Mellow Yellow coffeeshop Mellow Yellow was unsuccessfully raided by police several times. Unpackaged cannabis, bought from wholesalers including drug lord Klaas Bruinsma, was hidden behind secret doors and shutters. In 1975, the concept was adopted by a shop named Russia situated on the same street as Mellow Yellow and was followed by another coffee shop called The Bulldog. Now there are 223 such coffee shops in Amsterdam. Bruining also runs Stichting Mediwiet (Medi Cannabis Foundation), a group that supports the legalization of growing marijuana for medicinal uses. The shop was closed at the strike of the New Year in 2017, due to new
Legal history of cannabis in the United States a halt, and a number of existing laws were either repealed or allowed to expire. In 1972, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws petitioned the BNDD (which later became the DEA) to remove cannabis from the list of Schedule I drugs, in order to allow it to be prescribed by physicians. After a decade of legal battles in which the DEA refused to consider the petition, public hearings were finally held on the matter starting in 1986. In September 1988, after two years of extensive public hearings, DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young ruled in