This tolerance makes them big attractions for tourists in an industry said to be worth around 300 million euro's a year.

So how will the smoking ban impact on the Dutch cannabis trade?

'Not a problem', says coffee shop owner Arjan Roskam. 

Arjan, known as the "King of Cannabis" in and around Amsterdam, runs the Greenhouse Seed Company, whose marijuana strains have won 31 Cannabis Cup prizes over the years, helping build a brand name well known in ever corner of the world.

No mess, no noise, no trouble, just a quiet, enjoyable cannabis encounter - sums up the Greenhouse Coffee-Shop experience.

Many of his shops and offices are adorned with photographs which back up his claims that a great many Hollywood celebrities, members of Europe's royal families, lawyers, judges and police officers regularly frequent his coffee-shops.

Names such as 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson, Quentin Tarantino, Wesley Snipes and Eminem, have all savoured Arjan's famed 'hospitality'.

Dutch coffee-shops attract more than their fair share of tourism to the red light district of Amsterdam, which has for a long time been recognised as one of the true cultural capitals of Europe. 

With tobacco being banned, yet cannabis use remaining tolerated, this will no-doubt add weight to the pro-cannabis argument in Europe, which often points to the successful Dutch business model as an example of how a more liberal drug policy can and will reduce illicit drug user numbers.

In the United Kingdom the government looks set to reclassify cannabis early in 2009, to a class B drug which carries with it the possibility of a 5 year jail term, for doing no more than is deemed perfectly acceptable in Arjan's coffee-shops.

Isn't it time for some "parity" in European drug laws? If we can't expect a level playing field as a result of our membership to the European Union, then whats the point of us paying to be in it?

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