Looking Back: 40 Years of Soft Secrets

How Soft Secrets Started?

Wernard Bruining founded Amsterdam’s first coffeeshop, Mellow Yellow, in 1973. He went on to create the first growshop, Positronics, in 1985. In that same year, the journal Soft Secrets was also born. 

Bruining was a member of the ‘Green Team’ between 1980 and 1985. This team worked hard to raise the cannabis standard in Amsterdam. Unhappy with low-quality imported cannabis, they went on to improve the offer, producing new Dutch cultivars such as Holland Hoop, Dame Blanche, Viking, Purple Power and more. “Our aim was to make Holland the ‘Jamaica of Europe.’ An old man called Old Ed was our master grower. He was from Oregon, USA. When he came to Holland, he brought his seeds with him,” Wernard said in an interview with Soft Secrets France in 2019. 

In 1985, he founded the Soft Secrets newspaper, which was initially available only in Dutch. It was a small newspaper, distributed to growshop customers. Wernard subscribed to a news service and published articles on cannabis and coffeeshops. He then hired an editor, Yolanda, who became his spouse: “Yolanda started managing journalists and photographers, producing a better paper every month!” At the time, it had a circulation of 200-300 copies. 

For many years, Soft Secrets helped growers to take care of their home plants, but sadly, the publication came to an end as Positronics closed in the mid-1990s. However, it would soon get a second life. The newspaper was acquired by Discover Publisher, which already owned HighLife magazine, also dedicated to cannabis. 

Becoming International Magazine 

High Life’s founder Boy Ramashai hired Dutch freelance journalist Cliff Cremer to join as main editor of Soft Secrets. Cremer decided to publish a paper devoted mainly to cultivation and homegrowing. The new team included top cannabis specialists, such as Jorge Cervantes and Ed Rosenthal. 

Soft Secrets quickly became one of the leading cannabis magazines, and the only one to be published in several languages. The first print editions of the magazine in Spanish, English, and French were out in the early 2000s. Although, in those days it was not always easy to find it around. For instance, French readers would have to go to a Dutch coffeeshop and look for a copy of the underground magazine in their language. 

A lot has changed since those days, however. Soft Secrets is nowadays available in Dutch, English, Spanish, Czech, Polish, French, Italian, and German, in print and online. There are currently many more new publishers that write about cannabis. The topics are also much more varied than they used to be. There’s significant reporting on cannabis science, new research that comes in almost every week, the daily news on politics and legalization, along with updates on new breeding or growing technologies, or the latest hot trending weed products. You name it!

Of course, all of these changes are there because of the ongoing cannabis legalization around the world. But what would Wernard Bruining say about it? “I’m not interested in legalization, I want cannabis to be free!” he said. “I think governments should apologize for all the suffering they’ve created, and then maybe we can talk about regulation.” That’s the attitude, right? 

The latest and back issues of Soft Secrets since 2005 in all languages are available online free of charge in PDF format. Click on the menu at top right to change language. Discover other articles on the Soft Secrets website and subscribe to our monthly newsletter so you don’t miss a thing. Soft Secrets lives and breathes from advertising. Please also feel free to visit the websites of our advertisers. 

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