MAASTRICHT COFFEE SHOPS DROP PLANS FOR BIOMETRIC SECURITY SYSTEM

Plans for a biometric security system in cannabis-selling coffee shops
in the Dutch town of Maastricht have been dropped -- but they're still
going to be taking smokers' fingerprints when they buy their stash.

Cannabis smokers in the Dutch town of Maastricht can breathe a bit
easier. A proposed biometric security system the town's 15 coffee
shops had planned on installing this summer has been changed due to
its expense and threats to customer privacy.

Initially, the Maastricht coffee shop union's new security system
required a customer to register and submit to face and fingerprint
scans, which would have been stored in an electronic database. Despite
the clear threat to customer privacy that the new system presented,
the coffee shops felt it was the only way to protect their businesses
from the stiff government penalties against selling more than the
legal daily limit per customer, or selling to minors.

Marc Josemans, who has owned the Maastricht coffee shop Easy Going for
23 years, told SPIEGEL ONLINE that if a shop is caught violating these
rules, it is forced to close for three months. A second infraction
means a six-month hiatus, and a third would close the shop for good.
In contrast, according to Josemans, a bartender caught selling to
minors is charged a fine of a mere €360 ($483).

With 27 employees at his shop, Josemans, who is also the head of the
town's coffee shop union, decided that even though these penalties are
"completely out of proportion" to the crime, it was better to start
working with the system than risk such stiff penalties. A security
system was the only option, he says.

But, he says the biometric system turned out to be too complex, too
expensive (at about €150,000 per shop) and too invasive to customer
privacy. The shops will still install a security system, but it will
no longer store customers' personal and physical data.

The new system, set to start in September, will cost each shop between
€50,000 and €60,000 and will be able to check more than 1,200 types of
identification. Additionally, shops will take customers' fingerprints,
which will be thrown out at the end of each day.

Though several other shops in Maastricht declined to answer SPIEGEL
ONLINE's questions, Josemans says they're all installing the new
system voluntarily.

Josemans acknowledges that shops will lose business, but only in the
beginning. "Don't worry, we make enough money, so that's not the worst
thing," he says.

Technically, marijuana is illegal in the Netherlands, though it's
tolerated in small quantities. Josemans says that if other European
countries took more responsibility and devised more realistic cannabis
policies, shops like his wouldn't have to make such drastic changes.
He hopes that these countries will do just that when the United
Nations' Commission on Narcotic Drugs holds its next annual meeting in
2008 in Vienna.

He is concerned that customers might turn to illegal drug dealing
circles to maintain their anonymity, and Josemans says these dealers
don't look after their clients as the shops do.

"I am not proud that now it will be more difficult to enter a coffee
shop than it is for a terrorist to enter Europe," he says."