Canada: Cannabis / Weed is legal! The Netherlands: War on drugs!
The Netherlands is known around the world for its tolerant cannabis policy and the coffeeshops that have been openly selling hash and cannabis for over 40 years. But contrary to what many people think, cannabis is still illegal in the Netherlands. Will the Dutch learn from Canada’s cannabis legalization?
The Netherlands to learn from Canada’s cannabis legalization?
“Do not try it at all!” Dutch Prime Minister Rutte told Canadian high school students earlier this week while asked about cannabis during his state visit to Canada.
Meanwhile, the war on growers has intensified in the Netherlands. For example, in the North of The Netherlands police raided 112 addresses in 1 week and 81 times they didn’t find anything. We recently reported from one of these raids, which happened in the little town of Rohel.
Furthermore, Rutte went on to say: “95% of cannabis grown in the Netherlands goes to other European countries.”
This is particularly false. Instead, coffeeshops can barely keep up with demand and cannabis is now been smuggled and illegally imported into the Netherlands from Spain, Poland, and even the United States and Canada.
This was debunked earlier already by International Cannabis News (ICN):
Canada’s cannabis legalization is more like legalization 1.0
While there are certainly things to learn from Canada, their way of legalizing cannabis isn’t perfect either. We recently went in depth on Canada’s cannabis legalization.
Further recommended reading and viewing:
- Legal Cannabis in Canada: Legalization 1.0?
- Dutch NGO VOC Nederland recently published a lengthy article on the history of cannabis in the Netherlands.
- Check out our library of videos on cannabis in the Netherlands.
