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.

via The New Straits Times Online.

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.”

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The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.

The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry’s research department expects to continue for some time.

via nrc.nl – International – Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals.

Remember this the next time a prohibitionist tells you how terrible things became once the Dutch began tolerating sales and use of marijuana in coffee shops.  They’re closing prisons because they haven’t enough criminals; we’re home to the largest imprisoned population on the planet in history.

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Coffee Shop Trial a Test for Dutch Drug Policies

In our ongoing movement of marijuana policy here in the US, we are often tempted to take any change in law no matter how small. Often those changes leave the more stickier issues of production and distribution for resolution at a later date. This is what has happened for many years in the Netherlands. Often described as the Dutch Paradox, you can purchase up to 5g and walk right out of a coffee shop, but there is no lawful way for the proprietor of the coffee shop to obtain the cannabis in the first place.

If Meddy Willemsen, the owner of the mega coffee shop Checkpoint in the city of Terneuzen, is convicted of encouraging illegal cannabis cultivation and running an organized supply chain, it could allow prosecutors to convict other coffee shop owners and workers on charges that are usually used against gangs and organized crime networks.

André Becker, the lawyer representing Checkpoint, says that regardless of the verdict, his client’s trial will set a national precedent. “If the court accepts the prosecutor’s reasoning, it would have great consequences,” Beckers says.

It seems that the state of the cannabis laws in the Netherlands is in flux, with Christian Democrats looking to ban it outright and mayors of other municipalities actively encouraging the opening of coffee shops in their towns.

A judge struck down an attempt by the city of Maastricht to restrict drug purchases to Dutch nationals. The towns of Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal have shut down all eight of their coffee shops to keep away rowdy visitors.

Other cities are hoping to avoid prohibition. Indeed, the municipality of Eindhoven is encouraging the opening of more coffee shops in order to prevent the arrival of mega-coffee shops like Checkpoint.

We should never forget that neo-prohibitionists will actively search for any loophole to claw back any reform we seek. By allowing the distribution and production to remain illegal or in a state of legal limbo, we will always be vulnerable to having all we work for undone.

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The Associated Press: Amsterdam fights marijuana crackdown
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Amsterdam will fight national efforts to crack down on marijuana cafes — arguing that the city’s establishments are so strictly regulated that it is unnecessary to comply with a government ban on having them near schools.

Mayor Job Cohen’s promise to lobby the Justice Ministry to give Amsterdam an exception came after city leaders overwhelmingly voted to challenge the issue. They argue the cafes are already so closely watched they don’t need new rules to keep children away.

The challenge comes only days after a separate national ban on psychedelic mushrooms went into effect. Amsterdam also opposed that move and has so far declined to enforce it.

The Bulldog is one of the cafes in Amsterdam that was threatened under this ban on coffee shops within 250 meters of a school.  These coffee shop owners are relentless about IDing the customers who come in because they know an underaged person caught with cannabis or mushrooms in their shop would mean an end to their business.  That’s the advantage of a regulated market is that there is incentive for sellers to follow the rules.

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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.)

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Amsterdam ‘cannabis cafés’ to close – Telegraph
Amsterdam Council plans to shut 43 out of the capital’s 228 popular marijuana-selling coffee shops in support of a Dutch Government bid to protect schoolchildren from drugs.

The city’s Labour Lord Mayor Job Cohen said the businesses due to close were all within an “unacceptable” 200 metres of schools.

Peter Veling, a spokesman for the Cannabis Union in the Netherlands, said the closures were unnecessary as coffee shop owners carefully monitored customer’s ages, banning schoolchildren.
“They know a school aged customer found on the premises would mean instant closure of the coffee shop.”

One of cafés due to close is The Bulldog, a popular tourist attraction that is housed in a former police headquarters, that is considered too close to a high school called the Barlaeus Gymnasium.
Margriet Bosman, the School Principal, is opposed to the ban because coffee shops are not allowed to sell cannabis to under 18 year olds.

”We don’t think it’s very useful. We actually think it’s just for show,” she told Radio Netherlands.

”Children will get their drugs if they want to anyway, and closing the shops which are quite regulated, like The Bulldog, is not a very good solution to this problem.”

