RS2 Maastricht and Marijuana

This blog is a response to audio Episode 395: Maastricht, Marijuana, and the European Dream. 

40 some years ago, the people of the Netherlands found fun in smoking pot. That’s right, pot. Marijuana, weed, ganja, joints. They felt that smoking made them feel free and they liked the “hippie vibe” that the culture of marijuana represented. A local culture of smoking pot at “coffee shops” blossomed into somewhat of a secret society.

When the European Union was born, the Maastricht treaty was signed to create the euro, a common form of payment among the countries in Europe. But what many legislators did not realize was the other importance Maastricht stood for, its marijuana. The citizens of Maastricht who enjoyed smoking weed kept this their “secret legal quirk.” Maastricht was the only town able to smoke weed without legal punishment, and “coffee shops” were the places to find it.

Soon, their secret spread and Maastricht became a smoking sensation. Values really are subjective, and the people of the bordering towns and nations clearly valued marijuana. Moral and ethical thoughts were either too blurred by the sensation of their high, or maybe the culture of Maastricht ran so deep that frequent shoppers of the plant didn’t see or know about its harm.

Weed was scarce in the European union and many inhabitants of Liege, Belgium crossed borders to fulfill their wants and desires. If a European couldn’t satisfy their want in their own city, they would find Maastricht and reach the limited resource of weed their to do so.

News coverage talked about the coffee shops where it was legal to buy pot so that it was more readily available. Marijuana, before codes got strict, was set up like a display. The weed was even arranged beautifully in a buffet style at some coffee shops. Without laws against closed borders to European nations, border hopping to the Netherlands became ragingly popular.

The mayor of Maastricht wanted to put an end to the madness. Even though it seems positive that 60% of visitors at the time came from outside the country, one shop owner recounts that 93% of his business was done by those visitors. Financially, coffee shops were booming. Eventually, the mayor did put a temporary end to the marijuana madness.

The mayor was quoted saying that he thought, “Pot smokers made for lousy tourists,” subjective opinion in its finest form, and his incentives to change the town were to clean up the city that Maastricht was, the city where the European Union was born.

Eventually, foreigners were not allowed to enter coffee shops and free trade didn’t apply to smoking pot. To enter a coffee shop, you would need a passport proving your citizenship in the Netherlands. The mayor of Maastricht predicted that this theory would get rid of his “lousy tourists.”

But the laws became stricter. Soon after, to be allowed to smoke pot, a Dutch person would need to become “members,” like a CVS membership, and register with the coffee shop. The people of Maastricht chose purposefully and decided it was best to steer free from this idea. Why would they want their name registered with the government? In my opinion, I think they made their decision more on the margin out of fear that something could happen. If they did truthfully choose purposefully, if they economized their decision, they would have rationalized to the fact this fact. Memberships were legal and the memberships made smoking pot legal, so what trouble could signing up ever get them in? At this point, I think ethical behavior came in to play. Now that rules were becoming stricter, hopefully people were realizing that marijuana wasn’t as free or as attractive as it had been in the past.

Sadly to say for coffee shop owners, business fell when memberships became mandatory, and the culture of the coffee shop was never the same.