Dutch coffee shops that sell cannabis should should cater mainly for local people and not bulk-buying drugs tourists from abroad, a government commission proposed Thursday.
The commission was set up in February to advise the government in a re-evaluation of soft-drug policy, in large part due to an influx of German, French and Belgian drugs tourists in border areas.
The government should consider turning coffee shops, establishments with special licences to sell marijuana, into private members’ clubs, it recommended.
This has already been done in the southern Limburg province, which announced recently its coffee shops would in future sell soft drugs only to patrons with membership cards.
And last September, Roosendaal and Bergen-op-Zoom, two other border councils, announced in March the closure from September of all eight their coffee shops in a bid to curb the “nuisance” of 25,000 drug tourists per week.
Fortunately the coalition that is proposing this measure hasn’t the power in parliament to achieve it. Former NORML director and current editor of Marijuana News Richard Cowan tells me by email that this proposal would “go over like a lead balloon in Amsterdam.”
Loading ...
I don’t think this is unreasonable. Maybe the tourists are a significant nuisance.
Ultimately it’s a problem caused by the neighboring countries’ prohibition, but the Netherlands can’t do much about that.