Tourists to be banned from buying marijuana in Dutch coffee shops

A DUTCH judge approved government plans on Friday to introduce a law which will prevent foreigners buying cannabis in the country’s coffee shops – turning the cafes into private clubs.

The most significant move towards curtailing the use of the drugs – which is a major tourism draw in Amsterdam – to date will be implemented in the south of the country on Tuesday and rolled out to other areas next year.

But a lawyer representing coffee shop owners said on Friday night that he would file an urgent appeal against the ruling by a judge at the Hague district court.

Amsterdam has opposed the plan, and mayor Eberhard van der Laan is trying to agree a compromise with the country’s central government.

But the government in The Hague said that there would be no exceptions to the new rules.

“Amsterdam will also have to enforce this policy,” said Job van de Sande, a spokesman for the ministry of security and justice.

In a written ruling, the court agreed with government lawyer Eric Daalder that the fight against criminality linked to the drug trade justified the measure.

“This is a totally political judgment,” said Maurice Veldman, one of the team of lawyers who represented coffee shop owners in the case. “The judge completely fails to answer the principal question: Can you discriminate against foreigners when there is no public order issue at stake?”

Mr Veldman said he would appeal, but added it was unlikely he could do so before the new policy comes into force next week.

The “weed pass” will roll out in the rest of the country – including Amsterdam – next year. It will turn coffee shops into private clubs with membership open only to Dutch residents and limited to 2,000 per shop.

The government argues that the move is justified as a way of cracking down on so-called “drug tourists,” effectively couriers who drive over the border from Belgium and Germany to buy large amounts of marijuana and take it home to resell.

Their movements cause traffic and public order problems in towns and cities along the Dutch border.

However, critics of the new legislation say such problems are virtually non-existent in Amsterdam where the small, smoke-filled coffee shops are visited by thousands of tourists each year .

The conservative Dutch government introduced the new measures saying it wants to return shops back to what they were originally intended to be: small local stores selling to local people.

Coffee shop owners in the southern city of Maastricht have said they plan to disregard the new measures, forcing the government to prosecute one of them in a test case.

Though the weed pass policy was designed to resolve traffic problems facing southern cities, later studies have predicted that the result of the system would be a return to street dealing and an increase in petty crime, which was the reason for the introduction of the tolerance policy in the 1970s in the first place.

The cities of Tilburg, Breda and Maastricht have now said they oppose the pass system, though Eindhoven plans to move ahead with it as does the eastern city of Dordrecht.