Netherlands begins trial to make cannabis fully legal

[Simple Jack]

Netherlands begins trial to make cannabis fully legal

Experiment aims to make production, supply and smoking legal and remove effects of gang involvement

Cannabis users in two Dutch cities can smoke legally for the first time as authorities roll out a trial that would expand the country’s tolerance of marijuana to full legality.

“Historic moment,” said the health minister, Ernst Kuipers, on Friday as he scanned the first box of legal cannabis in the Baron coffee shop in the southern city of Breda.

A misconception abroad is that cannabis is already legal in the Netherlands, which is home to the famous coffee shops and seen as a huge draw for cannabis smokers.

In fact, the drug exists in a legal grey area, which the government hopes to stub out with the four-year trial starting in Breda and nearby Tilburg.

The consumption of small quantities of cannabis is illegal but police choose not to enforce the law as part of a “tolerance” policy that has been in place since the 1970s. However, the production of cannabis and its supply to coffee shops is also illegal but this is not tolerated, meaning producers and coffee shop owners have to operate in the shadows.

This has led to gang involvement, with a related rise in petty crime and antisocial behaviour that officials hope to stop if the trial is successful.

“Criminal organisations took over that criminal market and therefore coffee shop owners were depending on the criminal market and that had to stop,” the mayor of Breda, Paul Depla, told Agence France-Presse.

Production will be limited to a handful of farms, whose cannabis will be closely monitored before being supplied to coffee shops.

Consumers would be guaranteed a high-quality product, whereas before it was impossible to know where the cannabis came from, or whether it had been altered.

“The product will be clean, tested, pesticide-free,” said Ashwin Matai, the cultivation director at Holland High farm, which will supply coffee shops legally from February.

The level of THC and CBD, the active ingredients of cannabis, would be measured, so users knew the strength of their joint.

Kuipers said: “From a public health perspective, we had no oversight of the process, we could not do any checks on any potential contamination of the products. Now we can do all that.”

Independent researchers will monitor the trial with a view to eventual decriminalisation.

Asked whether it could lead to legalising other drugs, Depla was cautious. “Let’s start with the legalisation of cannabis and then we can see what will happen because I think some people are also afraid it will … lead to more people being addicted,” he said.

“I think one thing is for sure. Everybody is glad that we can say farewell to the policy, which was hypocritical and not logical.”

One unknown surrounding the planned policy is the Geert Wilders factor, whose far-right Party for Freedom won 37 seats in the general election last month. The party wants to scrap the tolerance policy and push for a “drug-free Netherlands”.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/15/netherlands-begins-trial-to-make-cannabis-fully-legal

[GSZZ]

Just now, Simple Jack said:

Production will be limited to a handful of farms

 

Another state sponsored monopoly that takes freedoms away from people then... who saw that coming.

[Slippy One]

This is great news for all the police raid budgets, and the small army of lawyers needed to bust anyone without permits. 
 

 

[wizzzard]

3 hours ago, Simple Jack said:

Production will be limited to a handful of farms,

I wonder if these farms will have links to dutch politicians like the situation in the UK.

[KC]

6 hours ago, Simple Jack said:

coffee shop owners have to operate in the shadows.

 

 

Well I've been to a few coffeeshops in my time and I'm not sure that's correct.

6 hours ago, Simple Jack said:

 with a view to eventual decriminalisation.

 

I think it is decriminilised already, the word they're looking for is legalise surely?

 

Top journalism from the Guardian as usual  

Edited December 15, 2023 by KC
spelling

[Michael Luchóg]

I got caught by the cops, didn't think much about the friendly dog I was petting on a train platform, until a man asked me to remove my headphones, and told me the dog is a narcotics dog, and he wanted to search my bags.They were complete pricks! I was told I was very lucky after they weighed my weed. I had a few grams sort of thirty grams and it'd have been a day in jail for every gram,or thirty, if it had been thirty grams or more. The cop weighed my individual bags of buds and said, ''a few more grams and you'd have been ours for thirty days''. They slagged my mother, made some reference to me being a country boy, milking cows, stupid insults but it was scary being in a cell at nineteen years of age. They take your shoes and belt but there's nothing to hang yourself from. 

[Arthur Mix]

@Michael Luchóg don’t need to hang ya self it can make a tourniquet or ligature , the removal of shoes maybe they swab for dna from sweat etc but that’s just my theory 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Arthur Mix

[Slippy One]

Pretty bloody unlucky to get busted with a zip of weed in Holland though..  

[KC]

I got arrested once, I had slip on shoes but they still took them, it's so they can check them against footprints from crime scenes, at least that's what the rozzer told me.

[wizzzard]

The coffeeshops i visited in Amsterdam were all supplied by guys on mopeds (organised crime?). The shops are limited to a maximum amount of weed on their premises which means regular weed deliveries each day to top up stock, that's what i was told.

I thought belts and shoelaces were taken from people in custody to prevent suicide attempts/deaths in custody.

[pollenlover]

Coffee shops are mostly supplied by a criminal network in Amsterdam. Some are fussier than others on quality and since there has been a change in management the quality has gone down a lot. Also some of the traditional growers have moved on to different things.

Shoes belts etc are taken to prevent suicides but in the case of footwear then there is extra concern that something maybe concealed within. I was in a prison once where plastic explosive was smuggled in in the sole of a shoe and used to break out.

[Lux_Interior]

11 hours ago, KC said:

I got arrested once, I had slip on shoes but they still took them

 

Slip on. Slip off. Were they expensive?

 

[KC]

2 hours ago, Lux_Interior said:

Were they expensive?

I doubt it, I can't really remember, must have had them 20 years.

[HazyDaze]

Slip ons, there's a couple o' words that's not used together as much as they once were! 

 

Here's another one....

 

Wait for it.....

 

 

Moccasins!!!! 

 

 

[Lux_Interior]

17 minutes ago, HazyDaze said:

Moccasins!!!! 

 

 

I wear Moccasins, Nice cherry red ones, polished regularly, don't go out in the rain. Smell the leather! & foot odour!