About POLYC
A magazine about cannabis culture, published in the Netherlands, in English, for adults.
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What it is
POLYC is a quarterly print magazine about cannabis culture. It comes out in October, January, April and July, and every January issue is the Directory Issue, with free listings for the businesses that supply cannabis retail.
It is written in English, printed on heavy paper, and made in the Netherlands, the country that worked out fifty years ago what the rest of the world is still arguing about. It is sold in the Netherlands, in Germany and in several other countries, and it is for adults, 18 and over, everywhere.
There are two editions. The trade edition is for the people behind the counter and the businesses that serve them: research, policy, lab science, the market, and nothing silly. The retail edition is for everyone else: the same information, plus the culture, the holiday pieces, the stoner-scope, the classifieds, and a few pages that belong to whoever ordered the copy. The plain retail copy is sold from shop counters; the custom copy, ordered here, is made one at a time with the buyer’s own portrait, their day out in the city they’d most like to smoke in, and their own jar. Those pages go inside, never on the cover, so every copy looks the same on a counter and different in the hand.
What it stands for
The name means many Cs. Cannabis. Culture. Community. Civil. Conviviality. In vintage cannabis culture, community was civil conviviality: strangers became friends faster over a shared one than over almost anything else, and nobody had to be sold anything for it to happen.
POLYC is written from that culture, and it keeps a few rules that follow from it.
We name no shops. Not a coffeeshop, not a dispensary, not a club. We print no prices next to a place to buy, no rankings, no best-of lists, nothing that works as an advertisement for a point of sale. Dutch law has a rule against publicity that promotes the sale of cannabis, and German law bans advertising for cannabis clubs. We write to the strictest rule in the room, and we think that’s a fair trade for fifty years of tolerance. A magazine that can’t be bought doesn’t have to sell anything, which leaves it free to say what it thinks.
We print facts with sources. Where a number comes from a study or a government report, we say which one, so you can check it. Opinion is labelled as opinion.
We celebrate people, not premises. The person behind the counter is the hero of this magazine. Their workplace is never named.
We give no medical advice and no growing instructions. We report what research and the authorities say. We don’t diagnose, prescribe, or promise cures, and we write about cultivation as policy and science, not as a how-to.
Nothing for children. POLYC is for adults and is never sold or marketed to anyone younger.
Civil, first. No driving after smoking. No alcohol with THC. Ask before you light up in somebody’s room. Pass it on with both hands. The manners are half the culture, and they get as many pages as the science.
The full list of what we print and what we don’t is on the standards page.
Who makes it
POLYC is published by Tinge World, an independent publisher of books and prints in the Netherlands, registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce under KVK 42080406. The editor is SunnyJ, a vintage head who has been loving weed quietly for fifty-odd years and who now, with her name on the paperwork, is making a fuss about it in print.
It is a one-person magazine. There is no marketing department, no data broker and no advertising sales team. What you send us is read by the editor, and what we hold about you is described in full in the privacy policy.
How to reach us
editor@tingeworld.com. Corrections, letters and pitches go through the write to us form. Shops and suppliers start on the shops page. We read everything, and we reply to less than we would like.