Tourists hoping to buy a cannabis joint in Dutch coffee shops could be in for a rude awakening this year under a test plan to curb drug tourism.
Soft drugs are legally banned in The Netherlands but under its policy of "tolerance", people are allowed to have less than five grammes of cannabis in their possession.
Government-regulated coffee shops can hold a stock of up to 500 grammes. "We are developing a system whereby people not registered in The Netherlands will not be allowed into coffee shops," Justice Ministry spokesman Ivo Hommes said.
A pilot project will start up in Maastricht, on the southern tip of The Netherlands. "We want to do this to combat drugs tourism and should be able to start the project this summer," he said.
Maastricht, bordering Germany and Belgium, attracts the largest number of tourists in The Netherlands after Amsterdam, many of them French, Germans and Belgians on short breaks.
They include an estimated 1.5 million drug tourists, the city's Mayor Gerd Leers said on Friday at a conference on tackling the cross-border soft drugs problem.
Some 400,000 cannabis smokers live in The Netherlands, where they can openly buy and smoke the drug, to the annoyance of neighbouring countries.
The centre-right government now wants to curb drugs tourism, in part due to pressure from its European partners. The number of coffee shops has been cut to 754 nationwide in 2003 from 1,200 in 1997, according to the latest figures from The Netherlands Trimbos institute for addiction studies.