At Netherlands' Paradox Cafe, They Sell Dope To Fight Drugs -- Burghers Step In To Foil Seamy Coffee-Shop Types

DELFZIJL, Netherlands - The Paradox Cafe hands its customers a tip sheet of warnings about cannabis: Do not smoke and drive. Do not smoke and drink. Do not take it across the border. Avoid "space-cake" - hashish baked in muffins.

On the other hand, the main menu item at the Cafe Paradox, other than coffee and natural fruit juices, is cannabis. The selection ranges from expensive Moroccan hashish to cheap Dutch marijuana, sold at $7 to $15 a gram.

"That's the paradox," explained Ernst Gunst, the cafe's manager. And not the only one.

Cafe Paradox, whose main product is technically illegal in the Netherlands, is a creature of Delfzijl's town government. The cafe rents municipally owned space next to the town library, and the program is aggressively championed by the mayor, police and magistrates of this North Sea town of 30,000 people.

Opened in September as a nonprofit "foundation," the cafe is an experiment in cannabis regulation. The idea is to drive and keep criminal elements out of a business by taking it over, as state liquor stores were designed to do in the United States.

The Netherlands for years has taken a progressive approach toward what it calls "soft drugs." The law is known by a term that means "illegal but permitted" - that is, police put the lowest priority on enforcing the sale and use of small amounts of cannabis.

Delfzijl officials said they expect their cafe idea to spread across the Netherlands. Three other small towns have similar pilot programs under way.

The Dutch government is taking an open-minded attitude toward the experiments, waiting to see how they work and what local prosecutors report, an official of the Dutch Justice Ministry said.

Today in Holland, at least 5 percent of the country's 15 million people are estimated to use a cannabis product regularly. But the use of hard drugs has plummeted, with the addiction rate here half that of other European countries.

The tolerant policy toward soft drugs has spawned a ubiquitous fixture across the Netherlands: "coffee shops" and "teahouses" where the real attraction is something else.

These establishments do big business in Amsterdam and other cities, including a lively tourist trade of Germans and Americans agog at the freedom to traffic and smoke while police officers stand on the corner looking the other way.

But what the authorities will tolerate in Amsterdam they apparently will not in Delfzijl, a quiet town just a half-hour's drive from the German border.

The bad image of the local coffee shops, the criminal transactions on the wholesale level inherent in running them, and the suspicion that harder drugs also were being traded led Mayor Eduard Haaksman to launch a new program for prevention and regulation.

In a single sweep, the town shut down the cannabis trade at free-enterprise places such as De Corner and New Generation and opened the doors of Cafe Paradox.

"The war on drugs - we lost it a long time ago," said Paul Oldenburger, a local businessman and parent. He said he was cautiously open to the Cafe Paradox experiment if it meant the demise of the coffee shops.

"These coffee shops, they don't just sell the soft drugs. Hard drugs are available too, and it's an easy step from one to the other. I have young children," he said, concluding with an Americanism: "It ain't easy."

There is no sign outside the new establishment. It is an attractive if subdued space painted in yellow where a steel band plays from speakers and young people sit at tables puffing enormous reefers.

Customers have to be 18 to enter. "Use hashish and marijuana for pleasure and not to combat stress or insecurity," they are advised on the Paradox flier. "A joint does not solve any problems." The place closes at 10 p.m.

What is the message of an organization that warns about the dangers of drugs and sells them over the counter?

"The message is: Don't do drugs. But if you want to use drugs, do it in a healthy, conscious way," said Gunst, 38, formerly - and he would say still - a social worker specializing in youth problems. "One thing is for sure," Gunst said. "If you forbid it, people still want to use it, like the U.S. during Prohibition."

Gunst is proud of the cafe's offerings, noting that no artificial pesticides or fertilizers were used in their cultivation or manufacture.

"We think that's important," Gunst said, sitting at a cafe table as he rolled a large, hashish-laden cigarette. "That's why we sell no soft drinks. Coca-Cola is just water and sugar. It's not healthy."

Gunst is especially proud of the "documentary center" he is designing in the back of the cafe - a place for drug presentations to police officers, doctors and school groups, for discussion of drugs by young people and an Internet hookup to access current information about drugs.

The Dutch government is under pressure from surrounding European Union members to better police the country's commerce in drugs.