Netherlands clamps down on marijuana as the US liberalizes it - by Mike Corder

"Weed Pass" needed to get into a Dutch coffee shop"

A young man at a bus stop hisses at a passerby: "What you looking for ... marijuana?" It's a scene of street peddling that the Netherlands hoped to stamp out in the 1970s when it launched a policy of tolerating "coffee shops" where people could buy and smoke pot freely.

But Maastricht's street dealers are back, local residents complain. And the reason is a crackdown on coffee shops triggered by another problem: Pot tourists who crossed the border to visit the cafés and made a nuisance of themselves by snarling traffic, dumping litter and even urinating in the streets.

This exchange of one drug problem for another has become a headache for Maastricht - and may give reason for pause in the U.S. states of Washington and Colorado that recently allowed the sale of marijuana for the first time. The Netherlands, the world pioneer in pot liberalization, has recently taken a harder line toward marijuana, with mixed results seen particularly in border towns such as Maastricht.

The central government clampdown has involved barring people who live outside the Netherlands from coffee shops, and shuttering shops that are deemed to be too close to schools. There was even a short-lived policy that said smokers had to apply for a "Weed Pass" to get into a coffee shop. The new rules were rolled out across the country between the middle of 2012 and the beginning of last year.

Amsterdam, with about 200 licensed coffee shops, one-third of the nationwide total, still lets foreigners visit them, although it is closing coffee shops that are near schools.

One city that has embraced the crackdown wholeheartedly is Maastricht, in the southern province of Limburg close to the Dutch borders with Belgium and Germany.

Its mayor, Onno Hoes, says he enforced the legislation to halt a daily influx of thousands of foreigners who crossed the borders to stock up on pot at its 14 coffee shops. That effort to end so-called "drug tourism" has been successful, local residents say, but the flip side has been a rise in street dealers.

Read more: Netherlands clamps down on marijuana

The Netherlands - Marijuana Tourism: Government ban a farce - two-thirds of Dutch "pot" cafes still admit tourists

Marijuana Tourism in the Netherlands

Two-thirds of the country's 478 cannabis cafes continue to sell marijuana to tourists, despite the ban implemented at the beginning of this year, according to research published by Nos television.

In total 111 cafes in 33 cities - including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague - took part in the survey, devised by Epicurus, a foundation launched by coffee shop owners.

The survey shows there is a sharp north-south divide. The ban was first introduced in the southern provinces of Limburg, Brabant and Zeeland, where only 8% of cafes still sell to tourists.

At the same time, three quarters of cafe owners in the south say street dealing has increased since the ban came into effect.

Just 3% of cafe owners in the rest of the country say their door policy has been checked up on by police and council officials. And there have been no infringements of the law reported outside the southern provinces.

For example, Amsterdam's mayor Eberhard van der Laan made it clear last year the capital will not ban tourists from the city's 220 coffee shops because the legislation makes it possible to take local circumstances into account.

Read more: DutchNews.nl - Two-thirds of Dutch cannabis cafes still admit tourists: survey

New Netherlands government to cut budget by16 billion euro,will continue strict immigration laws and ditches proposed controls on 'weed' use

Amsterdam Marijuana Tourism Alive and Well

The two parties forming the new Dutch Government including the center-right Liberal party of Mark Rutte and the center-left Labor party, led by Diederik Samsom have reached a coalition agreement that will pursue pro-European policies with an emphasis on austerity – stated it will cut 16 billion euro in government spending in the health care, social security and educational sectors.

As to the Netherlands immigration policies, including the 2007 treaties that govern Bulgarian and Romanian accession to the EU, which provided for a seven-year transition period before nationals of those countries would obtain full access to the labor markets of other EU member states, the new Dutch Government said it will remain among those EU states that plan to maintain the restrictions for the entire 7 year transition period which ends in 2014.

The incoming new Dutch government has also ditched plans by the previous government for a national "weed pass" that would have been available only to Dutch residents and that would have effectively banned tourists from Amsterdam's and many other cities in the Netherlands with marijuana cafes.

However, under a provisional governing pact unveiled this week, cities can still bar foreigners and tourists from weed shops but only if they so choose.

The pact says that it wants only Dutch residents to have access to marijuana cafes, but leaves final enforcement up to local cities governing bodies. Amsterdam which has a very lucrative red-light district with large numbers of marijuana cafes, or coffee shops as they are called in Holland, opposes any ban which would hurt the Amsterdam tourist industry..

Some cafe owners said Tuesday that they are satisfied Dutch weed policy will remain unchanged, while others criticized the lack of clarity.

Marijuana trafficking is technically illegal in the Netherlands, but people can't be prosecuted for possession of small amounts and the drug is sold openly in designated and licensed coffee shops.

EU-Digest