It’s a weird, wacky world out there!

Take Holland - they have instituted a tobacco ban on restaurants and cafes. Big deal, you say. Everybody is doing that. Yeah, but does everybody allow you to smoke weed in those same restaurants and cafes? Well, Holland does!

From the UK Telegraph comes this story:

Smoking tobacco in restaurants and cafes across Holland is now illegal, but customers are still allowed to light up pure cannabis cigarettes. Dutch coffee shop owners claim the law, which has effectively put a stop to smoking the milder varieties of cannabis cigarette, threatens to put hundreds of them out of business.

Mark Jacobsen, chairman of the BCD, a nationwide association of coffee shop owners, said proper implementation of it would require inspectors to check each cannabis joint for tobacco content. “It’s absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette, here they’ll look to see if you’ve got cigarette in your marijuana.”

Research shows that the majority of coffee shop patrons prefer less-potent joints in which cannabis is mixed with tobacco, and only 18 per cent favor the pure cannabis alternative. Some cafes have said they will get round the problem by producing more pure cannabis brownies or “space cakes”, while others have built smoking chambers within their premises which are off-limits to staff. But a catering industry spokesman said 1,600 coffee shops across the country have been put up for sale because their owners were convinced their businesses were doomed.

The Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, which is responsible for enforcing the ban, said it had trained around 200 inspectors: “They can tell the difference between a mix or a pure joint from its smell and appearance.” The Dutch health minister, Ab Klink, said he hoped the law would help to rid the country of cannabis-induced idleness. “Consumers who spend the whole day hanging out in coffee shops will find other things to do,” he said.

Dutch coffee shops are licensed to sell small quantities of cannabis to adults over 18.

Here’s something from the LA Times:

“They sell Bud. We sell Weed,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

The Place: WEED, CALIFORNIA

The federal government is telling the owner of a small brewery here that the pun he’s placed on caps of his Weed Ales crosses a line. “Try Legal Weed,” the caps joke.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau says those three little words allude to marijuana use. Vaune Dillmann, owner of Mt. Shasta Brewing Co., says he was just trying to grab attention for his beers and this tough-luck place in the morning shadow of Mt. Shasta.

The Logo for Mount Shasta Brewing Company

The bureau’s bureaucrats have told Dillmann he needs to stop using the “Try Legal Weed” bottle caps. If he doesn’t, he could risk fines or sanctions. His worst fear: being forced out of business.

“This is ludicrous, bizarre, like meeting Big Brother face-to-face,” says Dillmann. “Forget freedom of speech and the 1st Amendment. They are the regulatory gods, a judge and jury all rolled into one. This is a life-or-death issue for my business.”

Besides, he said, the town itself was named for a man, not a plant. Abner Weed was a lumber baron who served as a state senator from these parts a century ago.

This Famous Photo’s Origins Now Revealed: The College is actually called College of the Siskiyous

Folks in Weed — population 3,000 — know whom they’re rooting for. “Government is keeping us safe from bottle caps,” mocked the headline above an editorial in the Record Searchlight newspaper of Redding, an hour’s drive south down Interstate 5. “Let’s get real,” the editorial concluded, “anyone old enough to legally buy a six-pack . . . is mature enough not to be dragged into a life of drug-addled debauchery by a message on the bottle cap.”

On the bottle caps in question, “Try Legal Weed” is surrounded by the slogan “A Friend in Weed Is a Friend Indeed.” To Dillmann’s supporters, that spells civic boosterism, not drug pushing. Weed has a tradition of exploiting the double-entendre of its name. A pithy placard on the way out of town announces “Temporarily Out of Weed.” Gas stations sell “High on Weed” T-shirts. (The town, after all, is at an elevation of 3,500 feet.)

Though the town is no counterculture haven, the metal entry arch downtown is something of a stoner stopover. Summer days find traveling pot aficionados playfully posing for snapshots under the archway’s sign, “WEED.”

Dillmann says the government treats Budweiser with kid gloves, despite the fact that “This Bud’s for You” also could be mistaken for marijuana slang. “They sell Bud. We sell Weed,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

Suicidal pets get anti-depressants

Pets at risk of self-harm are increasingly being prescribed anti-depressants because they cannot discuss problems in their lives with others, a leading veterinarian says.

Zoo and wildlife medicine specialist with the UK’s Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, Romain Pizzi, told the Telegraph that more pets were being prescribed Prozac. Tropical birds such as parrots seemed to have been the most affected by depression, Mr Pizzi said.

“Firstly, we will change the environment of the animal and make sure it has more stimulation and toys. When we have ruled out underlying medical problems, we try to break the cycle by using Prozac… given to the parrots in liquid form.

“Typically if people go out to work all day their parrot will get very bored and frustrated and eventually develop depression. Symptoms often include plucking out their feathers or self-harming… When cockatoos in particular are depressed they can start to self-mutilate and peck their own legs to the bone.”

Last year, Eli Lilly released a chewable anti-depressant for dogs onto the US market. The manufacturers even gave the “Reconcile” drug a beef flavour.

This comes from J. Napsterista:

Officers in the capital of the Netherlands are in open revolt against a new code of behavior that orders them to stop taking drugs in their free time.

The new rules, due to come in on January 1, have upset officers who patrol the city’s infamous coffee shops, where cannabis is smoked openly by locals and millions of tourists attracted by Amsterdam’s relaxed atmosphere.

It has been their duty for years to operate a policy of non-enforcement over the coffee shop culture. Now the police union will back its members in defying the cannabis ban.

Hans van Duijn, the chairman of the Nederlandse Politie Bond, the police union, says “If you allow people in the country to smoke, you would be a hypocrite to say to the police officers, ‘You are not allowed to do that’.

Legalize-it!!

This month Job Cohen, the Mayor, unveiled plans to convert scores of Amsterdam’s notorious prostitutes’ windows into fashion displays in an attempt to clean up parts of the red-light zone around some of the more attractive streets and canals. He has also led intense efforts to close coffee shops and smart shops, which sell harder drugs such as magic mushrooms.

Supplying and possessing cannabis remains illegal in the Netherlands and police have always been banned from drinking or taking drugs on duty.

Cultivating MJ is illegal in the Netherlands. A shame - that is some sweet, sweet, cheeba!

Another flaky teen celeb arrested. Can we please get them all shitfaced and have a Mercedez-Benz demolition derby? From MTV News:

Mischa Barton was arrested early Thursday morning (December 27) in West Hollywood, California, for DUI and other charges, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The English-American actress — best known for her portrayal of Marissa Cooper on Fox’s defunct teen drama “The O.C.” — was charged with three criminal counts: driving under the influence, possession of illegal narcotics and driving without a valid license.

According to an arrest report obtained by MTV News, Barton was stopped just before 3 a.m. after police noticed her car had been weaving back and forth, crossing the traffic line that runs down the middle of North La Cienega Boulevard. Police further noticed the car’s driver failed to signal before making a turn.

Mug shot courtesy LA County Sheriff’s Department.