cannabisnews.com: Common Currency Builds on Common Culture 





Common Currency Builds on Common Culture 
Posted by FoM on December 31, 2001 at 22:14:23 PT
By T.R. Reid, Washington Post Foreign Service
Source: Washington Post
A search for the soul of Europe began on Juhani Persola's snow-covered farm here on the Arctic Circle, where the only hint of daylight this time of year is a smudge of pink that moves across the southern sky around midday. The trek ended 2,400 miles away in Jose Luis Silva's taxicab on the palmy southern tip of Portugal, where the sun is so dazzling that the tourism office hands out skin-cancer warnings even in the depths of December.
Yet despite the vast differences of light and latitude, a sense of identity emerged that spanned the continent. "I am Finn, in Lapland, but now feeling European," Persola said, the words coming out in a cloud of vapor that circled the furry earflaps of her Russian hat."I am a European who lives in Portugal," Silva echoed, looking out from behind his Italian designer shades. "There is a mentality now that rivalry is disappearing, and we are all part of the same Europe."Today, that sense of attachment to a single home called Europe takes a great leap forward as more than 300 million people in 12 countriesadopt the continent's new common currency, the euro.Replacing a dozen familiar currencies with a single money is a bold economic step for the leaders of the increasingly integrated European Union. But money, as a symbol of sovereignty and national identity, has meaning far beyond finance. A common currency presumes a common culture -- or at least an aspiration in that direction. Can Europe, with its potpourri of languages, customs, cuisines and ethnic animosities, qualify as a cultural union?Some possible answers to that question came in a reporter's trip through the eurozone, a journey taken to discover whether the crisp new euro notes amount to more than just paper in the pocket.In today's largely borderless western Europe, the travel was easy. You cross frontiers and never see a border guard. That's a result of the 1995 Schengen Agreement, which eliminates most intracontinental immigration controls and lets a citizen of any member country travel, live and study in most of Western Europe without a passport or a visa.Everywhere on the trip, instant contact with every corner of Europe -- and most of the world -- was available through the GSM (Global Standard for Mobiles) cellular network, the European invention that helped phone-makers here pass Motorola Inc. of the United States in the booming global market for cell phones. And Europe's multibillion-euro infrastructure of new bridges, tunnels, trains and highways made the continent more connected today than ever. .Europeans in the past decade have fulfilled the dreams of centuries by linking their mainland with Britain -- through the Channel Tunnel, or "Chunnel" -- and the Scandinavian peninsula -- through the Oresund Fixed Link."Twenty years ago, even 10 years ago, we would not have spent billions on this bridge," the mayor of Copenhagen, Jens Kramer Mikkelsen, said, pointing proudly toward the Fixed Link, a $3-billion, 10-mile-long structure -- with a bridge, tunnel and man-made island -- that opened 18 months ago between Denmark and Sweden."But now we are no longer just Danes and Swedes. We are Europeans. We needed to have that mental bridge before we could build the concrete one."With all the new bridges, concrete and otherwise, it's not surprising that Europe would develop cultural norms transcending borders and traditions.Consider those famous European cuisines, for example. Yes, the Finns still love a good reindeer steak, the French have a thousand different cheeses, and the Greeks like to put olive oil on everything. But there is a common European diet emerging.From the top of Norway to the toe of the Italian boot, you find a standard breakfast: a cup of severely strong coffee and the kind of sweet roll that Americans, for some reason, call "Danish pastry." No Europeans -- not even the Danes -- use that term, except for TV comedians making fun of Americans. In Europe, that breakfast pastry is generally called Vienna bread.The favorite quick lunch almost everywhere is a crunchy baguette sliced lengthwise and turned into a sandwich about the length of a forearm. The continent's standard snack is "frites," the food that Americans call French fries. "I don't know where you get that 'French fry,' " complained Jacques, the chief potato fryer at a sidewalk friterie in Charleroi, Belgium. "Everybody knows that frites are all over Europe."Frites are properly eaten with mayonnaise, particularly in the northern half of the continent. But nowadays -- such is the power of U.S. culture -- ketchup is also common.Despite Europe's world-renowned vineyards, the real national drink of Europe is