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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Dutch City’s Marijuana Curbs Are Justified to Stop Drug Tourism Stephanie Bodoni Bloomberg Thursday 16 Dec 2010 The city of Maastricht's ban on shops selling cannabis- derived products to non-residents "is justified by the objective of combating drug tourism and the accompanying public nuisance," the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, ruled today. While the Netherlands decriminalized the use of marijuana in 1976, it stopped short of 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. The case was triggered by a dispute between Marc Josemans, owner of the "Easy Going" coffee shop, and the mayor of Maastricht, a city in the south of the Netherlands, that started in 2006 when Josemans was forced to close his shop after breaching the city rules. "It is indisputable that a prohibition on admitting non- residents to coffee-shops such as" the one owned by Josemans "constitutes a measure capable of substantially limiting drug tourism and consequently, of reducing the problems it causes," a five-judge panel of the court ruled. 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 had told the EU court. The case is C-137/09, M.M. Josemans and the Burgemeester of Maastricht v Rechtbank Maastricht. To contact the reporter on this story: Stephanie Bodoni in Luxembourg at sbodoni@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-16/dutch-city-s-marijuana-curbs-are-justified-to-stop-drug-tourism.html
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