30th Anniversary of the Dutch Hashcoffeeshops : 1972 – 2002. We organise a special event to celebrate this anniversary, and to pay tribute to those that made it all possible, by just doing what they felt they should. One person, Wernard Bruining, started the first ever coffeeshop, the Mellow Yellow, the first cannabis-growshop, Positronics, and the first Medical Marihuana organization in Europe, Mediwiet (Mediweed). He was also the one of the persons involved in developing the sinsemilla grow-technique in Holland, stimulated and instructed by Old Ed, a top-grower from California, USA. Our event will be for and around Wernard, after all, without his initiatives to get cannabis to the surface in Holland, our country might also still be suffering from the same uncontrolable drugproblems as the countries around us, with cannabis being just another drug, and thousands of people in prison for cannabis related offenses. Wernards Mellow Yellow opened in 1972, on the Weesperzijde in Amsterdam, with a group of close friends, after he had been selling hash and weed from his house, the previous few years. This initiative was followed up by others, who saw the commercial opportunity of the trade in cannabis, a new form of business was created, and is thriving as never before in 2002. All this and much more, made us realize we, the cannabis community in the Netherlands, owe Wernard, and all who worked with him, a great deal of respect and gratitude, especially the people that are commercially involved in the cannabis-industry. Our event : “A tribute to Wernard and friends”, is meant as a fundraiser for Wernard, who lost his company, Positronics, in 1997, he was declared bankrupt, the tax on seeds and clones, which he had been paying faithfully, was raised from 6 to 19 %. The taxman wanted it squared from the day Positronics started, in 1985, it was too much, Wernard was left in daze, he lost everything he had built up in a day. We are asking all Dutch cannabis-entrepreneurs to make a donation for Wernard, who deserves our support more than anyone in the cannabis-culture, for his life-time achievements. We have invited Old Ed, 86 now, to be our guest of honour for this event, he accepted, and will be flown in a few days before the anniversary party. Both Wernard and Old Ed will be put in the spotlight, we have something special in mind for these two pioneers of sinsemilla. After this special event, on Fridayevening, November 29, 2002, Wernard will introduce a new event, in the following weekend, the Haarlem Hash&Weed Festival. The H&W Festival is meant to choose the best hash or weed in the contest, through a system that will exlude any form of fraud or dishonesty. The participating products, hash or weed, will be rolled into 200 joints per strain or kind, half of them pure, the other half with tobacco. The tasting and voting will be started in the participating coffeeshops, a number of the pre-rolled joints, with numbered filtertips, each number connected to the involved product. The voting is easy, after smoking the testjoint, you just dump the roach in one of the voting-boxes : Bad, good, and excellent. After counting the roaches, the winning number will be attached to the product and coffeeshop, during the Award ceremony on Sunday-evening. The tasting and voting event will be running on Saturday and Sunday, in the participating coffeeshops in Haarlem. Old Ed will be present in the Global Hempmuseum on Saturday, Nov.30, for a meet and greet with those who want to meet him in person. During the event, we will also present a new book, about the previous 30 years of experience with coffeeshops in Holland, by the title: “the Dutch Experience”, written by Richard Cowan, the man behind Marijuana News and Pot-tv, in cooperation with Wernard Bruining and Nol van Schaik. Tickets for the events will be made available through internet-reservation and the participating coffeeshops. We hope to welcome you in Haarlem for the occasion, and invite you to have a ‘taste’ of the Dutch delights… More info : www.wwwshop.nl/30 The Willie Wortel and Global Hempmuseum crew. www.wwwshop.nl www.globalhempmuseum.nl