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 and was passed in 1860 following a string of suicides allegedly involving the substances later categorized as poisons. The first draft of the bill 'An act to regulate the sale of poisons' prohibited the sale of cannabis—as with the other substances—without the written order of a physician. The final bill as passed allowed the sale without a prescription so long as the purpose to which it was issued and name and address of the buyer was recorded, and in addition, all packaging of such substances—whether sold with a prescription or not—had to have the label "poison" on them in uppercase