Dutch cities to grow their own cannabis – Telegraph
The “grow-your-own” idea has taken hold in Eindhoven, while Tilburg’s city council has said it is considering starting up a “cannabis market garden” of its own to supply local coffee shops.Others are expected to follow suit, as the Dutch government considers nationalising soft drugs production and sales in a bid to decriminalise the industry.
Forty mayors met at the weekend, with many in favour of legalising soft drugs, whose consumption is a major tourist draw for Holland.
Amsterdam’s Lord Mayor, Job Cohen, said that he was in “full” support of the country’s cannabis-selling coffee shops, as their survival would help to keep the trade out of the hands of criminals.
However, he told The Telegraph that the Eindhoven city council’s plan to start an experiment involving the council actually growing cannabis for supply to coffee shops was going a “little too far”.
He said that he would prefer to see a form of ‘Cannabis licence’ granted to potential growers who would be carefully monitored by police.
“While I don’t agree with the idea of councillors actually growing cannabis in plots near their town halls a positive development has been that our government has now said it will take a close look at the issue of where the cannabis should come from. We could see the problem of the two doors – legal front door for customers, illegal back door for supplies – being resolved soon.”
I’m just trying to imagine mayors and city councils here in America discussing where to begin planting the municipal cannabis garden. (Well, I mean, imagine it in present-day America, not Colonial America where hemp plantation was required by law, and Post-Revolutionary America where hemp fields supplied the rope and sails for Old Ironsides, and not Pioneer America where hemp fields supplied the canvas for the covered wagons, and not WWII America where “Hemp for Victory” supplied the Greatest Generation with the hemp materials they needed to win two wars.)
