Majority of the Dutch favour cannabis legalisation

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Majority of the Dutch favour cannabis legalisation

4 October 2013

An opinion poll in the Netherlands in August 2013 showed that 54% of the Dutch are in favour of legalising cannabis, while 38% opposes it. There is now a clear pro-legalisation majority among the voters on the parties that form the current government, the liberal conservative VVD (58% in favour) and the social-democrat labour party PvdA (55% in favour) and in the Dutch Parliament. A range of recent polls indicate that the majority of the Dutch strongly disagree with the government on current cannabis policies.

At the local level initiatives to somehow regulate supply to the coffee shops are mushrooming. In Utrecht, the city council announced on September 10 that it would support a local social cannabis cluband seek permission of the minister of Public Health to allow cultivation and distribution through an official exemption on the ban to cultivate and supply in the Opium Law. “The city of Utrecht wants to create the possibility for recreational users to use cannabis grown in a club. It is a small-scale initiative in which the members use cannabis recreationally that has been cultivated on a responsible and verifiable way by the club,” said the local alderman for Public Health, Victor Everhardt.

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