The latest in the Netherlands and Jamaica

[Rishi]

Maastricht, NL - Pot tourists targeted in Dutch coffee shop crackdown.

Tourists hoping to buy a cannabis joint in Dutch coffee shops could be in for a rude awakening this year under a test plan to curb drug tourism.

Soft drugs are legally banned in the Netherlands but under its policy of "tolerance", people are allowed to have less than 5 grams of cannabis in their possession.

Government-regulated coffee shops can hold a stock of up to 500 grams.

"We are developing a system whereby people not registered in the Netherlands will not be allowed into coffee shops," Justice Ministry spokesman Ivo Hommes said.

A pilot project will start up in Maastricht, on the southern tip of the Netherlands.

"We want to do this to combat drugs tourism and should be able to start the project this summer," he said.

Maastricht, bordering Germany and Belgium, attracts the largest number of tourists in the Netherlands after Amsterdam.

They include an estimated 1.5 million drug tourists, the city's Mayor Gerd Leers said on Friday at a conference on tackling the cross-border soft drugs problem.

Some 400,000 cannabis smokers live in the Netherlands, where they can openly buy and smoke the drug, to the ire of neighbouring countries. The Dutch population is 16 million.

The centre-right government now wants to curb drugs tourism, in part due to pressure from its European partners.

The number of coffee shops has been cut to 754 nationwide in 2003 from 1,200 in 1997, according to the latest figures from the Netherlands Trimbos institute for addiction studies.

The Government also hopes to stub out the illegal growing of hemp plants and sale of soft drugs by criminal groups.

"As member of parliament in The Hague, I thought it was possible to get rid of cannabis by taking hard measures. But after having been mayor of Maastricht for three years I see that it does not work," Mr Leers said.

"It's a 'water bed effect' if you push down on one part the problems pop up somewhere else," he said.

He said the tough approach did not work, likening it to the prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920s, which he said was a "a textbook example of a failed experiment in social engineering".

Maastricht, which has about a dozen authorised coffee shops, is discussing details of the pilot with the Justice Ministry, which could involve user registration and identification.

But coffee shops fear the rules will create more problems and chase buyers into the illegal circuit.

"If coffee shops have to carry out controls at the door, people who don't want to register will turn to the illegal circuit. We think nuisance will only increase," the chairman of the association of official coffee shops of Maastricht, Marc Josemans, told the conference.

"Legalise it," was his suggestion.



Source: ABC News Online
Copyright: © 2005 ABC
Contact : Reuters News
Website: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitem...05/s1373761.htm



Jamaica - 'Free Up the Weed'

The government was on Wednesday chided for its delay in implementing recommendations from the Ganja Commission even as more persons called for decriminalisation of the drug as a means of boosting the country's flagging economy.

"Rather than taking strong political action, politicians have been meandering, trying to please the local people and trying to please foreign masters," said attorney-at-law and rastafarian, Miguel Lorne during a Gleaner Editors' Forum on the 'Ganja Debate' Wednesday night at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, New Kingston.

Lorne was joined by persons from several sectors and members of the public, who renewed calls for the implementation of the recommendations of the National Ganja Commission, including the decriminalisation of ganja or cannabis for personal, private use in small amounts by adults.

'Hypocrisy'

Participants cited marijuana's medicinal and economic benefits as reasons for decriminalisation. They also referred to what they termed the 'hypocrisy' of making ganja illegal when 40 per cent of Jamaicans use the drug. They noted also that other more harmful substances have been made legal.

"Ganja is not a controversial issue but a political issue," argued Professor Federick Hickling, head of the section of psychiatry at the University Hospital of the West Indies. "...What we do know is that this is illegal and there are much more serious substances ... It is a contradiction where you have two substances ( alcohol and tobacco ) which are much more harmful and cannabis is illegal," he said during the forum.

Panellists, among them Paul Chang, a founding director of the National Alliance for the Legalisation of Ganja, and audience members, also lamented that Jamaica was losing out on potential resources to be gained from ganja.

He pointed out that other countries have been benefiting from ganja-derived products by decriminalising the use of the drug.

Mr. Chang added that ganja can be used to boost agriculture, employment and community tourism.

'Current Laws Causing Confusion'

"The idea is not to only legalise ganja but to tax it, regulate it and control it. To move the hundreds of billions of dollars that go into the black market ... to the tax revenue system to build schools and hospitals .. to help build up the country," Mr. Chang said.

Mr. Lorne said the current ganja laws were causing confusion locally and were hampering the efforts of the police to fight more serious crimes.

"A man is not going to come today and give you information about gun crimes and you going to come tomorrow and drape him up ( over a ganja spliff ) and haul him before the court," Mr. Lorne said to loud applause.



Source: Jamaica Gleaner, The (Jamaica)
Copyright: 2005 The Gleaner Company Limited
Contact: http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/feedback.html
Website: http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/
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