By MIKE CORDER and TOBY STERLING
Associated Press
AMSTERDAM – This country of canals and tulips is also famous for “coffee shops” where joints and cappuccinos share the menu. Now, the Netherlands’ famed tolerance for drugs could be going up in smoke.
A judge on Friday upheld a government plan to ban non-Dutch residents from buying marijuana by introducing a “weed pass” available only to residents.
The new regulation reins in one of the country’s most cherished symbols of tolerance – its laissez-faire attitude to soft drugs – and reflects the drift away from a long-held view of the Netherlands as a free-wheeling utopia.