Smoking out tourists?

The Dutch government's current attempt to restructure Holland's permissive cannabis culture and cripple the thriving cannabis industry continues to baffle local and international observers. The idea — which the courts and other outposts of the establishment are grappling with — is to limit licit marijuana smoking to Dutch citizens and official residents of the Netherlands.

A recent court ruling may have slowed down the process when the Council of State determined that cities can't regulate marijuana sales, as reported in The International Herald Tribune, because "national law already theoretically bans selling marijuana," implying that "the government must change the law in order to bar foreigners, rather than simply amending policy."

However, according to local news source DutchNews.nl, quoting an official court statement, "the judgment does not mean the mayor has no further statutory scope for taking measures against coffee shops that he believes cause nuisance problems. ... Under the Opium Act itself, the mayor may impose an enforcement order against coffee shops selling narcotics."

In response to the court action, the Netherlands justice ministry "has concluded that the ruling clears the way for the government to turn coffee shops into members-only clubs open only to people who officially live in the Netherlands," DutchNews.nl reported. "It is clear that European law allows foreigners to be excluded from coffee shops, but this will have to be implemented via a different legal mechanism" which "will be solved quickly," a justice ministry spokesman told news agency ANP.

With respect to the European statutes, the European Court of Justice said last December that the city of Maastricht at the center of the Dutch controversy is not breaking European law by attempting to stop nonresidents buying cannabis products. Restricting sales, the court said, is "justified by the objective of combating drug tourism and reducing public nuisance [as long as] the aim of the restriction is to maintain public order and protect public health."

The Dutch news media draws its own conclusion: "Cannabis cafe tourist ban can go ahead, says supreme court." This seems generally to be the official line on the issue in the Netherlands, and some participants in the coffee shop industry have accepted the supposed inevitability of the proposed changes and are presently pondering the problems involved with transforming themselves into private clubs bereft of their traditionally international clientele.

But many longtime activists continue to scoff at the possibility that tourists and other visitors to the Netherlands will soon be barred from entering premises where marijuana and hashish are legally sold. The concerted official attack on what they call "drug tourism" is widely considered an impossible dream that may well turn into a public nightmare if the right-wing governing coalition secures enough votes for passage of the new restrictive laws.

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