Europe: In Bid to Fend Off "Drug Tourists," Some Dutch Border Towns to Close Coffee Shops

Citing an overwhelming number of French, German, and Belgian citizens coming to Holland to purchase marijuana and the public nuisances the crowds cause, the mayors of two Dutch border towns have announced they will close all their cannabis coffee shops, Radio Netherlands reported. But mayors of other border towns say the move will only transfer the problems to their towns.

The mayors of the southern Dutch towns of Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal said they were not opposed to the use or sale of cannabis in principle, but were concerned with the public nuisances associated with the border trade. They will shut down all eight coffee houses operating in the two towns, they said.

"There are 25,000 drug tourists per week who visit these coffeeshops," said Mayor Han Polman of Bergen op Zoom. "That leads to a lot of nuisance, and there are links to illegality, there's criminal activity going on. People in our cities are asking us to make the streets safe so we have no choice but to close the coffee shops."

About 1.3 million people a year come to Holland to buy weed, Radio Netherlands said. The two mayors said the drug tourists caused problems such as driving dangerously, parking illegally, and public urination.

Maastricht Mayor Gerd Leers is facing the same problems, but has a different solution. He is proposing relocating all the coffee shops in his city to the border crossings with France, Belgium, and Germany. And he's not happy with the unilateral action taken by the two mayors.

"We're simply moving the problem," he said. "We're pushing it from Roosendaal to Breda, and then from Breda to Rotterdam. And what's much worse, is that we're pushing the problem into the illegal sphere. The drug runners are celebrating today because they realize they've just won lots of new customers. The demand for cannabis won't go away, it'll just find a new channel of supply."

Leers is calling for a summit of all border town mayors and the Justice Ministry to arrive at a common solution. "It's key that we now make a clear decision here in the Netherlands," he said. "We have to ask ourselves, are we going to hold on to our own Dutch system and maintain a different drug policy from our neighbors, or should we say no, because of the problems this causes we can't do that anymore?"