Local Dutch councils are queueing up to join a government experiment to grow marijuana which could see its production legally licenced in the Netherlands, the NOS broadcaster said Tuesday.
The new Dutch coalition government has said it will introduce a bill possibly within six months on "uniform experiments with tolerated cultivation of cannabis plants for recreational use."
The aim is to find ways to overcome a grey area in Dutch law under which the sale of small amounts of cannabis--less than five grams per person, or about one-fifth of an ounce--was decriminalized in 1976.
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About 600 so-called coffee shops operate legally around the country selling the drug, but the wholesale growing and sale of marijuana remains banned, forcing the shop owners to buy from illicit growers or criminals to meet demand.
The aim of the experiment, to be carried out in six to 10 local municipalities, is to determine "whether and how controlled cannabis can be legally supplied to coffee shops and what the effects would be," the government said in its coalition agreement published last month.
