After years of preparation, the experiment started last year in two municipalities, Tilburg and Breda. Coffee shop owners can purchase legally grown cannabis in these municipalities. Due to the tolerance policy in the Netherlands, cannabis is still grown illegally.
Eight more municipalities will follow later this year. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) would like to add another large city as the eleventh municipality, in order to include specific metropolitan problems in the research. The focus was on the Amsterdam East district.
A change in the law is necessary to also carry out the experiment in East Amsterdam. After a tour, PVV, NSC, BBB, CDA, ChristenUnie, DENK and SGP appear to be against expansion. It is striking that CDA and ChristenUnie also voted against expansion. They previously signed the coalition agreement, which included the promise to expand the experiment to include a major city.
‘Bone in the throat’
Christian Union leader Mirjam Bikker explains that she was always against it: “It was a bone in my throat.” CDA MP Harmen Krul is also no longer interested in expansion: “We really don’t want this to be the new Cannabis Valley.”
The experiment of selling legally produced cannabis in several municipalities will certainly not meet with much enthusiasm in the new House of Representatives. The PVV, the largest party, would prefer that the entire experiment be stopped until there is a new cabinet. They receive support for that proposal from at least the CDA, DENK and SGP.
PVV MP René Claassen: “Not last year, not today, not tomorrow: no experimenting with our youth. And then the euphemistic term ‘coffee shop’. Nobody really comes there for coffee. Why don’t we just call it a drug house or weed shop, I ask the minister. We don’t call a garage a fruit shop or something like that, do we?”
2024-03-04 18:59:27
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