Q. "Is it possible to look at different ones?"
A. "Yeah, which ones do you want to see?"
Q. "The bubble gum, and the white widow."
A. "White widow..."
Q. "OK. May I see the jack haze?"

A guy is shopping for marijuana in the southern city of Maastricht. He's at a coffee shop called Easy Going which has already introduced the weed pass.

Here's how it works. To get the pass, you have to become a 'member' of a coffee shop, the Dutch cafes allowed to sell cannabis. After paying a fee and showing official identification, your details are entered into a computer system, and you get a pass.

The pass allows you to buy up to three grams of marijuana per day. All the coffee shops will be hooked up to the same system, so you can't cheat and get more by hopping from shop to shop.

Fewer tourists

The new system is meant to discourage drug tourism. The Netherlands' neighbours Germany and Belgium, along with France, have never been pleased with Dutch tolerance of soft drugs. The policy undermines the other countries' stricter laws.

For their part, residents of Dutch towns in the border regions are irritated by the thousands of foreigners coming into their towns every week just to buy drugs.

Ciska Joldersma is an MP for the Christian Democrats. She's been pushing for more restrictions on soft drugs for years.

"I think it's good. We like all kinds of measures which will help to diminish the number of drug tourists who come to the Netherlands. Because the policy is a little bit different from the countries around us. So a lot of people think 'we have to go to the Netherlands to get drugs' and they go to our coffee shops. And we have a lot of problems around the coffee shops."

Drug tourists indeed cause disturbances in some places, particularly in the smaller cities and towns in the border regions of the south.

Back door

But that's only a part of the equation. Dutch politicians are increasingly unhappy about the fact that the coffee shops rely on criminal networks by definition. This is why: while the retail sale of small amounts of cannabis is officially tolerated, the wholesale supply of the coffee shops remains illegal. The coffee shop owner legally sells small amounts to customers who come through the front door, then turns around and illegally re-supplies his store through the back door.

Many see the introduction of the new weed pass as part of a general move toward less tolerance of soft drugs. The pass will be introduced next year as a pilot project in the province of Limburg. Chances are good that it will be implemented nationally in due time.

Victory of sorts

But Mark Joosemans, owner of the Easy Going coffee shop in Maastricht, doesn't agree. He sees it as a victory of sorts:

"The biggest plus-point in the province's plan is that now, for the first time, there's real recognition of the sector. It's a bit of legalisation that shows the cannabis sector has a future. It could be totally legalised by getting rid of the final shadowy part of it, that I can't buy cannabis wholesale, even though I can sell it retail. When we finally get rid of that strange, hypocritical construction, then we'll have a nice, transparent system."

Given the current political climate of restricting soft drugs, that transparent system is not coming anytime soon. It's more likely that the prime minister will stroll into Joosemans' shop and light up a joint. Weed pass or no weed pass.

* * *

The soft-drug sector in the Netherlands is substantial. There are currently more than 700 coffee shops throughout the country, employing more than 4,500 people and generating an estimated 250 million Euros in revenue.

John Tyler
Radio Netherlands

Photo credit: Meepocity