Buzzby

City That Went To Pot Strikes Back
Fiona Barton | The Advertiser | 01/21/2005

THE Smoky Boat is a big tourist attraction in Maastricht.

Floating on the river that bisects this affluent Dutch city, its white hull gleams under arc lamps, and the twinkling of lights within entices the passers-by up its gangplank.


A woman smokes a pipe of marijuana in front of
a plaster cast mock Statue of Libery during a rally
calling for the legalisation of soft drugs in Amsterdam.

It is early evening and the snow is threatening to start again as dozens of young men and women skid across icy cobbles to reach it.

Inside, huddles of youngsters are playing cards beneath the red lightbulbs or amusing themselves with the children's game Hangman.

It looks like a dimly-lit youth club with nothing to recommend it as the venue for an evening out.

Then you see the menu posted behind a small serving hatch at the rear. The Smoky Boat shop has remarkably limited fare: no alcohol, just tea, coffee, orange juice, instant soup, toasted sandwiches and ... cannabis. Since 1976, a limited number of licensed premises, known euphemistically as coffee shops, have been allowed to sell cannabis in The Netherlands.

This relaxation of the law has allowed the Dutch to smoke without fear of prosecution, but it has also created a monster in Maastricht.

The city's proximity to the borders of France, Belgium and Germany has made it the centre of Europe's cannabis tourism.

Each year, 1.5 million young day trippers flood to the Smoky Boat and the city's 15 other coffee shops, making up an astonishing 75 per cent of their customers.

As far as the 16 shop owners are concerned, the $1.3 billion a year trade is a huge success. But for Maastricht, the drug tourists have brought nothing but trouble.

This month, the city will strike a blow at the very heart of Holland's liberal attitude to drugs by banning the sale of cannabis to foreigners.

The people and police of Maastricht have watched as crime rates have risen in the city in line with the numbers of foreign visitors. Of the 21,000 people charged with crimes last year, 4500 were foreigners.

A police spokesman said: "It cannot go on like it has been for several years now. We hope that the city's experiment will be successful because the problems here give us a huge workload.'

Maastricht Mayor Geerd Leers and the council decided to act just before Christmas, when they voted unanimously to change city laws so that only Dutch nationals can buy cannabis in its coffee shops.

In the next few weeks, shop owners will be arrested for selling the drug to a foreigner and prosecuted as a test case so issues can be examined by the Dutch legal system and the European Court of Justice.

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TheNewGuy

How is it causing nothing but trouble if its a $1.3 billion a year trade? Also, doesn't the majority of crime come from the illegal production and supply of cannabis, not its sale? They could solve alot of these problems if they regulated the production, so gangs wouldn't be the ones supplying the coffee shops.

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"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." ~P.J. O'Rourke

reggie_the_dog

i am going there i 4 weeks, i will tell you if this is bull**** or not.

they cannot deny me service they give to the Dutch, i am a resident of the EU.

urania3

Do you really think 4500 foreigners, or even a majority of them, are going to Maastricht to facilitate the production and supply of cannabis?

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Why is it that we cannot face the simple truth? Religion is at best unsubstantiated superstition. (Massimo Pigliucci)

Neilio

but how many of those foreigners crimes were marijuana related?

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"What matters is that your rights were violated....and in regard to that all i can say is WELCOME TO AMERICA!"

^thanks to oneluv4boognish for that.....

Buzzby

If the foreigners are there because of the easy availability of marijuana, their crimes are marijuana-related. I picture it like parts of Florida during Spring Break: people go there to get crazy and do stupid sh*t.