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National Geographic : 1974 May
Contents
go to one of our inside 'sleep-ins' and have a mattress for three guilders a night." "Are drugs a problem?" I asked. "Our narcotics squad concentrates on hard-drug pushers," he replied. "That's one thing we don't tolerate. We don't bother much about 'pot,' although it's illegal too." I had noticed a sign on a barge just across the canal from the police station: The Lowlands Weed Company, specializing in marijuana plants. "It's legal to buy and sell the plants," Officer Jagerman ex plained. "It's only illegal to sell them dry. It became fashion able to plant your own hemp on your balcony. My own family did it. Now it's going out of style. "The hippie fad is passing too," he said. "We had 3,000 in the Vondelpark last August. This summer we're down to 2,500. We still have about 50 parents coming to the police station every summer-Germans, Swiss, Italians, Americans-all looking for their 16-year-old son or daughter. We give them this map showing our sleep-ins and youth centers. They usually find their missing kids. "This situation is under control," Mr. Jagerman concluded. "We Amsterdammers see things in perspective. If people aren't making trouble, let them alone. Live and let live. We have always been tolerant of minorities. We treat the hippies the same way." The hippies killed with kindness! I talked to a group of them later in the Dam Square. They were seated cross-legged on an Oriental rug, drinking wine. "Man, this used to be the place," one of them told me. "But it's getting too structuredaround here. We're thinking of going somewhere else, like maybe Copenhagen." 0[ J. VAN BERKHOUT Never on Sunday: The rule was imposed when gasoline sources dried up last fall. Special permits were carefully examined by police (above). "We've had harder times," say the Dutch, recalling battles against the dike-breaching sea and the Nazi occupation, when Amsterdam earned the motto bestowed by the late Queen Wilhelmina: "Heroic, Resolute, Merciful." Amiable Amsterdam 705
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