DUTCH PLAN TO WEED OUT CRIMINALS

Plans For Giant Cannabis Farm To Cut Out 'Back-Door' Supply To Coffee
Shops

The Dutch city of Eindhoven has caused a stir with a plan to set up a
cannabis plantation to supply marijuana to its coffee shops. The move
was announced at a "weed summit", when dozens of Dutch mayors urged
the government to back the pilot project in an effort to clamp down on
the criminals who supply the drug.

The Netherlands, famed for having one of Europe's most tolerant
policies on soft drugs, allows for the possession of less than 5g of
marijuana and its sale in coffee shops, but bans the cultivation and
supply of the drug to these shops. The majority of Dutch mayors say
this legal "back door" has spawned an illicit industry worth ?2bn (UKP
1.7bn) a year.

"It's time that we experimented with a system of regulated plantations
so we can have strict guidelines and controls on the quality and
price," Rob de Gijzel, the Mayor of Eindhoven, told the Dutch
newspaper Volkskrant. "Authorities must get a grip on the supply of
drugs to coffee shops."

There are also concerns about the increasing strength of unregulated
cannabis, with the content of tetrahydrocannabinol, the active
chemical ingredient, doubling in recent years.

The weed summit was called to thrash out a revamp of drugs policy
after the provincial cities Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom announced
plans to shut all their coffee shops in the next two years to combat
drugs tourism and criminal activity. They complain that the 1.3
million French and Belgians who come every year for a puff of weed or
dash of hash are often badly behaved. Worse still, they are targeted
by "drugs runners" who lure them away from legal outlets to back-door
suppliers that offer harder, illegal drugs.

Han Polman, the Mayor of Bergen op Zoom, said: "We are in favour of
the Eindhoven experiment but we don't see it happening quickly. That's
why we are going ahead with our shutdown."

The Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, of the conservative
Christian Democratic Appeal party, has applauded these "courageous"
efforts to wipe out coffee shops.

The capital, Amsterdam, was in shock over the weekend after news that
one in five of its coffee shops would be forced to close under a new
law. The city council said 43 of 228 sites must close by the end of
2011 because they are within 250m of a school. This includes the
famous Bulldog coffee shop, a tourist magnet housed in a former police
headquarters on the Leidseplein. Three Canadian visitors were reeling
from the news. One said: "We come here twice a year, we fly thousands
of miles, spend probably ?4,000 while we are here. It's the place to
be!"

The headmistress of a nearby school, Margriet Bosman, was equally
unimpressed by the new measure: "This is just for show. Children will
get their drugs if they want to anyway, and closing the shops, which
are quite regulated, is not a very good solution."

Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, is also in favour of permitting the sale
of soft drugs. "There should be a system... in which it is clear where
soft drugs come from," he said. Many Dutch also want the tolerant
approach to remain in place, with a newspaper poll this week showing
80 per cent of Dutch opposing coffee shop closures.

Experts agree that a ban is not the answer. "A ban is even more
dangerous than the grass itself because consumers will turn to illegal
circuits and criminality will explode," said Tim Boekhout, a
criminologist.

The plan for a cannabis plantation will now go before the Dutch
cabinet.

Dutch drugs: in numbers

UKP 1.7bn

The estimated value of the illicit cannabis industry in the
Netherlands.

5 grams

The maximum amount of cannabis an individual can have in his or her
possession in Holland.

43

The number of coffee shops in Amsterdam that must close within the
next three years.