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1. Massachusetts Supreme Court to hear student 5th Amendment right to remain silent case
2. Maastricht bans tourists from coffee shops
3. Missoula overrides citizen initiative making marijuana the lowest enforcement priority

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• Roots Monday: Blind Lemon Jefferson – “Easy Rider Blues”

Government at Work

• Ed Docter from Montana Cannabis Industries Association on referendum on SB 423

Radical Rant

• Lessons we can learn from Part I of Ken Burns’ Prohibition documentary on PBS

The Netherlands has long been famous for their tolerance of cannabis possession and its use in coffee shops.  While not technically legal, authorities tolerate the use of cannabis and soft drugs, understanding that separating the hard and soft drug markets is important for reducing the harm drugs bring society.  With this policy of tolerance, the Dutch have half the rates of both cannabis use and hard drug use, as well as having half the rate of teen use as the United States.

However, the new government is populated by more conservative elements and they are pushing for stricter cannabis policies.  The border town of Maastricht passed a ban on foreigners patronizing the coffee shops to address a problem with Belgian and French “drug tourism”.  Some 70% of coffee shop business derives from foreigners.  The court of the European Union has upheld the ban, contrary to usual EU decisions allowing for free trade and free travel among the member nations.  An appeal will be heard on December 16.

The new government pushes to enact a nationwide ban on foreigners in coffee shops through the creation of a “cannabis pass” available only to Dutch citizens.  However, Tilburg University researcher Nicole Maalsté tells the Dutch newspaper Trouw that the ban would have the opposite of its intended effect, leading to more crime.

Maalsté says tourists who want to buy drugs will simply look for street dealers. In addition, there are many Dutch nationals who do not want to be registered as official marijuana users, she says.

‘Which problem do we want to solve with the pass?,’ she asks. ‘Eindhoven does not have a problem with drugs tourism.’

So the foreigners who would cross the border into Holland for their cannabis will turn to the streets when the coffee shops aren’t available.  The growers who supply the coffee shops can make more money selling for higher prices in the street than are found in the shops.  The Dutch citizens who value their privacy will also turn away from the coffee shops and get their cannabis in the streets.

As it is in the United States, when social conservatives get the reins of power and try to restrict cannabis, underground unregulated marijuana dealers benefit.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Los Angeles extends by six months the period that dispensaries have to comply with new ordinances
2. Wyoming, Michigan official will not heed the state’s medical marijuana law, saying he will enforce federal law
3. The Netherlands looking at new restrictions to make coffee shops “membership only” and only available to Dutch citizens to combat “drug tourism”
4. Mock terror drill casts marijuana growers as terrorists who car bomb and seize the Shasta Dam to drown civilians

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Stash

• Groovin’ Thursday: Slightly Stoopid – “No Cocaine (remix)”

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• Reactions to the loss of Prop 19 with guest comedian Jason MacCloud

Radical Rant

• Responses to my recent rant on religious use of cannabis and sales of “defense kits”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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?

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.