In 1999, a law (the Damocles Act) was introduced to allow the use of
administrative law against coffee shops with connections to the criminal
underworld. In 2003, the BIBOB law was activated which is used for in-
depth investigations into the integrity of coffee shop owners. In 2008, the
‘Taskforce to approach organized cannabis cultivation’ was started in order
to find and dismantle cannabis plantations and organizations which invest
in these plantations.
In 2007 the state issued the distance criterion, which state that no coffee
shops are allowed within 250 m of a school. This was changed in 2011 to
350 m. The goal of this new law was to dissuade young people from visiting
a coffee shop. This resulted in the closure of 16 coffee shops in 2009 in
Rotterdam. Other cities have not yet gone this far.
In the border provinces of the Netherlands, many coffee shops were
closed because of the anti-social behaviour of consumers from Belgium,
Germany and France. These measures were mostly related to crowd con-
trol, such as parking problems and the lack of public washrooms. In order
to prevent the influx of cannabis consumers from outside the Netherlands,
only Dutch citizens are allowed to buy cannabis in coffee shops since 2012.
In 2009, the Van der Donk committee (van der Donk, 2009)charged
with evaluating the Dutch soft drugs policy of the last 30 years stated that
the current policy on cannabis was in need of change. The commission
equated cannabis to hard drugs because of the reported increase in THC
content (the active ingredient in cannabis) in some cannabis products and
argued for redefining cannabis as a hard drug. In the committee’s report,
organized crime was identified as a major problem, especially in the light of
the increase in the size of coffee shops demanding a constant supply of can-
nabis. The committee recommended changing the law in order to create
small-scale coffee shops oriented towards a local clientele.
Cannabis Policies in RotterdamAsmentioned earlier, Rotterdam is known for having a comparatively
strict cannabis policy. Coffee shops undergo formal inspections at least 10
times a year. In 2007, the average for the whole of the Netherlands was
between five and seven a year (de Bruin, Dijkstra, & Breeksema, 2008).In
2011, the minimal number of inspections in municipalities which had
explicit regulation on the surveillance of coffee shops was five times a year.
The strict policy of the city of Rotterdam is also demonstrated in its imple-
mentation of the distance criterion of 250 m as the first and only city in
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