A rude awakening

Communities along the Dutch border want to close their coffee shops - places where so-called soft drugs are sold legally - in a bid to put an end to drug tourism from neighbouring countries. The Netherlands can no longer afford to adhere to its liberal drug policy, writes the business newspaper NRC Handelsblad: "Cannabis has long since ceased to be the soft, elite drug it was in the 1970s. Its chemical composition is much stronger now, and consumption has become more problematic. ... In the opinion of the police and youth welfare services cannabis aggravates the problems of the weakest adolescents in the poorest neighbourhoods. But under the current policy legal soft drugs are still seen as a useful instrument against hard drugs. The drug policy must be revised and new facts and insights weighed up against each other. A further tightening of the law is inevitable. Drug policy is in principle a transnational issue. Therefore a new policy on drugs can only be a European policy."

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