beer. Europeans consume vast quantities of black beer, white beer, red beer, gold beer, cherry-, lemon-, and strawberry-flavored beer, beer for breakfast, beer at bedtime, beer even at McDonald's. A beer with your Big Mac costs about .90 euros, roughly 80 cents.The Europeans cherish their many languages. Indeed, the European Convention on Human Rights says that all people have a fundamental right to learn and use the traditional language of their region, no matter how few speakers might be left. The European Union has a regulation guaranteeing that representatives of any member nation can use their national language in any EU forum -- which means the translators at committee sessions sometimes outnumber the speakers.And yet, a common European language is clearly emerging: English. Every European country requires students to take years of English in school; other languages may be offered, but English is mandatory. As the standard second language, English tends to be the chosen tongue when, say, Greeks, Swedes and Spaniards get together.At the European Central Bank, in Frankfurt, Germany, the official language for all business is English. At the European Parliament, with elected members from all 15 member countries, "I'd say about 80 percent of all conversations are in English now," says Tom Lynn, a Briton on the parliamentary staff.Companies operating across borders in Europe routinely require staff to converse in English. On MTV Europe, about 80 percent of the announcers use English; the songs are primarily in English. English is the language of European baseball caps, backpacks, T-shirts and tattoos.Europe's common language has become so common it appears in unexpected places. The current advertising slogan of the postal service in Belgium -- a nation largely of French, Flemish and German speakers -- is the English phrase "Belgian stamps are cool." On the steep mountain pass that links German-speaking Austria with Slavic-speaking Slovenia, a billboard declares, in huge letters, "Hit my airbase!" This turns out to be a popular sales campaign for an Austrian cigarette brand called Memphis Blue Lights."The thing about English is, you can use it anywhere in Europe," said Maria Ortega, a ski instructor in the Pyrenees, where French and Spanish are used interchangeably. "If I meet someone, I try Spanish. Then I try French. And if it's not working, I say 'Hello.' That's the signal, and we communicate no matter what country we come from."English is particularly standard among the young, and the 20-somethings chattering in the common language at clubs and raves also share a common intoxicant: marijuana.In most of Western Europe, governments have either legalized the drug or simply stopped enforcing laws against it. On the sidewalks of London's lively Brixton neighborhood, people will light up a spliff -- a word the British use for "joint" -- in front of the police station. Why not? The local police chief has announced publicly that it is not worth his time to arrest them.From the ski slopes of the French Alps to the beaches of southern Portugal to the coffee shops of Amsterdam -- where menus list types of marijuana as well as flavors of coffee -- the drug is the common element of European youth culture.Another tie that binds all Europe is a common sport. The Norwegians idolize skier Bjorn Daehle; the French love bike racer Laurent Jalabert; the Dutch are wild about speed skater Rintje Ritsma. Those are localized passions. But fans from all three countries, and every other European location, are particularly obsessed with soccer and with international stars such as David Beckham, of England's Manchester United team, who probably ranks as the Michael Jordan of Europe.To many Americans, soccer in Europe suggests drunken hooligans battling in the stands. That happens. But mostly, European soccer is a pastime that draws tens of millions of peaceful fans every weekend and reaches across all national borders. On any given Sunday or Monday, virtually every European newspaper will have page after page of soccer results, reporting on games from every country on the continent.In a tiny farm village in Alsace, on the border where France and Germany meet, a cable TV salesman, Jacques Laurent, gleefully compared European football,as soccer is called across the continent, to America's pastime.Laurent gave no quarter. "Baseball is a good game," he said, "but where do you get the right to say it is the 'World Series'? You have just two countries playing."In Europe, every nation plays football, every nation plays every other nation, and every fan knows the teams and players from anywhere in Europe. Football brings millions and millions together in a shared experience. I myself have traveled to, let's see, nine countries at least, to see games. Football is Europe, don't you see? If I meet somebody from Manchester [England], I just say, 'David Beckham,' and we immediately have something we share."On the whole, Europeans also share a political vision. It is a familiar one to Americans in many ways, with a firm commitment to democracy, free debate and individual liberties.But politics in Europe is considerably more to the left than the American consensus, particularly on the role of government in daily life. Nearly all western European nations today are run by center-left governments that use high tax rates to provide high levels of public service. Even the "conservative" governments in Italy and Spain are well to the left of the U.S. standard on many social issues."One of the striking things for any European," says Jonathan Freedland, a columnist with Britain's Guardian newspaper, "is the way Americans use the term 'welfare state' as a pejorative. In Europe, we are proud of our welfare states. People want government to provide health care for everybody, college education, cheap transit, employment guarantees, all those things. If it means higher taxes than any American would want to pay, that's part of the bargain. This is the European way of seeing things."What's not clear is whether these disparate elements of a pan-European culture can ever lead to a Europe that is as united as another wealthy transcontinental power, the United States. Europeans may talk, eat, travel, cheer and vote in increasingly common ways, but the continent is still a collection of sovereign nations.European leaders speak expansively of making the European Union a new "superpower" -- a global force equal to the U.S. politically and economically. Two weeks ago, at the "Eurosummit," the prime ministers and presidents of the 15 member nations launched a constitutional convention to write a new charter for pan-European cooperation in numerous areas.The convention is to consider such ideas as EU-wide tax systems and a popularly elected "president of Europe." Even so, Europe is still far removed from the kind of political unity that binds Americans."Europe has been engaged in nothing less than an attempt to invent a new kind of political unit," noted Jessica T. Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "Europe's integration . . . is a gigantic exercise in pooling, even perhaps redefining, national sovereignty."If that is the goal, many Europeans seem ready to support it. .On that sunny beach in Portugal, Silva was shown a photo of Persola, bundled up in the strange noontime twilight of northern Finland. He was asked: do you two Europeans really have much in common?"Well, I'll tell you this much," Silva replied with a smile. "If she came all the way down here and rode in my cab, we'd both be using the same money. Doesn't that mean something?"Note: For Many Europeans, Euro's Arrival Strengthens Ties That Bind Continent. Source: Washington Post (DC)Author: T.R. Reid, Washington Post Foreign ServicePublished: Tuesday, January 1, 2002; Page A01 Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company Contact: letterstoed washpost.comWebsite: http://www.washingtonpost.com Related Articles:Police Extend Pilot Scheme on Cannabis http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11649.shtmlDutch Model for UK Drug Laws http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11624.shtmlWhy Britain is Going Dutch http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11175.shtml 
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Comment #7 posted by E_Johnson on January 01, 2002 at 10:21:51 PT
But I will miss seeing Debussy's face on money
It was nice having faces of artists and scientists and philosophers on the money. Euros need some personality. But I'm glad that Europe is arising as a power to balance the noxious influence of American Puritanism in the world.
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Comment #6 posted by Sam Adams on January 01, 2002 at 09:12:45 PT
happy new year!
"From the ski slopes of the French Alps to the beaches of southern Portugal to the coffee shops of Amsterdam -- where menus list types of marijuana as well as flavors of coffee -- the drug is the common element of European youth culture."And from the ski mountains of Colorado to the walk-up flats of Manhattan, American youth smoke more cannabis than any other country in Europe, save England, which is tied with us according to the studies I've seen. Sadly, our society sees the youth culture as something that needs to be kept under the thumb of law enforcement.
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on January 01, 2002 at 08:13:33 PT
Happy New Year 2002!
I hope everyone had a fun New Years Eve and no one has too bad of a headache! LOL! We're doing just fine! We are watching the FREE concert on DIRECT TV right now and it is a Willie Nelson concert for this month. Some of you might want to check it out. It's really good! 
