Dutch Coffee Shop Owners Found Guilty of Selling Cannabis to Foreigners

Holland’s reputation as a haven of drug tolerance took a knock yesterday. In the 120,000-strong city of Maastricht, a court handed down fines of €2,500 apiece and community service orders to three coffee shop owners who sold cannabis to foreigners. The offense is a fairly new one in the Netherlands – it was introduced last spring, when Dutch authorities began limiting cannabis sales to possessors of a "weed pass" proving they were permanent Dutch residents. Come November, following an election, the law was softened, as the new Liberal-led government decided to let local city authorities decide whether or not to implement it. The Netherlands' biggest cities scrapped the law, but some southern Dutch cities, including Maastricht, have decided to keep it in place and go after anyone who challenges it.

The move may seem at odds with Holland’s image as an anything-goes kind of place, but the truth is that this reputation is out of synch with reality. Certainly Holland has a broad (though contested) consensus that the law should stand back from meddling in personal habits if possible, but its cannabis consumption is actually middling by European standards. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction’s report last year, 3.3 percent of the Dutch population use cannabis monthly, fewer than in the U.K. (3.9 percent) and France (4.8 percent), far fewer than in Italy (6.9 percent), and Spain (7.6 percent) and way behind Europe’s ultimate stoners, the Czechs, who come in at 8.6 percent.