News

**Spread** · **Spread** More Washboard User ID: 115445 08-19-2012 06:07 AM **Posts: 11,708**

Opponents of a Dutch cannabis law that restricts sales of the drug to foreigners on Saturday launched a campaign aimed at getting citizens to vote for pro-pot parties in elections next month.

Organisers said they would travel the nation in an old American school bus, painted silver to convince people to vote for "cannabis friendly parties" in the upcoming parliamentary polls.

The campaign would be funded by 140 coffee shops and two wholesale companies selling cannabis paraphernalia, one of the organisers Marc Josemans told AFP from the southern Dutch city of Maastricht where the campaign was launched on Saturday.

"Today we started a 'cannabus campaign'," said Josemans, a Maastricht cannabis cafe owner and campaigner against the new law.

"It's aimed at trying to convince people to vote in a positive way on September 12." The parties say they would abolish the law if they held political power.

The so-called "cannabis card" law came into effect on May 1 and effectively transforms coffee shops into private clubs as it requires around 80 cannabis cafes in the south to sell only to signed-up members who live in the country.

Its coverage widens nation-wide to 590 other coffee shops in January 2013, and is aimed at curbing drug tourism-linked disturbances.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120818-dutc...nnabis-law

**Spread** · **Spread** More Washboard User ID: 115445 08-19-2012 10:13 AM **Posts: 11,708**

**Enaid**

Don't bogart!

Share please.

**Spread** · **Spread** More Washboard User ID: 115445 08-19-2012 02:09 PM **Posts: 11,708**

Enaid Wrote:

Don't bogart!

Share please.

A cannabis section in the LOP store would be nice chuckle

**RaXz** · **RaXz** Party Pooper User ID: 103918 08-19-2012 02:25 PM **Posts: 7,014**

Judeo-Christians politics dominate the cannabis laws. They really want the god given plant gone, coffeeshops with it, so they can keep drinking their manmade beverages. Dutch politics are one big con to me, especially now with all the EU crap that want to dismember cultures in favor of a Zionist police state.

But I'll have to admit, that maybe I'll vote for the first time in my life if there is going to be a cannabis party. I think of it as a huge crime against humanity, but the ignorant cannot see the industrial and medical implications of keeping it illegal, in a sense they're against a possible cancer cure, how very Christian of them.

**Spread** · **Spread** More Washboard User ID: 115445 08-20-2012 06:25 AM **Posts: 11,708**

Dutch 'cannabis card' boosts Maastricht drug trade

"Cannabis? Marijuana? I have it all!" said a young man named Mohammed as he stood on the banks of the Maas River in the heart of the southeastern Dutch city of Maastricht.

A new law took effect in May allowing the owners of legalised cannabis cafes in the southern Netherlands to sell only to Dutch residents, no longer to foreigners.

Since then, Maastricht -- near the borders with Germany and Belgium and which attracts an estimated 1.4 million "drug tourists" each year mainly from those countries and France -- has become a gold mine for illegal street dealers like Mohammed.

"It's going well -- we are selling a lot at the moment," he told AFP as he plied his trade just a few metres (yards) from the riverbank where families were strolling in the early afternoon.

Hooking a client, Mohammed fiercely negotiated the sale of five grammes of cannabis, eventually selling it for a reduced price of 35 euros ($43 dollars).

Nearby, underneath a bridge spanning the river that divides the mediaeval city, 20 other dealers, alone or in groups, hung out, waiting for a piece of the action.

"I also have cocaine, heroin, ecstasy: which one do you want?" asked one, sitting on a motorbike as he gave a prospective client his mobile phone number.

The contentious new law, which took effect on May 1, effectively transformed the 80 or so coffee shops across the south into private clubs. Not only can they sell only to Dutch residents, but customers are required to sign up with their cafe of choice.

Each shop is allowed a maximum 2,000 "members", who must be aged 18 or older.

The new "cannabis card" law goes nationwide next January, when it will also apply to the other 590 coffee shops around the country. It aims to curb drug tourism-linked disturbances such as late-night rabble-rousing, traffic jams and illegal drug pushing.

Although cannabis is technically illegal in The Netherlands, the country decriminalised possession of less than five grammes in 1976 under a so-called tolerance policy, but it can be sold only in the specialised coffee shops.

The laws, including the new one, do not deter Mohammed, who said tourists are still coming to Maastricht: "I sell to French, Belgians, Germans and Spanish ... and of course, also to Dutch clients."

Such illegal drug trade has increased dramatically since the cannabis card -- also called the "wietpas" (Dutch for "weed pass") -- was introduced, said Nicole Maalste and Rutger Jan Hebben, researchers from Tilburg University.

They conceded that while fewer dealers have been hanging around the coffee shops since the new law took effect, more people were seeking out illegal sale points or calling the street dealers, who do home delivery.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/entertainment/a...rug-trade/