[420 Girl]

The Dutch government moved a step closer to barring tourists from Holland's signature marijuana bars with a ruling by the European Court of Justice on Thursday that the ban would not violate European laws.

The Luxembourg-based court said the southern Dutch city of Maastricht was within its rights when it briefly banned non-Dutch residents from its soft drugs dens in 2005.

The policy aimed at curbing problems by so-called drug tourists who flock to the city from nearby Belgium and Germany. The visitors have a reputation for rowdiness, creating havoc on the roads and in the city's narrow medieval lanes.

While marijuana is technically illegal in the Netherlands, it has been sold openly for decades in designated cafes, known as 'coffee shops.' Police make no arrests for possession of small amounts.

However, the new conservative government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte is planning to make the coffee shops members-only clubs, aiming to shut out tourists.

Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten has said he wants to turn coffee shops back into small neighbourhood haunts where locals can smoke pot in peace, instead of the large-scale tourist magnets many have become.

Authorities warn that organised crime gangs dominate the illegal cultivation of cannabis plants to supply the shops. It is one of the anomalies of the Dutch drug policy that selling weed is OK but growing it is not.

Marc Josemans, owner of the Easy Going coffee shop in Maastricht who initiated the legal fight, argued that coffee shops are a successful way of regulating the drug market and preventing marijuana users coming into contact with drugs like heroin.

'All these people who visit coffee shops, they want to use and buy cannabis in a safe haven where they are not being contacted with hard drugs or hassled for other things,' he told The Associated Press. 'That place is called the coffee shop.'

The court said in its written ruling that banning foreigners from coffee shops 'constitutes a measure capable of substantially limiting drug tourism and, consequently, of reducing the problems it causes.'

The ruling rejected Josemans' claim that the policy breached European Union laws on the free movement of goods and services. The court said that because selling marijuana is technically illegal the EU laws do not apply.


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