Pubdate: Sat, 08 Mar 2014
Source: Daily Freeman (Kingston, NY)
Copyright: 2014 Daily Freeman
Contact:  http://www.dailyfreeman.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3269
Author: Mike Corder, The Associated Press
Page: A2

AS U.S. STATES ALLOW POT SALES, NETHERLANDS REVERSES COURSE

MAASTRICHT, NETHERLANDS (AP) - A young man at a bus stop hisses at a
passerby: "What you looking for ... marijuana?" It's a scene of street
peddling that the Netherlands hoped to stamp out in the 1970s when it
launched a policy of tolerating "coffee shops" where people could buy
and smoke pot freely.

But Maastricht's street dealers are back, local residents complain.
And the reason is a crackdown on coffeeshops triggered by another
problem: Pot tourists who crossed the border to visit the cafes and
made a nuisance of themselves by snarling traffic, dumping litter and
even urinating in the streets.

This exchange of one drug problem for another has become a headache
for Maastricht - and may give reason for pause in the U. S. states of
Washington and Colorado that recently allowed the sale of marijuana
for the first time. The Netherlands, the world pioneer in pot
liberalization, has recently taken a harder line toward marijuana,
with mixed results seen particularly in border towns such as Maastricht.

The central government clampdown has involved banning people who live
outside the Netherlands from coffee shops, and shuttering shops that
are deemed to be too close to schools. There was even a short-lived
policy that said smokers had to apply for a "Weed Pass" to get into a
coffee shop. The new rules were rolled out across the country between
the middle of 2012 and the beginning of last year.

But while the central government made the rules, it's up to local
municipalities to enforce them - and most are embracing only part of
the policy.

Amsterdam - with some 200 licensed coffee shops, one-third of the
nationwide total - still lets foreigners visit them, although it is
closing coffee shops that are near schools.

One city that has embraced the crackdown wholeheartedly is Maastricht,
in the southern province of Limburg close to the Dutch borders with
Belgium and Germany.

Its mayor, Onno Hoes, says he enforced the legislation to halt a daily
influx of thousands of foreigners who crossed the borders to stock up
on pot at its 14 coffee shops. That effort to end so-called "drug
tourism" has been successful, local residents say, but the flip side
has been a rise in street dealers like the man who recently tried to
sell pot to an AP reporter in Maastricht.

Carol Berghmans lives close to the River Maas, whose muddy waters
bisect the city, and whose banks are frequented by dealers he sees as
he walks his dog each day.

He says there were certainly problems before the crackdown as cars
filled with pot tourists poured into the cobbled streets of central
Maastricht - but he described the atmosphere as "gezellig," a Dutch
word that loosely translates as cozy or convivial.

Since coffee shops were banned from selling to nonresidents, the
numbers of foreigners has dried up. But the atmosphere in town has
turned darker as street dealers now aggressively badger any potential
clients and fight among themselves, Berghmans says.

"Now the drug runners are trying to sell on the street to anyone," he
says. "They are bothering everybody."

Maastricht city spokesman Gertjan Bos said the problem of street
dealing is not new, but concedes it has become more visible since the
city's crackdown reduced the number of drug tourists.

"We have a feeling our approach is working," Bos said, "but we do
still have to work on the street dealers."

Easy Going coffee shop, in a street linking Maastricht's historic
market square with the Maas, has been shut for months as its owner,
Marc Josemans, refuses to adhere to the rule about selling only to
Dutch residents.

"I won't discriminate," he explains. He is fighting a legal battle
against the new rules and expects the Dutch Supreme Court to issue a
ruling soon on whether turning away non-Dutch residents is
constitutional.

Experts also question the Dutch policy change.

August de Loor has for years run a bureau in Amsterdam that gives drug
advice aimed at minimizing health risks for users as well as testing
party drugs such as ecstasy for purity.

He says coffee shops once played an important role not only in keeping
cannabis users away from hard drugs like heroin, but also educating
them about safely using pot and providing a meeting place for people
who would rather smoke a joint than drink a beer.

"That special element of the Dutch model makes coffee shops unique in
the world," he said, "and that is gradually fading away."

One part of the Dutch drug experience that has remained illegal is
commercial cultivation of weed. Meaning that while coffee shops are
tolerated - and taxed - the people who supply them are not.

In January, a group of 35 municipalities, including both Amsterdam and
Maastricht, called on the central government to allow regulated
growing, saying it would take the harvest out of the hands of
organized crime.

The Dutch Justice Minister, Ivo Opstelten, was blunt in his rejection:
"I'm not doing it," he said. "The mayors have to live with it."

Prof. Dirk Korf, a criminologist at the University of Amsterdam, says
the Dutch tolerance policy has worked well.

"The clear success is that there is regulated supply to users without
having a strong effect on the prevalence on use itself," he said. "One
could be afraid that more people would use cannabis; that has not been
the case."

Jo Smeets, a former coffee shop worker in Maastricht, complains his
neighborhood has been overrun by dealers since the city's crackdown.
The dealers, he says, sell drugs on the streets to people who
previously would have bought in tightly controlled coffee shops: "Now
they can buy more and they can buy hard drugs from the same dealers."

Amsterdam's coffee shops, by contrast, continue to welcome foreigners
with open arms.

The main difference between the two cities is the type of tourist they
attract. In Maastricht, foreigners drive over the border, visit a
coffee shop and drive back on the same day. In Amsterdam, tourists
mostly arrive by plane or train, stay in a hotel and visit museums and
restaurants - as well as dropping in on a coffee shop - plowing far
more cash into the city.

On a recent Friday afternoon in the Dutch Flowers coffee shop on
Amsterdam's historic Singel canal, German and American voices mingled
with English and Dutch in a hazy cloud of pot smoke.

Shawn Stabley, a 49-year-old, musician and IT director from York,
Pennsylvania, is typical of the type of tourist Amsterdam coffee shops
attract.

He and his partner strolled into Dutch Flowers for a smoke after
visiting another Amsterdam icon, the Anne Frank House museum, a short
walk away on another of the city's canals. The cafe has a few tables,
a bar with a set of electronic scales for weighing out drugs and a
menu filled with names of marijuana and hashish like Neville's Haze
and Parvati Creme.

The couple has been visiting the city for 20 years to celebrate
Thanksgiving, Stabley says. He says they don't plan to stop the
tradition now, even if he can buy pot closer to home in Denver or Seattle.

"Every window is picturesque," Stabley said, "and coming here to
places that serve hash and marijuana just enhances that and prolongs
it."
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MAP posted-by: Matt