[420 Girl]

AMSTERDAM - The Dutch cabinet wants to discourage foreigners from coming to the Netherlands to buy drugs by limiting the amounts permitted to be sold and by only allowing debit card payment, the government said last week.

The Netherlands has one of Europe's most liberal soft drug policies with legal use of marijuana but some cities at the border near Belgium want to close down marijuana-selling coffee shops because they are drawing too many foreign visitors.

"Several pilots should lead to smaller, locally-focussed coffee shops. In a pilot in Limburg the bar to buy cannabis will be raised," the government said in a statement.

The province of Limburg lies in the south of the Netherlands, bordering Belgium and Germany and is close to France and Luxembourg.

"The maximum quantity of cannabis per customer will be lowered from 5 grams (0.18 oz.) to 3 grams and clients can only pay by bank card," the government said about the Limburg pilot.

Coffee shops would not be forced to ban foreign customers but the new policy plan would move to make it harder for foreigners to buy cannabis, Dutch press agency ANP reported Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin as saying.

Dutch authorities also want to cut cannabis use by citizens to reduce social and health effects such as bad school performance and to cut criminality linked to the production and trading of cannabis, the cabinet said.


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