Starting today, legal, Dutch cannabis may be sold in all coffee shops participating in the cannabis trial. Yet the government experiment with this has still not really begun. Because there is not yet enough legal supply, the shops may also continue to sell their illegal "backdoor cannabis" for the time being.
The "closed coffeeshop chain experiment," as the trial is officially called, was agreed upon in the Rutte III coalition agreement in 2017. With this, the cabinet wanted to investigate whether the sale of cannabis could be legalized in the Netherlands and what the effects of this would be on crime and public health. But the trial was slow to get off the ground.
In December of last year, the start-up phase was already started in Tilburg and Breda, where participating coffeeshops have been supplied by two growers. As of today, this is now being extended to coffeeshops in all ten participating municipalities.
The hope is that in the coming months, two additional growers will bring the supply up to the desired level and also start delivering by mid-September so that the experiment will really begin. The nearly 80 participating coffee shops will then be allowed to sell only legal cannabis.
Source (in Dutch): www.nos.nl