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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Dutch message to drug tourists: c’est fini
Radio Netherlands Worldwide Tuesday 15 Sep 2009 The cities in the southwest, close to the Belgian border, say their coffee shops attract 25,000 Belgian 'drug tourists' a week – a source of nuisance and irritation to the locals. In the Netherlands, cannabis is not actually legal, but retail sale of up to five grams in so-called coffee shops is tolerated. However, Dutch border towns have been wrestling with the problem of how to deal with the stream of Belgian, German and French tourists who cross the border to buy the drug. The tourists irritate local residents and attract illegal street dealers. Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal have chosen to deal with the problem by banning the sale of cannabis altogether. From today, the cities' coffee shops are obliged to live up to their name and stick to selling coffee. Those that flout the ban face a five-year closure. Six coffee shop owners tried to take out an injunction to prevent the local authority from changing the rules. However, the request failed on a technicality: the court ruled they should have brought the case against the local authority and not against the mayor. The owners have announced they will be staying closed pending a further court case. The two other coffee shops have not said whether they plan to abide by the new rules, but in both cities the police are out in force to clamp down on any infringements. C'est fini A publicity campaign has been launched in Belgium aimed at leaving would-be drug tourists in no doubt about the Dutch message on border-town tolerance of drug tourism: it’s over – c'est fini. This is the title of a website pointing out the policy change to Belgians. The campaign is accompanied by a comedy video clip showing disappointed Belgian drug tourists ending up in the back of a police van. Despite the campaign's French name, it is in Dutch, aimed at Flemish Belgians on the other side of the border. In practice, the border-town ban simply means that Belgians will have to travel further into the Netherlands to track down a coffee shop selling cannabis, as in the rest of the country the policy of tolerance remains unchanged. The city of Maastricht, andwiched between Belgium and Germany in the southern province of Limburg, is taking a different approach to the drug-tourist problem. It proposes to introduce a coffee shop pass system: foreign day-trippers trying to buy cannabis without a pass will be turned down. http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/dutch-message-drug-tourists-c%E2%80%99est-fini
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