The dinky, marijuana coffee shops have gone mainstream in Amsterdam and leading the brigade is The Bulldog, that quintessential rebel outfit of Hank Vreis.

Now The Bulldog sells jewellery, wallpaper, T-shirts, and even rents bicycles (Amsterdam has half a million bikes on a population base of 7,50,000) echoing a branding strategy that would turn the hippies of the beat era turn in their graves.

It even runs a hotel and rents out rooms and as a concession to hedonism (contrary to economics) suggests for you to take a room so your friends can "watch you make out".

The mind benders are still sold in the basement - anything from 12-15 Euros for some significant grams of marijuana or hash. And something not on the push button menu: a single, pre-rolled joint for three and a half Euros. For that you have to chat up the bartender who in spite of being Dutch has developed an Irish accent.

If you are a beautiful girl he will even take you around the photo collage of celebrity visitors - Chuck Norris, Sylvyster Stallone, Sinead O Connor, Madonna, Tom Cruise and many others. Some of them recent visitors.

In times between 1975 to the late 1980s the police used to come around 2-3 times a week raiding the premises. On those occasions an orange was dropped down by the bartender in the shop above to warn the dealer of the police raid. These days all the authorities do is send a man in front of the hash coffee shops with number counters - an exercise to estimate the total number of visitors to a particular shop.

The numbers go into sending the annual tax invoice for the coffee shop, a cut for the state of nearly 40 per cent. The final number is hotly debated between lawyers from the two sides and after some haggling a more amenable position agreed to.

Says Vries, "We Dutch just need an excuse to take tax. The state has assumed a mafia like position. Pay us the tax and we will leave you alone."

Under current Dutch laws, the 1976 Opium Act, the importing, trafficking and possession of cannabis are illegal. But possession and selling of amounts less than 30 grams are classified as misdemeanours and given zero-policing priority.

Technically, it's illegal to sell and consume pot, but years of tolerance and policing have taught the Dutch to ignore the coffee shops. There are some 400 in Amsterdam and perhaps 2,000 in the whole of the Netherlands. Use, therefore, is permitted only in designated areas so Dutch officials can keep an eye on people.

The general Dutch theory behind this tolerance is that policing becomes easier and soft drug smokers (users of marijuana and hash) rarely graduate to using hard drugs (heroin, cocaine etc). Besides, even soft drug users stop using them after a particular age.

Out-of-control drug use was a huge problem in the past and usage is not tolerated outside designated areas. Use of hard drugs is dealt with harshly. As is more extreme forms of entrepreneurship like the courier service that started delivering drugs to homes. Annually, some 20-30 coffee shops are closed down. Some on complaints from neighbours about the noise.

Obviously, selling cannabis to minors or advertising your trade is a strict no no. Of course, it doesn't mean there isn't some excitement or the other apart from the thick grass smoke wafting through the bars. The day I was there a Macedonian ran off with some joints and ran so fast and furious that his shoes got left behind. The sucker came back an hour later to collect his shoes. Only to be nabbed by the bartender and the police.

All this while flakes of snow were hitting the streets. Some social system.