The mayor of Maastricht is promoting change in the Dutch soft drugs policy. Also many other local authorities want to experiment with regulated cannabis cultivation and a majority in the Dutch Lower house is in favour, but the Dutch minister of Justice is against the idea and does not support the plan.
Filming BBC reporter Mike Donkin travels to the Netherlands to make a reportage about the difficulty for owners to get the illegally produced soft drugs in the coffee shops – the so called ‘backdoor problem’ – and the need for regulation of cannabis cultivation in the Netherlands.
Mike portrays and interviews a coffee shop owner, a cannabis grower and a Dutch member of parliament from the Christian democrat party CDA that is against new regulations. For the rest he interviews the editor-in-chief of the glossy cannabis magazine Highlife and he interviews the mayor of Maastricht Gerd Leers.
For this reportage Featurez proposed the idea for the story, gave advice, did the research, set-up, planning of the filming, booked a rental car, did the driving and accompanied the filming.