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Dutch City's Marijuana Curbs Justified to Keep Peace, EU Court Aide Says

Stephanie Bodoni

Bllomberg

Thursday 15 Jul 2010

A Dutch city's ban on sales of marijuana and hashish to foreign customers in so-called coffee shops is a lawful and necessary measure to cut crime from drug- tourism, an adviser to the European Union's highest court said.

The city of Maastricht's ban on shops selling cannabis- derived products to non-residents is necessary to maintain public order, Yves Bot, an advocate general at the European Court of Justice, said in a non-binding opinion today.

"As drug tourism represents a genuine and sufficiently serious threat to public order in Maastricht, the exclusion of non-residents from coffee shops" is a "necessary" means to protect residents, said Bot. The Luxembourg-based EU court follows this advice in a majority of cases.

While the Netherlands decriminalized the use of marijuana in 1976, it stopped short of fully legalizing the drug because international treaties prohibited it from doing so. The country’s first coffee shop, named after Donovan's song "Mellow Yellow," opened its doors four years earlier.

It's up to each of the EU's 27 nations "to determine the measures necessary for maintaining” public order," said Bot.

The city of Maastricht will first study the opinion before giving a reaction, spokeswoman Marianne Ravestein said by telephone.

A ruling in line with today's opinion would be a setback for Marc Josemans, owner of the "Easy Going" coffee shop, who has been entangled in a dispute with the mayor of Maastricht, a city in the south of the Netherlands, since 2006, when Josemans was forced to close his shop after breaching the disputed rules.

Josemans couldn't immediately be reached for a comment on today's opinion.

Tolerated

"Narcotics, including cannabis, are not goods like others and their sale" doesn't benefit from EU laws protecting the free movement of products in the region, said Bot. While the sale of marijuana is tolerated in coffee shops in the Netherlands, "it remains an activity prohibited by all" EU nations, the EU court adviser said.

About 10,000 people on average visit the city of Maastricht a day, of whom some 70 percent come from Belgium, Germany and France, Sander Lely, a lawyer for the mayor told the EU court.

The case is C-137/09, M.M. Josemans and the Burgemeester of Maastricht v Rechtbank Maastricht.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-15/dutch-city-s-marijuana-curbs-justified-to-keep-peace-eu-court-aide-says.html

 

 

 

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