Shooting Sours Copenhagen’s Open Hash Market Haven

Copenhagen, Denmark’s autonomous neighborhood municipality of Christiania (or Freetown Christiania), has tolerated soft drug use on Pusher Street, its main market, for decades, but a recent shooting could complicate the situation for the open hash trade.

On September 4, the mayor of Copenhagen on Monday urged foreign tourists not to buy cannabis in the Christiania district after a man was killed. Instead of selling cannabis in a regulated retail model, as is common in legal US states, cannabis is sold there like a street drug by unregulated dealers. A “bloody feud” broke out between the Hells Angels and Loyal to Family and culminated in the turf wars over the cannabis and drug trade.

“The spiral of violence in Christiania is deeply worrying,” said Copenhagen Mayor Sophie Hæstorp Andersen. She urged “the hundreds of thousands of tourists and the many new foreign students who have just moved to Copenhagen to stay away and not to buy weed or other drugs on Pusher Street.”

ABC News reported that on August 26, two masked gunmen opened fire in a building in Christiania, Copenhagen police spokesman Poul Kjeldsen told media. A 30-year-old man was killed and four others were injured in the shooting. As of Tuesday, one of the injured was in critical but stable condition, while the others had minor injuries.

A 28-year-old man belonging to the Loyal To Family gang was arrested Friday in connection with the shooting. The Hells Angels have been active in the region since the 1980s, taking advantage of the freedom of the drug trade.

Earlier this year, the mayor threatened to shut down the Pusher Street drug trade if the roughly 1,000 people who live in Christiania Township followed her plan to reduce violence. (The neighborhood’s population varies between 700 and 1,000.) Hæstorp Andersen told local newspaper Ekstra Bladet last May that the growing violence must end or it would shut down the cannabis and drug trade in Christiania. However, the mayor’s warning doesn’t seem to be working.

Christiania remains one of Copenhagen’s top tourist attractions with great hippie appeal, and many of the visitors come from abroad and want to get a taste of the tolerated hash trade. It is in many ways the Danish Amsterdam.

High Times writer Snake Blissken reported in 2017 that the going price on Pusher Street is 100 kroner – about $15 – for 1.5 grams of hashish and/or cannabis flower. That’s about the same as the usual price of $10 per gram for flowers in some US states. There were reportedly various forms of pre-rolls for sale at most stalls. In this person’s experience, one stall tried to get 200 crowns for a 1.5 gram bag before quickly reverting to the standard price.

“It may seem harmless to buy weed for a celebratory evening, but remember that your money ends up in the pockets of criminal gangs who shoot on our streets and put innocent people in danger,” said Hæstorp Andersen.

One particular shooting in 2016 sparked public outrage because a police officer was seriously injured after being shot in the head. Previously, there had not been a police shooting in the entire country since 1995. Violence is particularly atypical for the country.

What is Christiania?

Christiania transformed from a naval base on Amager Island in Copenhagen into a hippie commune when they began squatting in the former military barracks at Bådsmandsstræde in 1971. The squatters began to pursue a more serious anarchist agenda and rallied to pass their own, autonomous laws to the Danish government. On September 16, 1971, Christiania was declared free by Jacob Ludvigsen, a journalist and Provo anarchist. To get there, all you have to do is walk across bridges over Copenhagen’s canals.

Christiania has banned cars from the neighborhood, although there is now some parking for a limited number of vehicles. You can also find alternative architecture that is free from housing regulations, such as a house made entirely of glass. The neighborhood was once peaceful, but violence has increased in recent years. In 2021, a man was shot dead at the Pusher Street entrance. Then, last October, a man selling cannabis from stalls on the same street was shot dead.

While Denmark is one of the most liberal places in the world and has implemented LGBTQ rights since 1933, cannabis is illegal. Christiania, however, is a different story, and the law is rarely but occasionally enforced there.

According to the Danish Euphoric Substances Act, it is illegal to import, export, sell, purchase, deliver, receive, produce and process cannabis in Denmark. While personal use is not illegal, possession of cannabis has been illegal in Denmark since the passage of the Consolidated Controlled Substances Act in 2016. As in most European countries, hashish is a popular form of cannabis and is often mixed with tobacco.