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Comment by dep_b | Hacker News Reader

> Schneider said the legislation was likely to include a ban on non-residents buying cannabis in order to dissuade drug-tourism.

Given the fact they're sharing a border with France: probably a good idea.

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Canada shares a border with the USA (where persecution of cannabis use is a billion-dollar profitable industry) and has made no effort to dissuide cannabis tourism. On the contrary: we welcome it it open doors.

>where persecution of cannabis use is a billion-dollar profitable industry

Source?

Billions of dollars are spent prosecuting and jailing cannabis users, growers and merchants. The money comes from the taxpayers and goes to the companies and government agencies that do it. If you draw a surface that envelops the prison and policing industry but excludes taxpayers, it will look like billions are flowing in from weed enforcement.

google "war on drugs" and "prison industrial complex"

Private prison industry. Incentive wise they have every incentive to fight cannabis reform. Easy convictions -> more convictions -> more demand for prisons.

> On the contrary: we welcome it it open doors.

Well good for you, but as someone who lives in the centre of Amsterdam I can understand the motivation to discourage drug tourism.

Edit: to clarify it's not the reams of tourists getting high in coffee shops that I have a problem with, but the knock-on effects of it. Tourists treat the city like an adult themepark and recently the city council have been taking steps to address these problems.

I am personally more annoyed by the drunk people than i am by the high/stoned people.

If people were just smoking weed that wouldn't be a problem.

In other words, heavy tourism is a problem, no matter what drives it.

Amsterdam is still clean and quiet compared to other major cities. To be honest, I suspect the main factor to be the red light district. Just visit the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. I'd argue it's much worse and they don't offer legal weed. To be clear, I'm not arguing for or against prostitution, but against prostitution as a tourist attraction.

It's hard to see how you can have prostitution and it not be a tourist attraction.

If prostitution was legal, or decriminalized (I believe sex workers and advocates prefer decriminalization over legalization), everywhere, it wouldn't be much of a tourist attraction.

In Germany prostitution is legal and with the exception of st Pauli the red light districts are the opposite of tourist attractions.

I think the relatively small size (land area and population) of the Netherlands and the length of time that things have been going on have both contributed to that. A country newly legalizing pot probably has a lot less to worry about WRT rambunctious tourists.

> recently the city council have been taking steps to address these problems

I was in Amsterdam this morning and everyone I talked to explicitly mentioned it being done against drunk Englishmen on stag dos. I remember myself hating fractious drunk English stag parties, and have fond memories of pointing polite and hapless stoned Italians to the street we were already on.

Tourists from the UK are reviled by Amsterdam and they’ve ruined it so much the entire city centre now has an alcohol ban.

It has nothing to do with weed.

Well the UK is near and there are cheap flights so yeah that combined with Amsterdam's reputation and the way certain people like to "represent" the UK abroad is a pretty bad mix. But there's just tons of people from all countries all over the world that are smoking weed under your window, pissing on the street, don't watch out for cyclists and so on. You don't fix Amsterdam by banning the Brits.

Also, Dutch stag parties seem not to be that far off what happens in the UK.

> we welcome it it open doors.

In general, they're not really a completely open border. They're pretty strict about who they let in. They'll check into your US 'criminal record' and make judgements based on that. (A bit of an overeach.. but a bit weird if you have a DUI and they reject you [that's their policy])

I'm not sure why they get a complete pass to claim that they're the good guys when the US isn't as picky. (Yes, the US is a PITA to travel to)

Why is that a good idea? Is drug tourism necessarily a bad thing?

Probably because not everyone is okay with thousands of people coming to their city every year just to take drugs.

Isn’t that Oktoberfest?

Alcohol's not a drug, it's a drink.

You can dissolve MDMA in water, making it a drink.

LSD is often liquid before being deposited on a stamp.

Molecules are what matters, not the structure or state, and alcohol (like tobacco) is effectively a drug.

I'm far from a puritan - I thoroughly enjoy my beer (and rum, and slivovice ...etc) - but let's be honest, the addictive properties of alcohol together with the societal, social and physical damage that it can cause either match or exceed substances which are otherwise treated as "drugs".

This is not to say I think alcohol should be banned or more strongly controlled, but rather that we should really rethink how we harshly we view things like cannabis

Ethanol is literally a psychoactive recreational drug.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_(drug)

For those of you who may not know the reference it’s from Chris Morris’s Brass Eye

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MIAJemmO-bg

Well the idea isn't that bad, but people seem to think if one or two forbidden things are possible then all of a sudden everything that was forbidden is possible. You'll end up with Amsterdam.

Also problematic is the fact that in a lot of countries everything is outlawed so they might go looking for hard drugs where soft drugs are being sold. I've seen enough tourists seen thrown(1) out of a coffeeshop for asking any kind of hard drugs. What they don't find in coffeeshops they do find with street dealers.

(1) yes, flying

On an ecological level tourism is a bad thing yes. Now maybe it'd be good for the economy or whatever but I don't think making $ should be the priority. Plus Luxembourg isn't really in need of money.

That really depends on your definition of tourism...

Do you have a definition of tourism that doesn't imply travelling ?

The only point of comparison I have is amsterdam and people are definitely flying/road tripping there for short "drug vacations" (I genuinely think everyone I know has been there at least once for that purpose), which in my book is not so good for the environment and a more than debatable reason to fly/drive hundreds of kms.

A genuine question, Aren't all EU citizens supposed to be treated equally across the EU?

How would such a ban work?

>A genuine question, Aren't all EU citizens supposed to be treated equally across the EU?

Nope. At least by now, but little by little they are taking the sovereignty of members.

We'll see soon enough.. we just need someone to get arrested first.

It's a good thing they picked Luxembourg for this experiment, it will cut back on the travel time for everyone involved getting to the ECJ

Presumably all residents, including those from other EU/EEA countries, would be allowed to buy. I believe discrimination against nonresidents is allowed under EU law in many contexts, for example for social benefits. (But not allowed in other contexts, for example discrimination against nonresidents can restrict the free movement of capital.)

They are being treated equally. A citizen of France who is resident in Luxembourg would be able to purchase. A citizen of Luxembourg who is resident in France, wouldn't.

You can have rules that apply only to residents, but they have to be applied to any resident.

It is my understanding that this ability to discriminate only applies to acts by the state but not to commerce.

Perhaps this could be workable by issuing all residents a license to buy? Restriction in buying items certainly exist: guns, alcohol, etc

Maybe I'm missing something, but Germany's personal car toll system was supposed to be offset by a rebate on car taxes that would benefit any resident (or more precisely: anybody paying their car taxes in Germany) and was found to be in violation of EU regulations. Are there special cases for tax rebates or what would have been the difference?

Even different cities have different laws, the EU is not some magical homogeneous government as much as the haters want to purport it as such.

No problem with making rules based on residency; everyone does it (vast amounts of tax law, for instance). The citizenship of the residents is irrelevant here.

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