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City Of Haarlem Presents Own Alternative To Failing Weed Pass

The city of Haarlem is currently working on an alternative to the seemingly doomed ‘Weed Pass’, that is meant to take effect nation-wide on the 1st January.

The so-called “wiet pas”, a controversial new registration policy, was designed by the Dutch government to limit coffeeshop clientele and to ban foreign customers from buying cannabis, but the new policy backfired in the southern three provinces of the Netherlands after it was introduced earlier this year. The mayor of Maastricht, the city on the southern border, has recently had a change of heart on the issue as the new policies led to an dramatic increase of nuisance and street-level drug dealing in his city.

According to the mayor of Haarlem, Bernt Schneiders, the alternative that Haarlem is now working on together with the local coffeeshops and the city’s health service, will function as a hallmark, guaranteeing good entrepreneurship, quality of products and compliance with (yet to be defined) standards. Particular points of focus will be the prevention of complaints from neighbours and the down-scaling of the coffeeshops. Mayor Schneiders told a local newspaper that the new certificate will force coffeeshops towards what he called the “ideal situation”, where they would be small businesses, serving locals. Exactly how the new hallmark would achieve this function he did not explain.

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City of Breda votes out planned “Weed Pass”

The city council of Breda voted against the introduction of a so-called “Weed Pass” that has to prevent tourists from buying cannabis in the Netherlands.

With the vote Breda joins ranks with Maastricht, Den Bosch, Eindhoven, Amsterdam and other municipalities that already oppose the planned registration system for Dutch coffeeshop customers.

The Netherland’s minister of “Security and Justice”, Ivo Opstelten says he is still determent to have such a system implemented.

After the vote was taken a member of Breda’s city council told the present media: “It’s just isn’t a smart precaution”.

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Is The City Of Amsterdam Going To Grow Its Own Pot?

Dutch green-party, GroenLinks, is the big winner of the Amsterdam city and borough elections held Wednesday 3rd of March. After securing eight of the 28 seats in the counsel of the city’s most important and international borough, Amsterdam-Centrum, GroenLinks is ready to actualize their election promise to have the city of Amsterdam grow pot in order to supply the city’s many coffeeshops.

Under the drug policy of the Netherlands, the sale of cannabis products in small quantities is allowed by licensed coffeeshops. The coffeeshops (in Dutch written as one word) were introduced in the 1970s after the drugs laws changed with the explicit purpose of keeping hard and soft drugs separated.

There is an on-going contradiction concerning the Dutch coffeeshops, as they are allowed to sell cannabis over counter, but they are not allowed to purchase their own supply. There have been proposals for remedying the situation by, for instance, the GroenLink’s proposition of controlled growing of cannabis to replace imports of ambiguous legal status. It seems that with yesterday’s victory the green-party has its mandate to make this happen for the city of Amsterdam.

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