Six of the eight coffee shops in Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal have closed down, as a ban on the sale of cannabis in the cities comes into force.
The cities in the southwest, close to the Belgian border, say their coffee shops attract 25,000 Belgian ‘drug tourists’ a week – a source of nuisance and irritation to the locals.
In the Netherlands, cannabis is not actually legal, but retail sale of up to five grams in so-called coffee shops is tolerated. However, Dutch border towns have been wrestling with the problem of how to deal with the stream of Belgian, German and French tourists who cross the border to buy the drug. The tourists irritate local residents and attract illegal street dealers.
Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal have chosen to deal with the problem by banning the sale of cannabis altogether. From today, the cities’ coffee shops are obliged to live up to their name and stick to selling coffee. Those that flout the ban face a five-year closure.
Six coffee shop owners tried to take out an injunction to prevent the local authority from changing the rules. However, the request failed on a technicality: the court ruled they should have brought the case against the local authority and not against the mayor. The owners have announced they will be staying closed pending a further court case. The two other coffee shops have not said whether they plan to abide by the new rules, but in both cities the police are out in force to clamp down on any infringements.
C'est fini
A publicity campaign has been launched in Belgium aimed at leaving would-be drug tourists in no doubt about the Dutch message on border-town tolerance of drug tourism: it’s over – c’est fini. This is the title of a website pointing out the policy change to Belgians. The campaign is accompanied by a comedy video clip showing disappointed Belgian drug tourists ending up in the back of a police van. Despite the campaign’s French name, it is in Dutch, aimed at Flemish Belgians on the other side of the border.
Watch the C'est Fini video clip:
In practice, the border-town ban simply means that Belgians will have to travel further into the Netherlands to track down a coffee shop selling cannabis, as in the rest of the country the policy of tolerance remains unchanged.
The city of Maastricht, andwiched between Belgium and Germany in the southern province of Limburg, is taking a different approach to the drug-tourist problem. It proposes to introduce a coffee shop pass system: foreign day-trippers trying to buy cannabis without a pass will be turned down.
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Freedom must be sometimes handled with more care than anything else. I`m afraid it is true, freedom is more harmful sometimes than the lack of it. Second chances lay everywhere, for those who didn`t manage it quite well, and a drug rehab in California experience may put you back on your feet and ready to get back to a normal life. I`m glad that authorities did their job in this case.
so the dutch enforce the medieval drugs policies of its neighbours - progress
I can't believe what is said of the dutch. I didn't know they could buy cannabis, but it's still not like in Holland. However, I'm not against this form of sale and use, but they should go to a Drug Rehab once in a while, otherwise it's very bad for them.
Pray something you enjoy and may be beneficial for you like cannabis has been proven to be for glaucoma, AIDS-related nausea, MS, etc. doesn't get banned soon. Online pharmacy
Apparently drugs don't need promotional campaigns to sell better, the drug market is a strong self sustained one, even the anti-drug campaigns can't change that. Drug tourism is over, a lot of people got that but how many are willing to accept it?
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