The Netherlands Drug Situation 2010 - Trimbos-instituut

The police district of West and Central Brabant is situated in the southern part of theNetherlands on the border with Belgium. It has 26 different municipalities, with amongothers two bigger cities (Breda en Tilburg) and three middle ranged towns (Bergen opZoom, Oosterhout and Roosendaal). In March 2009, a commission (Commission Fränzel)consisting of mayors, police representatives and members of the regional public prosecutor'soffice was installed to formulate a joint regional approach for handling the drugsproblem. During the term of the Commission Fränzel, the mayors of Bergen op Zoom andRoosendaal decided to close down their 8 coffee shops, in order to diminish the publicnuisance caused by foreign drug tourists. These mayors didn't wait for the conclusions ofthe commission or for a change in the national drug policy. The effects of this policy weremonitored in the police district. Under the name Project Courage the towns of Roosendaaland Bergen op Zoom are working closely together to tackle drug related crime. Sixmonths after the closure of the coffee shops, it was reported that the number of foreigndrug tourists had diminished with 90 per cent and that the reported public nuisance andstreet trading had declined (Gemeente Roosendaal, 2010). The dreaded shifting of thedrug tourists to the bigger cities of the region partly took place because the municipalityof Breda detected an increase of 30 per cent coffee shop visitors after September 2009,but no increase in public nuisance was reported. The municipality of Tilburg reported nochange in the number of foreign coffee shop visitors.In its advice the Commission Fränzel followed the basic ideas of the national AdvisoryCommittee on Drugs Policy.Some of the measures proposed by the Commission Fränzel are:1. To monitor the number and characteristics of problematic juvenile groups2. More strict enforcement of the rules of the existing coffee shop policy;3. To start a pilot with small scaled closed coffee shop clubs with a maximum number ofmembers: these coffee shop clubs can be commercially or non-commercially operated;the commission thinks that the municipalities that closed their coffee shops haveto find a solution to supply their local cannabis market;4. The district must develop a joint communication strategy to diminish drug tourism;5. All of the grow shops in the region will be checked by a BIBOB procedure.6. To organize the dismantling of large scale cannabis farms according to one commonprocedure in the region (Commissie Fränzel, 2009).Most of these measures will be implemented under the watchful eye of the same CommissionFränzel.Pilot project EindhovenAlthough the city of Eindhoven is also situated near the Belgium frontier in the provinceof North-Brabant there are no problems with foreign drug tourists. However, the mayorwants a coffee shop pilot project in order to combat the serious criminality which is connectedwith cannabis cultivation and also because many criminal juvenile groups are usingcannabis. The municipal government respects the policy proposed by the nationalAdvisory Committee on Drugs Policy, although she prefers an experiment with a regulationof cannabis cultivation. The pilot has four purposes: 1. More transparency of the entrepreneurshipof the coffee shop owner, e.g. the owner must be able to submit to theauthorities his exact purchases and sales; customers are obliged to pay by bank card; toinvestigate whether the entry age could be raised to 21 years. 2. Scaling down the sizeof the coffee shops: introduction of a permit-registration system for customers with amaximum number of clients per coffee shop. 3. Combating organised crime connectedwith cannabis production, e.g. more administrative barriers for owners of grow shops andcoffee shops; dismantling of large-scale cannabis cultivation in residential areas. 4. Tigh-26