officers indicated that, based on their observations, coffee shop owners gen-
erally comply with the law.
This positive image is confirmed by the yearly reports on administrative
law enforcement over the period 20072011, since the extra surveillance on
coffee shops started in 2007. In this period over 2,000 inspections of coffee
shops took place, which resulted in 16 cases of observed infractions of the
law, 11 of which have led to the city taking action: 6 administrative warn-
ings, 4 closures and a penalty (a conditional fine ofh2,500). |In five cases,
the city decided not to undertake any action because the owner was not to
blame. Four of the six administrative measures were related to a large trad-
ing stock and one to an excessively large sales transaction.^6 The closures
were related to the presence of a minor in the coffee shop and once to a
large transgression of the maximum trading stock and a large excess of the
maximum sales transaction in the same coffee shop twice. The conditional
fine was related to the absence of a licensed manager in the coffee shop.
The concept of the moral entrepreneur as rule maker seems far removed
fromthe pragmatic and sober stance of the police officers I interviewed.
However, in one interview it was mentioned that a few police officers
seemed to be engaged in a kind of personal crusade against coffee shops
and were more committed to giving them a hard time, but this was the
exception to the rule. Most officers saw rule enforcing as part of the daily
mundane practices of their job. In fact, some officers actually took a matter
of fact stance when they stated that running a coffee shop was a good busi-
ness nowadays. They did not expect this development in the 1990s, but had
they known this beforehand they would have started a coffee shop them-
selves. One of the officers said with a big smile that ‘if we would have done
that, we would be living on a beach in Thailand right now’.
The pragmatic stance of the police officers is also shown in the way they
relate the discussion about stricter laws on coffee shops to their daily situa-
tional experience. In other words, they are very down to earth. One officer
stated that he did not understand the Minister of Safety and Justice and
questioned whether he was aware of what goes on in the daily practice of
policing. In the interviews the police officers stated that there was hardly
any problem in relation to coffee shops, and that they did not need more
professional attention than was currently the case. To put the current situa-
tion into (a historical) perspective some of the respondents referred to
situations in the past, when massive social problems developed in certain
neighbourhoods because of hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin (both
dealing and use): ‘compared to those days, when we had to arrest people
on a daily basis, this thing with cannabis is just peanuts’.
150 THADDEUS MU ̈LLER