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Netherlands: Dutch coffee shops guilty of selling drugs

International Times

Thursday 27 Jun 2013

THE HAGUE: A Dutch court on Wednesday fined six coffee shop owners and workers for selling cannabis to non-residents, in a victory for Dutch authorities’ fight against drug tourism.

Prosecutors had sought up to one-month suspended jail terms for the owners and staff of cannabis cafes in Maastricht for selling pot to foreign non-residents in defiance of a controversial law.

“The court rules that a residence criterion is not against the law,” the court in drug tourism hub Maastricht in the south of the country said in a statement. The six were ordered to pay fines of between 250 and 2,500 euros. A seventh accused was cleared because of lack of evidence.

The court was relatively lenient as the coffee shops had deliberately flouted the law because they hoped the case would set a legal precedent in their favour, arguing that the residence criterion was unconstitutional. “The residence criterion does indeed indirectly discriminate people based on nationality, but this distinction is objectively justified by reasonable and legitimate interests,” the judgement said.

Foreigners, mainly from Germany and Belgium, constitute two-thirds of coffee shops’ clientele in Maastricht, a Roman city of 120,000.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-1-186309-Dutch-coffee-shops-guilty-of-selling-drugs

 

 

 

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