Maastricht bans cannabis coffee-shop tourists

[Penguin]

If they close the legal market, the black market will rise again, with all it's problems: bad weed, sale of hard drugs, crime, etc... There won't be one marijuana consumer less.

A drug free society is an utopia. The war on drugs is no war, as wars can be won. The Netherlands had a pretty good model.
Interestingly enough the percentage of pot smokers in the Netherlands is lower than in its neighboring countries - also the percentage of juveniles who smoke pot - maybe the attraction of forbidden fruits is not there.

Regarding the US: I find Alaska's handling of the issue pretty good and pragmatic - yeah, those damned liberal blue states!

Originally Posted by Egan

The Belgian/German exemption seems odd. Considering that the vast majority of drug tourists in Maastricht are going to be day trippers from either of these countries, why bother putting through legislation if you're then going to exempt 95% of the people who would be hit by it?

I heard it a week ago, when a friend told me that a coffee shop owner in Maastricht told him that they will continue to sell to Germans but not to the French, couldn't believe it first.
The plans were first to sell only to Dutch, I wonder why they made the exceptions, hard to say how big the economical influence of the coffee shop owners is. My guess is that it could be also a proposal by the police, as they are very pragmatic over there and have certainly better things to do than arresting people with small amounts of weed.