Advocates of legalizing marijuana have grown more aggressive — and silly — in recent years, casting their cause as a civil rights issue and ignoring the public safety questions surrounding the legal cultivation, sale and use of the drug.
But the veritable poster child for legal marijuana, the Netherlands, has just exited the poster.
The Netherlands has a reputation — distressing or appealing, depending on your point of view — for a freewheeling attitude toward marijuana. Dutch citizens and drug-seeking foreign tourists alike flock to absurdly misnamed “coffee shops” to get their fix.
But Holland is rethinking that approach. A number of cities have shut down the so-called “coffee shops” that are located near schools, for instance, and now a Dutch judge has upheld a law that will prohibit foreigners from buying marijuana in the country. Under the law, the shops will become clubs that can have a maximum of 2,000 members apiece — all of whom have to be residents of the Netherlands.
Frankly, we can’t see anything surprising about a country not wanting its claim to fame to be that vast numbers of people go there to get strung out.