The Netherlands finally complies with EU tobacco control lows and bans cigarette smoking in restaurants and bars, including those singularly groovy coffeeshops so close to our hippie hearts. Now all joints have to be 100% pure cannabis, though herbal substitutes for tobacco might do the trick..... mugwort, anyone? i'm sure the Dutch will figure something out to prevent people from collapsing after they've basically mainlined some of the higher quality fare... is there another group of people in Europe who work better collectively to solve social problems?

Photo by Martha Sullivan@2007