Marijuana Mobile

image Peptalk seems to be positioning itself as the mobile phone service provider of choice for Dutch marijuana lovers. Check out its website, pepyouraddiction.nl, where you can see that its corporate logo is a hemp plant. Marijuana is, of course, legal in Holland... and PePtalk is a Dutch company, but the weird thing is that beyond that PePtalk doesn't seem to have any rational connection to marijuana. It's as if they just liked the idea of being a pot-lover's phone company... without offering pot lovers any benefit from choosing their service over another. As this article at Strand Reports notes: PePtalk do not actually seem to express any views on cannabis on their website - other than their name and logo. And although they offer many premium rate SMS services, none of them seem to have anything to do with daily cannabis prices - or where you can locate your nearest cannabis coffee shop!  But maybe that is in the pipeline?

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Posted on Wed Oct 13, 2004


Comments

Their slogan is "pep your addition" so I think the drug only serves as an image for "addiction", in this case it's about the addiction to mobile phones.
Posted by Robbert from the Netherlands  on  Wed Oct 13, 2004  at  11:41 AM
Contrary to what you report, Marijuana is NOT legal in the Netherlands. That is a very wide misunderstanding abroad. It is illegal by law to deal in marijuana in the Netherlands, or to have marijuana in your possesion. Law enforcement agencies however have adopted the viewpoint that they won't prosecute if you have less than 5 grams with you for your own use, and they are not enforcing law with regard to the dealing of the stuff in designated places such as coffeeshops. These things are "tolerated", although they are against the law by the letter of it. By law, Marijuana is illegal (and smugling it into or out of the country will for example bring you to jail if cought - something not all tourists that come to our country for Cannabis realize).
I admitt it is all a bit crazy, to "tolerate" (the Dutch word is "gedogen") things that by law are still illegal, but that is the Dutch way.
Posted by Marco  on  Wed Oct 13, 2004  at  01:06 PM
Marco has the best explanation I've seen yet of the (il)legal status of cannabis in the Netherlands. I've tried to explain this to people before, without much success.
Posted by Big Gary C  on  Wed Oct 13, 2004  at  01:14 PM
So it's de facto legal, but de jure illegal. Is that to satisfy EU laws, or something like that?
Posted by The Curator  in  San Diego  on  Wed Oct 13, 2004  at  01:26 PM
(in reply to Alex),
No, it is because in our perpetual coalition government the conservatives favour a ban, the progressives favour legalization - so in the best Dutch spirit the matter is resolved by a compromise that satisfies both parties (more or less). This is the famous "polder model" and the typical Dutch way to solve matters (the other way, is to assemble a "commission" that will study the queston of concern for perpetually, at best reaching, if anythng....a compromise solution).
In fact most EU member countries near us do not quite like the what they regard as "liberal" way our country handles the Cannabis problem.
Posted by marco  on  Wed Oct 13, 2004  at  05:28 PM
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