Hash, Marijuana & Hemp Museum
The Hash, Marijuana & Hemp Museum is a museum located in De Wallen, Amsterdam, Netherlands. According to the museum, more than two million visitors have visited the exhibition since it opened in 1985. Dedicated to cannabis and its many uses, the museum offers visitors information about the historical and modern uses of cannabis for medicinal, religious and cultural purposes. The museum also focuses on how hemp can be used for agricultural and industrial purposes, even including clothing accessories and cosmetic products made from hemp fiber in their gift shop. In 2012 the museum opened a second location in Barcelona, the Hash Marihuana Cáñamo & Hemp Museum.
The Hash, Marihuana & Hemp Museum is located at Oudezijds Achterburgwal 148, open daily from 10am–11pm, and costs €9 ($11.50) per adult (children under 13 are free when accompanied by an adult).
Exhibits
The museum includes a live cannabis garden in various stages of growth, pipe and roach clip collections, an 1836 Dutch Bible made of hemp, and many other accessories made from the industrial crop. The museum also contains artwork, including David Teniers the Younger's painting, Hemp-Smoking Peasants in a Smoke House (1660), and one of the fake I.D's of the famous cannabis smuggler Howard Marks.
Reception
The Hash, Marihuana & Hemp Museum is often cited in travel books as a destination to visit in Amsterdam due to the unique drug policy of cannabis in the Netherlands. However, Time Out Amsterdam asserted that the museum "tries to be all things to all people and ends up being nothing to anyone". The magazine recognized the museum's success at displaying some interesting information, historical context and benefits of medical marijuana, but claims the "small exhibition lacks cohesion and entertainment value, and comes across alternately as hippyish and – surprisingly – rather po-faced". Similarly, author Rick Steves wrote that the museum was informative, but "small and somewhat overpriced, educational but not very entertaining".
