Posted on 05/28/2011 9:08:28 AM PDT by GonzoII
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Dutch government on Friday said it would start banning tourists from buying cannabis from "coffee shops" and impose restrictions on Dutch customers by the end of the year.
The Netherlands is well known for having one of Europe's most liberal soft drug policies that has made its cannabis shops a popular tourist attraction, particularly in Amsterdam.
Backed by the far-right party of anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders, the coalition government that came into power last year announced plans to curb drug tourism as part of a nationwide program to promote health and fight crime.
"In order to tackle the nuisance and criminality associated with coffee shops and drug trafficking, the open-door policy of coffee shops will end," the Dutch health and justice ministers wrote in a letter to the country's parliament on Friday.
Under the new rules, only Dutch residents will be able to sign up as members of cannabis shops.
Dutch customers will have to sign up for at least a year's membership and each shop would be expected to have only up to 1,500 members, a justice ministry spokesman said.
The policy will roll out in the southern provinces of Limburg, Noord Brabant and Zeeland by the end of the year and the rest of the country next year, the spokesman said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
How about that, I thought they would be more Libertarian in this regard. Good for ya.
I guess they got tired of all those tourism dollars.
They'll bring it back when their tourist industry takes a big hit (as it were).
Then again they still have prostitution tourism.
Wow. Now there’s no reason at all for Libertarians to go to Holland. And with the Arizona government putting it’s pot laws on hold until some determinations, there’s no reason for them to come to Arizona, either. So please, stop coming here, Libertarians. We’ve got enough problems with illegal Mexicans and illegal Muslims and Janet Napolitano.
Perhaps they’ve calculated that the drug business costs them more than it brings in.
He’s looking for 20 lbs. of tuna I’ll bet.
When the word gets out about this ban and the efforts to clean up their country they may see a gain in the tourist industry.
You can buy cannibis, but they draw the line at Ovaltine.
If so then they are about to discover that they are mistaken.
More likely the tourists will go to Portugal instead.
Not all pot heads are dirt poor democrats, I can personally assure you of that without going into uncomfortable details about who and what I know. Anybody with the cash to buy a ticket from the US to Amsterdam has plenty to spare.
Now wait a minute...the potheads here have been saying that the crime is only because it is illegal. Am I missing something?
(donning flameproofs)
NOOOOOOOOO! Now I have no reason to visit Amsterdam. Oh well, at least there’s still Jamicia right?
“Libertarians are conservatives who like to smoke pot”, Drew Carey.
They're a lot more than that I'm afraid.
On a normal summer weekend...from Friday to Monday...I’d make a honest bet that at least fifteen thousand British tourists are in Amsterdam. Toss in the Germans and the French...plus another two thousand Americans who flew in, and at least forty thousand folks are there to use cannabis and play as a tourist. Most cities in America would beg for something like that....weekend after weekend.
After spending fifteen years in Europe and at least three weeks of that touring the country of the Netherlands...I’m of the mind that the locals really have gotten to hate the drug-usage angle to their lives.
The last time I spent a weekend there...I’d stopped in at a restaurant on a business-related street. There were only a couple of open tables and the guy stuck me and the wife next to some 25-year old gal. What I noticed immediately was that she was on some LSD high and she spent almost the 70 minutes I was there...sipping a tiny bit of soup...drop by drop and being so fascinated with the soup on the spoon. She’d stop occasionally and then gaze at her fingernails as though she’d just acquired them. At the end as I paid...the owner apologized to me....in plain English....there were so few tables left and he could not kick her out. I asked if this was an issue, and he said that he had a dozen customers a day like this....and they occupied tables for almost two hours at a time...barely eating and mostly enjoying their high. He hated their business.
There is a spectrum of Libertarians, ranging from whacked out anarchists to whacked out one-world, Bildeburger, Rothschild conspiracy paranoids. It is my belief that most independents, I think, comprise roughly 40% of the electorate, would classify themselves as small “l” libertarians who by definition should not be compared to the Libertarian Party.
I guess my point is, the term libertarian, like most political labels, (right-wing, left-wing) don’t fit very well.
It’s always funny to talk pot legalization with liberals (and when it comes to domestic policy, “far right” in Holland is still very left): their immediate reaction 100% of the time is “yeah, then we can regulate it and tax it!” It’s their default setting for literally EVERYTHING. If it is to exist, it must be regulated and taxed!!!
Ron Paul will NOT be happy about this.
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