Dutch schoolchildren already have far less access to and use of both cannabis and drugs precisely because you have a system of tolerated sales of small amounts of cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms.  Now you’re banning mushrooms as of December 1st and closing a fifth of your cannabis cafés because they’re too close to a school?  Have you seen the results we’ve gotten with laws like that?  Why would you want to emulate our prohibitionist policies in any way?

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Understanding the Netherlands’ marijuana policy – USATODAY.com
Cannabis is technically an illegal substance in the Netherlands, although you won’t get arrested for buying or smoking it in a coffee shop.

The Dutch have adopted a policy of “gedogen,” or blind eye, to its sale and use since 1976. The government distinguished between so-called “soft” cannabis drugs and “hard” drugs such as heroin or cocaine. That’s when coffee houses sprang up to sell and let people smoke.

In 1996, the Dutch government began to crack down on cannabis cafes. It now licenses them, bans them advertising their product, prohibits sales to anyone under 18, and limits sales and possession to 5 grams a day per person. Before, people could possess up to 30 grams. Since then, the number of shops in the country has fallen by about half — to 720 in the country. Last year, shops were forced to choose between serving alcohol and cannabis. Most chose cannabis. The sales aren’t subject to tax. However, owners pay taxes on the income they make from selling it.

The government and cannabis advocates say that regulating the sale and use of soft drugs results in less hard-drug addiction.

The facts speak for themselves (references to 2001-2002):

• Percentage of citizens aged 12 and over who have ever used cannabis:  US 37%, Netherlands 17%
• Percentage of citizens aged 12 and over who have used cannabis in the past month:  US 5.4%, Netherlands 3%
• Percentage of citizens aged 12 and over who have ever used heroin:  US 1.4%, Netherlands 0.4%
• Rate of incarceration per 100,000 residents:  US 701, Netherlands 100

There are smarter ways of dealing with cannabis and hard drugs than locking people up.

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The Irony of Holland’s Smoking Ban: You can Still Have Your Joint, but Only if it’s Pure – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News
In July, the Dutch government will introduce a nationwide smoking ban in bars, cafes and restaurants, aimed at protecting workers. But it will also make life a lot harder for the country’s infamous coffee shops, where customers will only be allowed to smoke pure cannabis.

…Dutch Health Minister Ab Klink has no plans to make any exceptions. Coffee shop employees, he argues, also have the right to protection from tobacco smoke.But [a coffee shop owner] claims it’s a specious argument. After all, people who apply for jobs in a coffee shop know that smoking is the company’s core business. “If the boys are old enough to be sent to Afghanistan, then you can’t tell me that people want to protect them from smoke in the workplace. They’re old enough to decide on their own. They can vote, they can go to war — but now they won’t even be allowed to make this decision?”

Perversely, the law, intended to protect workers from smoke, only applies to tobacco. In the Netherlands, that has resulted in a rather bizarre result: Smoking pot or hashish in coffee shops will remain legal; it just can’t be mixed with tobacco. If someone wants to roll their joint with tobacco, then they have to smoke it outside….

Besides, it will be difficult to monitor whether someone has secretly rolled his joint with tobacco or not. [Another coffee shop owner] feels the world has been turned on its head in Holland. “In every other country they do just the opposite — there they check whether there is cannabis inside,” he says with a laugh.

There are exceptions to the ban. If an establishment can set up a separate room or add a glass partition to ensure that employees are not exposed to tobacco smoke, then smoking is permitted in those rooms as long as service is not provided.

It’s also possible that officials will place a low priority on policing the smoking ban in coffee shops and, in a typically Dutch fashion, a situation would be created in which smoking would be officially banned but still tolerated.

I’ve always been leery of the indoor tobacco smoking bans being promulgated in the US and around the world.  I was a musician for many years and would have loved to have sung in a smoke-free room.  I get the point about employees not being subject to dangerous secondhand smoke.

On the other hand, some jobs have risks.  We still let men go into the bowels of the earth and mine coal for thirty years and they’re breathing far worse air than a part-time server would at a smoky tavern.

I can see banning smoking in public buildings, but I wouldn’t have banned smoking from bars (or in this case, coffee houses.)  Instead, I would tell workers that they have the choice whether they wish to work in an environment with dangerous air, but I’d also tell the management that they must cover at 100% any health care costs of their workers (that’s a US argument, obviously, since the rest of the world has some form of national health care.)  You’d see these business owners doing what they could to provide cleaner air, whether that was air scrubbers or banning smoking.

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