GanjamaN1992
Member
[h=1]Amsterdam News[/h]June 2012 Well the ban is now in place in the boarder cities but reports are that the coffeeshops are refusing to operate the pass scheme which is great news. Police have visited the shops, informing them they will be closed down for a month if they do not operate within the new law. Amsterdam is next on the list from January 1st 2013. All the coffeeshops here say they will just ignore the silly law. Even better news is that the conservative government collapsed last week so it is likely that a new government will abandon the introduction of the new law after elections are held in September. Fingers crossed. The Mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard van der Laan is totally against the ban as he says as much as 70% of tourists visit Amsterdam to smoke and visit a coffeeshop. The ban will most likely hurt anything tourist related including all the hotels and museums most of which depend on the huge amount of tourists who visit Amsterdam each year. Bans of any sort do not work as we have seen over the years. Banning anything just makes it go underground and same Will happen once again in Amsterdam. It is like going backwards in time. Amsterdam is indeed changing and not for the better. The Coffee shop owners are bringing a case against the ban, but will most likely loose, the say they intend taking it all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, on the basis that the Dutch should not be allowed to discriminate against people on the basis of where they live, we will see what happens. The moves are part of a tougher approach to drugs introduced by the coalition conservative-led government, elected 18 months ago. Recently the government reclassified so called strong cannabis as a hard drug, after recent reports that it has a psychotic effect on some users. The opposite is happening in the UK where last month the government reclassified cannabis down to class C a much more sensible approach. |