Dutch coffee shops fined for selling marijuana to tourists; Dutch court decrees marijuana is only for residents

Agence France-Presse reports via Inquirer.net that a Dutch court in the city of Maastricht on Wednesday ordered six coffee shop owners and workers to pay fines of between 250 and 2,500 euros for selling cannabis or marijuana to non-residents.

According to the report, the owners were fined because they violated a "controversial" law introduced in 2012 requiring coffee shops "to cater only for Dutch residents in the hope of addressing the downsides of drug tourism - traffic jams, street dealing and rowdy late-night partying." Foreigners, mostly Germans and Belgians, "constitute two-thirds of coffee shops' clientele."

The coffee shops were said to have "deliberately flouted the law because they hoped the case would set a legal precedent in their favor."

For more on this story, log on to Inquirer.net.