[Sativa]

BUYING cannabis in the Dutch city of Maastricht will soon mean having your fingerprints taken, your face scanned and your biometric data recorded.

The 15 coffee shops in the city are spending about 100,000 (£67,000) on a security system.

Marc Josemans, head of the local coffee shop union, said it would be harder for under-age cannabis smokers to get into their shops than for a terrorist to get into Europe. "We are ashamed for this attack on your privacy", an explanatory leaflet tells customers.

The coffee shops face a continual struggle to prove they are not selling to people under the age of 18 or selling more than five grams of cannabis a day to any one individual. If they can't, they risk being shut down.

Cannabis is theoretically illegal in the Netherlands but has been tolerated in small amounts since the 1970s. Customers in Maastricht will have their fingers and face scanned. The scans will be compared with stored data and, if everything matches, they will be able to enter the coffee shop.

No names and addresses are stored, and details of the amount of cannabis bought every day will be saved only until midnight. The information is completely secure, coffee shop owners say. But Mr Josemans concedes that 90 per cent of his clients don't like the system and he expects the new measures to hurt sales initially.


News Mod: CoZmO - 420Magazine.com
Source: Scotsman.com (Scotland)
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Copyright: 2007 Scotsman.com
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