ALSO MAASTRICHT PLANS TO MOVE COFFFEE SHOPS TO SIDE OF TOWN

After the Dutch border city Venlo moved coffee shops to the side of town to fight soft drugs tourism annoyance, now also Maastricht comes with the same plan. The mayor if Maastricht even suggests to create a Cannabis Boulevard on the south side of town. By concentrating all the outlets of cannabis and hash to one place Maastricht tries to get more control over the branch. A possible location is a former customs office.

The mayor of Maastricht thinks he can force the coffee shops to move out of the centre. If they refuse to cooperate their licence will be withdrawn. The goal of the plan is to remove all “legal” drugs sales to the side of town within five years. Yearly Maastricht is visited by around 1.5 million drugs tourists. Caused by the geographic location of Maastricht the city is confronted with a lot of annoyance and drugs criminality.

When Dutch Dutch minister of Justice Donner came with the plan to introduce a sort of identity- or membership card to exclude non-Dutch citizens, the Maastricht mayor reacted positively. The municipality had consults with the ministry of Justice to start an experiment with the ‘hash pass'. Donner's first reaction was that this was a good opportunity to introduce the pass system for all the border coffee shops.

The press speaker of the city of Venlo totally disagrees with the hash-pass plan. In Venlo there is one coffee shop who introduced the pass-system voluntarily – also to fight annoyance and to able to refuse clients. The press speaker states that from the 19.000 customers around 17.000 is German. ‘If the authorities would introduce the system it will mean that most of the 17.000 will look for another place to buy soft drugs. This will happen in the street, and than we are back to where we started. Annoyance in the street and a varied supply of drugs, including hard drugs. The division of the soft and hard drugs market is the basis of the Dutch drugs policy. The ‘hash pass' system will result in the undermining of this 25 year old policy. more features

November 26, 2004