By James Leavey
Henk de Vries
The founder and owner of the Bulldog Café, Holland’s first cannabis café, which opened in Amsterdam, 27 years ago, sounds off...
JL: Where did you smoke your first joint?
HDV: It was in Amsterdam, in 1965, when I was about sixteen.
JL: Were there many people smoking cannabis in Holland, at that time?
HDV: Yeah, but actually it was smoked mostly by – what you say - the black people. It wasn’t that common. It was also a period of time when hard drugs started to put on its hat.
JL: What type of cannabis do you smoke now?
HDV: I prefer Morroccan.
JL: Why?
HDV: It’s soft, it’s blunt, it’s easy for me - but then I’ve smoked cannabis for so long.
JL: When did you open your first cannabis cafe?
HDV: In 1975, in Amsterdam. I had just come back to Holland, after two years in Germany, and saw that all my friends, neighbours and colleagues had, during the time I was away, switched over to hard drugs. That hurt me, because I lost quite a lot of friends. So I decided to open a place where I could sift the hard and the soft drugs, especially for my friends and neighbours. I opened a shop that was more a part of my living room, and said, ‘I will kick out everything that has nothing to do with cannabis.’
JL: Was that the first café of its kind, in Holland?
HDV: Yeah. The name ‘Coffee Shop’, was the name I came up with. At that time, there were what we call ‘coffee houses’, which were for the regular work people who drank coffee before they went to work, or at lunchtime.
JL: What was it that prompted the Dutch government’s tacit acceptance of cannabis cafes, such as yours?
HDV: It was a fairly big fight. In the first 2-3 years we had 30-40 police coming in to the cafe, 5-6 times a day. And they busted me, baby, a hundred times. And they busted my customers for a couple of hundred times. And every time when the customers went out, I went on the door and told them that every piece of cannabis that the police had busted them for, and taken away from them, I would replace. So the customers wanted to smoke a joint and they’d say, the same as me, ‘What are we doing wrong? We’re only smoking a joint.’ At the time, the police would take away all the cannabis they found and put my customers in jail for a day, or half a day. Later on, it was just for a couple of hours. But mainly, they took away the cannabis.
JL: When did they start leaving you alone?
HDV: We created a kind of slogan, ‘We break the rules, to create the rules’. That gave us the power, and the reason why we have been going on with it. Now, the cannabis cafes are ignored. They are not legal, yet. It’s a ‘blind eye’ policy. They give you the opportunity to sell your hash, but they bring it down and down and down with a lot of rules. And these rules are the strongest you will find in any kind of Dutch business – they’re not the normal rules a business can run with. For example, we are only allowed to sell five grams of cannabis per person, per day. That person has to be 18 years, or older. Each ‘coffee shop’ is only allowed to keep a total of 500 grams in stock. And we are not allowed to bring 500 grams to our shop. That means that I need a person who can carry only five grams at a time to my shop, where I can only sell 5 grams, at a time, to a customer. That’s if you do it by the book. I can only keep 500 grams of hash in my shop, at any one time, but how I should get it there, nobody knows.
JL: It’s just a miracle, I guess…
HDV: Yes. It’s a silly situation, but that’s how it goes, in Holland.
JL: How many premises do you own?
HDV: Seven, but it covers lots of things, including a low budget hotel, a sports café, coffee shops, a cocktail bar, merchandise, and the Bulldog energy drink. It’s now more of a lifestyle thing.
JL: Have you ever thought of opening a Bulldog cafe in Britain?
HDV: Yes. I always planned to open a Bulldog in Britain, but I’d like to do the whole Bulldog line – a hotel, bar, coffee shop – but I’ve been busy now, for 27 years, and the battle is not really won. Every day I still battle with authorities over here in Holland. So, if I can find the right person, who says ‘I’ll go in the way you have been going, and in the way you do it today’, with money to invest in a good place, then I’d be open to open a Bulldog shop in Great Britain.
JL: Who do you prefer to share a joint with?
HDV: The people I started with. I’ve got more than 35 people who have worked for me between 10 and 27 years. They’re the best persons I can enjoy a smoke with.
JL: Finally, whose doorway would you love to smoke in?
HDV: The first coffee shop in London.
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