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Comment #4 posted by Ethan Russo MD on January 01, 2002 at 06:19:15 PT:
Upbeat
This upbeat article nicely captures the current atmosphere in Europe that I experienced during my two trips there this past year on "CannaBusiness."Europeans are appalled by our refusal to provide medical care to people in every social stratum, and by our moralistic and parochial attitude about drugs, cannabis in particular.Unless the USA takes a hard philosophical look, we will be passed by economically as we surely have been on social policy. We do not have to compete, but we should be seeking a concordance of thought and feeling.A Happy New Year to all, but especially FoM for all the great work you do!
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Comment #3 posted by CorvallisEric on January 01, 2002 at 02:43:24 PT
self-fulfilling prophesy
In most of Western Europe, governments have either legalized the drug or simply stopped enforcing laws against it.
Altogether delightful article. But, nowhere in the industrial world with the partial exception of the Swiss loophole is cannabis de jure legal to possess 
(to the same extent as tobacco), let alone grow or sell.No problem. Every time someone writes that it's so, it edges a little closer to being so. All those articles in the British press since 23-Oct-2001 about "depenalisation," "decriminalisation," even "legalisation," make government denials impotent, regardless of the author's intent.Swiss Cannabis Report - 2 versions of the same report:
http://www.tacethno.com/tacpublish/cannareport.html
http://www.hanf-koordination.ch/hemp-switzerland.html
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Comment #2 posted by E_Johnson on January 01, 2002 at 01:57:22 PT
Faker!
From the ski slopes of the French Alps to the beaches of southern Portugal to the coffee shops of Amsterdam -- where menus list types of marijuana as well as flavors of coffee.Ahem.T.R.Reid, you've never been to a Dutch cafe, HAVE YOU? 
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Comment #1 posted by Dan B on January 01, 2002 at 00:42:31 PT:
A Positive New Year's Message
Excuse me while I wax optimistic . . .English is particularly standard among the young, and the 20-somethings chattering in the common language at clubs and raves also share a common intoxicant: marijuana.What's this? A mention of marijuana that does not include a staunch lashing of those who partake of it? Could this be an article published in America? Indeed, it is--at the Washington Post, no less. That newspaper has, as of late, become a relatively strong voice for rational thought. Surprise!In most of Western Europe, governments have either legalized the drug or simply stopped enforcing laws against it. On the sidewalks of London's lively Brixton neighborhood, people will light up a spliff -- a word the British use for "joint" -- in front of the police station. Why not? The local police chief has announced publicly that it is not worth his time to arrest them.No "moral" argument here, either. The author merely states the facts. Overall, the author's article is upbeat and optimistic about European unity, leaving the reader with the strong impression (and rightly so) that this business about letting folks smoke marijuana if they want to is also something about which to be upbeat and optimistic.From the ski slopes of the French Alps to the beaches of southern Portugal to the coffee shops of Amsterdam -- where menus list types of marijuana as well as flavors of coffee -- the drug is the common element of European youth culture.Some might object to the description of marijuana as a "drug," but I really don't have a problem with it in this context. Why? Because it is couched in such otherwise positive language--is in fact declared to be a unifying force for all Europeans. Not bad, and I think that the recent spread of marijuana acceptance across Europe (by the way: as I recall, most people there say "cannabis," not "marijuana") has been a unifying force and will continue to unify Europe. The trend is leaning in the direction of sanity there, and I see no reason why it won't continue to lean that way. One more thing: once Europe develops a common cannabis-friendly approach (it is a given that Canada will develop such an approach at the same time, and Australia will likely follow), expect most of Latin America to jump on the bandwagon. Why? Because Europe will become stronger economically at the same time that America becomes weaker, thus providing Latin America with a more sane trade partner/benefactor. The whole "rich get richer, poor get poorer" scheme here in America is about to implode on the rich. They don't know it yet, but they're digging that grave for themselves. It will be interesting to see how the US reacts when everyone else in the hemisphere, backed by the power of a strong European market, refuses to cooperate with the US's war on cannabis users. Europe to the rescue!Happy New Year!Dan B
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