A CULTURAL RELAXATION THAT'S NO LONGER MELLOW

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands - Watched over by a contented Mona Lisa with a
large reefer between her lips, clients of the Smoky Boat offer a cozy
picture of peace, playing backgammon and sipping juice between puffs
from cigarettes laced with hashish or marijuana.

The tranquillity, however, could come to an abrupt end. Marc Josemans,
the owner of the Smoky Boat, a cannabis cafe on a docked river barge
in Maastricht, said he might soon be packing up his menu of pungent
"Nirvana Special," "Silver Haze" and "Super Skunk."

The mayor wants to move most of the city's 16 licensed cannabis cafes
to the edge of town, preferably close to the border.

Maastricht, a medieval town on the Meuse River in the hilly south of
the Netherlands, has long cherished its rare position, a short
distance from Belgium and Germany, which gives its people a casual
ease with foreign languages, food and visitors.

But as the southernmost point of the nation with the most lenient
soft-drug laws in Europe, Maastricht has also turned into a hub for
foreign smokers and dealers. It is estimated that more than one
million drug tourists a year come from neighboring countries to shop.

The multimillion-dollar trade has spawned a supply chain of illicit
growers and underground traders.

It was not meant to be this way.

"People who come from far away don't just come for the five grams you
can buy legally over the counter," said Piet Tans, a police spokesman.
"They think pounds and kilos; they go to dealers who operate in the
shadows."

The police regularly destroy indoor nurseries, often detected because
of the high electricity bills run up by the grow lights, he said. But
new nurseries, hidden in attics and basements, keep springing up to
feed the international clientele. Tans said the flourishing drug
tourism had also attracted pushers of harder drugs from Amsterdam, who
often harass people on the streets.

Residents complain of traffic problems, petty crime, loitering and
public urinating. There have been shootouts between Balkan gangs.

Maastricht's small police force says that it cannot cope and that it
is spending one-third of its time on drug-related problems.

The mayor, Gerd Leers, and the town council have been searching for
answers. Forbidding sales to nonresidents would probably violate
European anti-discrimination rules, and closing the cannabis cafes is
not the solution either, he said. "The trade will just go underground
because demand will not disappear."

So he has drawn up a plan to move at least half the cafes away from
the charming narrow downtown streets and resettle them along the
highways near the borders.

He has met with mayors from a dozen nearby Belgian and German towns
and villages, explaining his ideas and pleading for cross-border
solidarity and greater collaboration. Some have signed a cooperation
plan, but others have protested.

Huub Broers, mayor of the nearby Belgian town of Voeren, is one who
objected to getting the new outlets on his doorstep.

The Dutch brought on the problem themselves, he said: If there were no
sales in Maastricht, the French and the Belgians would not go to stock
up there.

But Leers contends that Maastricht has merely borne the brunt of a
general problem that the mayors would otherwise find at home.

Several other Dutch border cities intend to relocate their cannabis
outlets. "We have already moved two cafes close to the frontier with
Germany, where most clients come from," said Rick van Druten, a town
official in Venlo.

"They buy and turn around," he said. "It solved a lot of congestion
and loitering."

The problem in Maastricht and other border towns echoes a broader
tension that has grown since The Netherlands began allowing the
regulated sale of marijuana and hashish in 1976.

As national borders lost their role in Europe's common market, many
domestic laws, including drug policies, have remained far apart. The
Dutch have lobbied for their neighbors to follow them, while others,
including France, want the Dutch to tighten drug regulations.

In practice, holding a small cache of drugs is rarely punished in
Western Europe, but the Dutch have been clearer about setting rules:
The cannabis cafes can sell five grams, or about a fifth of an ounce,
per person of marijuana or hashish. For clients younger than 18,
harder drugs and alcohol are forbidden. In Maastricht, half of the
original 32 cafes have been shut down because of violations.

Despite such clear rules, another basic problem lingers: The cafes are
licensed to sell the drugs, but it is illegal to produce or transport
their supplies.

"It's a crazy situation," said Josemans, who owns another cafe besides
the Smoky Boat and who is head of the local cannabis cafe owners'
association. "Every day I'm obliged to commit crimes because I have to
stock up illegally. But at the same time I pay taxes on the sales."

"It's all very hypocritical," he said. "So I have delivery boys going
back and forth, because I can keep only 500 grams in stock. A liquor
store can keep a thousand liters and has quality control."

Leers, who says that at heart he is a prohibitionist, and Josemans
have at least this in common: Both believe that as long as people can
sell, they should be allowed to cultivate the plants. "Illegal growers
use pesticides and fertilizer and make smoking more dangerous,"
Josemans said.

The mayor has asked the government to allow Maastricht to experiment
with supervised, legal plantations to cut out the criminal groups. In
speeches and articles, he has railed against the present policy.
"Either you close this back door or you regulate it," he argued in
Parliament. "It's like telling a baker that he can sell bread but he
is not allowed to buy flour."

The impending plan to move the drug commerce to the outskirts of town
has been debated by the owners of other cafes, like the Blue Dream,
Slow Motion and Wall Street.

Some of them see new opportunity.

One has proposed buying the former customs office on the Dutch-Belgian
border.

Some old-timers see only risks in leaving the intimate atmosphere of
the inner city.

The owners of the paraphernalia shops - the downtown boutiques that
sell water pipes, candles, rolling paper and other drug accessories -
are said to be worried.

Josemans said he would be one of the first to open an outlet along the
highway near Belgium. "I've been in this trade for 25 years, and I'll
do it for a while longer," he said. "I won't recommend cannabis as a
way of life, but it's O.K. for recreation."

And, at least for now, it is still good for business. His new highway
cafe, will provide a reading room, snacks, fresh juice and an Internet
corner.

"I'll take the risk," he said. "I'm willing to modernize."