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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Private prison industry. Incentive wise they have every incentive to fight cannabis reform. Easy convictions -> more convictions -> more demand for prisons.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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.
Given the fact they're sharing a border with France: probably a good idea.