I was planning a recent trip to Amsterdam and was wondering how much would weed cost when I was there? I, then, did some research and found out the actual costs of buying weed in Amsterdam.
So how much does weed cost in Amsterdam? You will find weed available from €5 per gram, and this weed will still be pretty strong. The best high-quality prize winning weed costs €15 per gram and in some places, you can find prestige weed at as much as €40 per gram. If you fancy pre-rolled joints, they start at €3.50 and top out at €5. You can also purchase hash from €4 to €35.
If you want to stay in Amsterdam in a place where you can smoke and enjoy a cool vibe I recommend you Flying Pig hostel.
Pricing of Weed in Amsterdam
You pay for weed by its quality in Amsterdam. This is the perfect way to buy weed as you can then decide if you want quality or if you want to keep to a budget and know that you are not being short-changed either way. You will also find that the closer to the center of Amsterdam you get the higher the price you will pay per gram. Staying away from the tourist traps can help save you a few euros per gram.
How to identify quality weed
You will probably be wanting to make sure that you do not buy €5 weed at €15 prices. Nicely there are a few visual clues to make sure that that does not happen to you. True low-quality weed will mostly find its way on to the black market rather than coffee shops. It is the stuff that you see that has been compacted together from all the parts of the plant.
How though do you tell if the weed you are buying is of the highest quality and worth your €15? The first thing you will notice is the color. A genuinely high-quality weed will stand out amongst all the other buds. It will be glowing; this is because it has been harvested and transported correctly. It will shine compared to the medium quality weed.
The sugary trichomes are holding all the good active ingredients into the weed. In lower quality weed they will have dried out a bit too much and won’t feel sticky like a high-quality weed. You should always be looking for this quality, so always ask to see the weed.
If you like cannabis and you visit Amsterdam you may be interested in coffeeshop tour. Otto, a Dutch guy living in Amsterdam knows everything about cannabis culture. He runs some coffeeshop tours in Red Light District. You can learn more about these tours here. It’s cool to hear a story from someone who knows everything about weed.
Naming Of Weed
There are a few names you will see repeatedly come up on menu boards; these can give you a good indicator of what you are getting. You will see haze, kush, and skunk a lot. These are defining qualities of weed.
Kush
Kush is the one most people will straight away recognize. Kush derives its name from the area where the plants originally grew, the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kush is the type of weed that will put a great big smile on your face. You will find that you start to do a lot of internal and external reflection after smoking kush. Kush will be around €10 to €15.
Bubba Kush is the classic strain of kush. This is the one that will make you feel your feet are made of lead, and you want to be happy. It is also one of the strains that will give you the munchies so make sure you have some food with you. You will be looking at paying €13-€15 per gram.
Haze
Haze is what the Californian hippies of the 60’s would have been smoking. Haze will then bring you the traditional OG effects of weed. It will allow you to be stoned and physically active at the same time. Haze is one of the stronger THC variants of weed, see below for a breakdown on THC. Haze will typically come in the €10 to €15 price bracket.
The classic Haze to buy is Amnesia Haze, and you will find that in many coffee shops. You should be looking to pay €13 per gram for Amnesia.
Skunk
Skunk is a generic term for weed with a very high THC content. It a crossbreeding of plants from Afghanistan/Pakistan with Central American plants, purely engineered to get you stoned. It is a very predictable variant of weed, regardless of the name all the effects will be pretty similar.
Skunk will generally come in the form of hash rather than weed. Weed is made by drying the flowering tops of the plant and hash is made the resin (sap) of the plant. Hash will generally be stronger than weed; this means that it contains a higher concentration of psychoactive chemicals. Expect to pay upwards from €8.
How to Buy Weed in Amsterdam
Now when you go to Amsterdam, you will want to know what you are buying. The basic knowledge you will need is are you buying real weed, weed with tobacco or hashish oil, oil mixed with tobacco and is liable to be what you get in a pre-rolled joint or in a bong.
The next thing you will be questioned about is do you want sativa or indica; we have posted more on that question below but generally indica will relax you and sativa will get you stoned. You will then be asked if you want the cannabis loose, pre-rolled or as an edible. Remember with edibles the effects are slow to appear, so don’t go overboard.
It is worth remembering that you will also find that the closer to the center of Amsterdam you get the higher the price you will pay per gram. Staying away from the tourist traps can help save you a few euros per gram.
Indica or Sativa?
When you browse through the coffee shop menus, you will see two main strains of cannabis. You will see indica or sativa, what is the difference? Both indica and sativa are subspecies of the same plant, but they both offer you a very different feeling.
Indica
Indica is a shorter and much bushier plant than a sativa plant. Being bushier means that you get a higher yield from them than you do from a sativa plant. You will find that indica strains will relax your muscles, bring you some pain relief, and help you sleep. This makes indica great for watching a film with or taking as your nightcap at a coffee shop.
Sativa
Sativa looks more like a tree than the bush like indica plant. It grows narrow and tall, and because of this it takes longer to grow and has a lower yield than indica. Sativa will tend to give you a euphoric high and tends to help you think creatively. Sativa may then be of more use if you are hanging out with a group of people, as you will not have the traditional stoner effects of indica.
The higher yield of indica over sativa does not mean though that indica will be cheaper. Many of the higher quality strains of cannabis are indica.
CBD and THC
The reason for the differences in the effect of the two main types of cannabis is related to their chemical compositions. Indica has higher CBD and lower THC counts. Now you are probably asking what CBD and THC is.
CBD
CBD stands for cannabidiol, cannabidiol is different from THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, in that it is not intoxicating. It is often said that CBD is not psychoactive, but it is, it is used in various medical treatments to change brain functions, and this means it is psychoactive. It just gives you a different effect from THC.
THC
It is the intoxicating effects of THC that give you a high. This is why many people say CBD is not psychoactive. What we need to know though is that the higher the THC content that more side effects you can be opened up to, CBD can help to balance this out. Like all things we all have different tolerances to what we can use, so try and learn what works and doesn’t work for you.
Should I buy pre-rolled joints?
First off you probably shouldn’t call them pre-rolled, in cannabis speak you will call them prerolls.
- One of the main advantages of prerolls is that you can try a wide variety of cannabis strains without having to buy a gram of every variety you want to try. It is also worth noting that some coffee shops will only sell you 3 grams at a time, this means you could be paying €45 to try a variety.
- The next main advantage is that you save time, you save yourself having to carry a lot of paraphernalia around with you. You buy one; you light it, you smoke it, simple. It will also be of a great benefit to those that have not learned to roll their own joints yet, especially if you are only on a small break to Amsterdam.
- The main con is that you do not know precisely what is inside the skin. Sometimes corners may have been cut as the joint is rolled, it might then not burn evenly, or they may be hiding stuff that the shop could not sell in plain view.
Now you can see from my research that there is a lot of choices when buying weed. There are certain names that will be used in coffee shops to make purchasing decisions easy and you know the basics of them now. We also have found out what the difference between weed and hash is and if we would prefe
