Dutch authorities oppose tougher cannabis laws

Following up on our earlier story, local authorities are protesting the plans of Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner and Health Minister Hans Hoogervorst, to reclassify Dutch grown cannabis as a hard drug and to otherwise crack down on the cannabis coffeehouses. The Association of Netherlands Municipalities said the move threatens to undermine 30 years worth of successful drugs control.

Lex Estveld, a policy adviser, said the government was trying to fix a system that was not broken. "The entire Dutch drugs policy of controlling and containing soft drugs has proven reasonably successful in recent decades. If you ask me, we haven't done bad when you compare us to other countries," he said yesterday.

In a joint statement 483 municipalities said the proposed measures would force the marijuana business underground.

"The tone of the letter is too influenced by foreign [opinions] and gives insufficient credit to the successes of local coffee shop policies," said the statement. "Concentrating the trade in soft drugs at coffee shops has the clear benefit of making it transparent and controllable."

Fortunately coffeeshop policy is controlled by local officials, not these meddling federal officials.

Meanwhile in Haarlem, Holland -- the city with the most cannabis friendly regulations in the country, Dutch coffeeshop guru Nol Van Schaik, says his Willie Wortels shops are flooded with customers and that high-THC Dutch cannabis is actually a harm reduction method that helps people get higher by smoking less, and that he and other coffeeshop owners will never accept a system that features testing of cannabis and bans on potent products.

Last word on the subject goes to Nol, who remarks on the influence the US and the United Nations with their absurd conventions is having on the conservative Dutch officials who are promoting this counterproductive scheme.

"They want to end the coffeeshop system which has become the model for cannabis use and distribution worldwide," he says. "But demand for cannabis is more and more, and if they eliminate shops, they will only create a black market dominated by organized crime that will mix the sales of cannabis with sales of hard drugs. Our coffeeshop system is the best system for managing the supply and demand of cannabis."

Amen to that.