the capital's 228 popular marijuana-selling coffee shops in support of a Dutch Government bid to protect schoolchildren from drugs.

The cafés are a big tourist draw and resemble ordinary coffee bars but include a cannabis menu detailing several varieties of the drug.

The city's Labour Lord Mayor Job Cohen said the businesses due to close were all within an "unacceptable" 200 metres of schools.

One of cafés due to close is The Bulldog, a popular tourist attraction that is housed in a former police headquarters, that is considered too close to a high school called the Barlaeus Gymnasium.

Contrary to the common belief that smoking the drug destroys memory, researchers have found that it could actually keep the brain young.

The team at Ohio State University found that specific elements of marijuana can be good for the ageing brain by reducing inflammation there and possibly even stimulating the formation of new brain cells.

The research suggests that the development of a legal drug that contains certain properties similar to those in marijuana might help prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Though the exact cause of Alzheimer's remains unknown, chronic inflammation in the brain is believed to contribute to memory impairment.

Any new drug's properties would resemble those of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive substance in the cannabis plant, but would not share its high-producing effects.

"Could people smoke marijuana to prevent Alzheimer's disease if the disease is in their family? said Gary Wenk, professor of psychology at Ohio State University and principal investigator on the research.

"We're not saying that, but it might actually work. What we are saying is it appears that a safe, legal substance that mimics those important properties of marijuana can work on receptors in the brain to prevent memory impairments in ageing. So that's really hopeful."

The research, which was presented to the Society for Neuroscience, involved giving rats a constant dose of a cannabis derivative for three weeks.

A control group of rats received no intervention. In follow-up memory tests, in which rats were placed in a small swimming pool to determine how well they use visual cues to find a platform hidden under the surface of the water, the treated rats did better than the control rats in learning and remembering how to find the hidden platform.

The Hague - Dutch mayors are to meet on Friday in a bid to clamp down on the nuisance they say is being created by foreign tourists drawn to the country's cannabis-vending coffee shops.

The gathering of municipal leaders, organised by the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) in Almere, north-east of Amsterdam, was arranged to compile a list of "sticking points" which would be given to the ministries of health, justice and internal affairs.

"Border communities are increasingly contending with drug tourism and the nuisance associated therewith," the association said in a statement.

"Some municipalities have simply had enough. The time has come for discussion."

Some 30 municipalities had indicated their participation by Monday, VNG spokesperson Asha Khoenkhoen said.

The meeting follows the announcement by Roosendaal and Bergen-op-Zoom, two southern Dutch municipalities close to the Belgian border, that they were closing their coffee shops, establishments with special licenses to sell cannabis, from February 1 next year.

The mayors of the two towns, who claim to have seen a rise in the influx of Belgian and French drug tourists, contend that the 25 000-odd foreigners visiting their coffee shops every week had "a notably negative impact on the public order".

The Dutch government announced last week a ban from December 1 on the cultivation and sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, another favourite among foreign visitors to Amsterdam.

And Dutch media has reported that some political parties, including the PvdA labour party, a member of the governing coalition, were becoming more and more critical of the country's tolerant approach to so-called "soft drugs" like cannabis.

The ruling Christian democratic CDA has always criticised this approach, which allows coffee shops to sell five grams of cannabis to an individual per day.

Police in Leeds (UK) are warning people to be aware that small amounts of cannabis are being sold in the city laced with crack cocaine.

The £5 amounts are known as 'Mach 5's' and are sprinkled with a small amount of crack cocaine making them more addictive and dangerous to users.

Police believe a number of those buying cannabis are unaware of crack cocaine being mixed into amounts of the class C drug.

Crack cocaine is a highly addictive class A drug that has an effect on the brain leading to users developing a psychological dependence on the stimulant. Recent studies have also suggested that long-term use of crack cocaine can irreversibly damage the nervous system.

Detectives are asking people to look out for each other and be aware of the symptoms associated with early crack cocaine use. These can include extremes of behaviour often characterised by increasing anxiety and paranoia. Users may also experience a high temperature and find their appetite is suppressed.

A cannabis plant managed to survive an estimated two months in the heart of Timaru's (New Zealand) crime fighting centre before being discovered by a policeman.

The 25cm plant was spotted by Sergeant Grant Lord this week as he went to talk to a group of people outside the town's courthouse - which is next to the police station.

Mr Lord told the Timaru Herald the plant, which was growing at the base of a table, was likely to be a couple of months old and meant someone had possibly lit up a joint and discarded the butt there.

The plant was plucked from the ground and destroyed.