Enough is enough for city on frontier of cannabis law

MAASTRICHT - The Mississippi Boat in Maastricht serves several hundred thousand people a year with cannabis - many of them foreigners from across the borders of Belgium, France and Germany.

But in contradiction with Holland's relaxed laws, the city council plans to make it technically illegal to serve foreigners in the city's 16 coffee shops, a move that could close many.

The policy is just one of three controversial - and contradictory - schemes designed to curb the social problems produced by Holland's drug laws.

Within easy driving distance of Belgium, Germany and France, Maastricht has proved a magnet for smokers.

In their wake a thriving trade in illicit cannabis and harder drugs has emerged, accompanied by crime.

Spurred on by complaints from police and residents, Mayor Geerd Leers plans a new bylaw that will require coffee shop clients to prove they are Dutch residents.

Initially, the law will be enforced only in one coffee shop as a test case. Council members believe bold steps are needed to tackle the unwelcome consequences of cannabis.

Ramona Horbach, one of the Mayor's two drug advisers, argues: "People who visit Maastricht are responsible for a lot of problems. There is intimidation, there are efforts to persuade people to buy cocaine, Ecstasy and heroin."

A small number of the coffee shops are in residential areas, provoking local opposition. Horbach's colleague, Jasperina de Jonge, adds: "Too many people are visiting. Sometimes there is rowdy behaviour. Some of the coffee shops are in residential areas and people no longer like living there."

Police say the south Limburg region has an estimated 1.2 million drug tourists a year.

Spokesman Peter Tans said that, of the estimated 21,000 people charged with crimes this year in south Limburg, 4500 will be foreigners.

It was not meant to be like this; the whole point of coffee shops was to bring soft drug use out of the sphere of influence of the criminal gangs.

But the law is contradictory. Technically all drugs are illegal in the Netherlands, though coffee shops are permitted to sell a maximum of 5g of cannabis without facing prosecution.

While it is an offence to produce, possess, sell, import or export cannabis, it is not illegal to use.

That means it is legal for a customer to buy 5g of cannabis in a coffee shop, but it is illegal for the shop to acquire the stock to sell.

Those who grow cannabis or buy it in large quantities are still criminals and thus the growing industry remains underground.

In the city this year, 78kg of cannabis has been seized and 43,000 adult cannabis plants destroyed. Much of this had been grown in suburbia under the direction of criminal gangs, who also deal in hard drugs.

Between January and October 2005, police raids netted 10kg of heroin, 1.5kg of cocaine, 12,000 Ecstasy tablets, 171,000 ($300,000) in cash and 11 guns.

The situation has led to the city clamping down on coffee shops; in the mid-90s, Maastricht boasted 30 coffee shops; it now has just over half that number.

But the dwindling numbers have not halted crime and the city is adopting two, radically different, policies in addition to the effort to stop foreigners being served in coffee shops.

Leers wants to create three drive-in centres away from the heart of Maastricht and from residential areas to service the drug tourists demand.

The city has offered to host an experiment in cultivating cannabis under strict supervision to supply local coffee shops and put criminal gangs out of business.

Though the logic of their policies suggests that the Netherlands should allow legal production of cannabis, ministers have always shrunk from such a step, knowing it would provoke an international storm. De Jonge says: "The problem has to be solved.

The National Government has to see that is the next step."

However, the plan looks likely to be blocked by the Government. And that will leave the city trying to manage the consequences of a flawed drug law with two, contradictory, policies.

Just a few yards from the Mississippi Boat, half a dozen people are smoking and discussing the proposed changes to the cannabis law and the trouble the laws have made for the city.

One client says: "You hear of bar brawls but you never hear of coffee shop fights."

- INDEPENDENT