Dutch mayor wants to create "weed boulevard" for drug tourists

[Hash]

THE HAGUE (AFP) - The mayor of the Dutch city of Maastricht wants to ban all 16 cannabis cafes in the city centre and set up a "weed boulevard" to keep drug tourists and criminals out of town, his spokesman said.

Maastricht is close to the border with both Belgium and Germany and attracts almost 1.5 million drug tourists yearly, who flock to the so-called coffee shops where cannabis is sold legally. Most come from Germany and France.

Maastricht mayor Gerd Leers told ANP news agency he wants all coffee shops in the centre to move to one location outside of town to limit the nuisance caused by drug tourism.

Although travellers can buy cannabis in coffee shops legally in the Netherlands it is illegal to take it back over the border to Germany, Belgium and France.

Marijuana was decriminalised in the Netherlands in 1976, and is sold legally in licensed coffee shops but cultivating cannabis is illegal.

The south of the Limburg province where Maastricht is located has three times the level of drug-related crime as the urban ring in central Netherlands, which includes Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht.

Leers, a Christian Democrat known for his zero tolerance policies on crime, want legal cannabis cafes moved out of the town centre within five years. The plan is to move the coffee shops south, the direction were most of the drugs tourists come from, his spokesman said.



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[deman]

hahaha, he even mad a rap song about it.
The minister of justice replied with his version.

Politicians...
lol

 

[ChesterO]

Hmmmm... While I'm not sure how Dutch taxation works. I will assume that almost all taxation/confiscation schemes are similar.

Soooo, I have to wonder that if the town is collecting taxes from these coffee shops, and then loses that source of "revenue" by chasing them out of the town, how long would it be until the town invites them back?? (If they are doing lots of tourist business, it is likely that they are paying more taxes than a "normal" coffee shop.)

Politicians are generally not known for either their intellectual prowess nor for their long term planning/thinking abilities...