Amsterdam - By May 1st, the club card (read: weed pass) for coffee shops will be introduced, but whether it very much makes sense is the question. “When dealing with drug runners already fails now, then you are surely very stupid if you still enter the weed pass,” the Maastricht PvdA leader Manon Fokke (re) opens the debate today on Facebook. She responds to the revealing coverage of the KRO program Brandpunt last night, which again shows that there is already no stopping the drugs runners problem at this moment.

The JOINT HIT TEAM of the Maastricht police, which hunts the 300 to 400 drug runners that plague the city, is powerless against the hundreds of young people - mostly of Moroccan origin - coming from the Randstad to Maastricht to make their shot in the drug scene, as became clear from the report. For each drug runner who is caught, ten new ones are ready, the makers noted.

A reason for Maastricht mayor Onno Hoes to scream for additional assistance loudly in the direction of The Hague. He particularly called for greater cooperation between the different police forces in our country who are dealing with young drug runners. According to Brandpunt, 300 to 400 runners are active daily in Maastricht and surroundings . They accommodate drug tourists at the borders of the city and take them to one of the 500 illegal 'kilo addresses’ in the city, where besides cannabis, hard drugs can often be obtained.

Opponents of the weed pass, including the Maastricht coffee shop owners, argue from the outset that the introduction of the pass, with which foreigners are kept outside the door 'legally,' will lead to even more drug runners in Maastricht. When foreign lovers can no longer go to the regular coffee shop for their weed, they are 'forced' to seek their refuge in the illegality after all.

The assumption from The Hague that foreigners will automatically stay away when they are no longer welcome in the coffee shops, they simply find laughable.

The many drug runners in the city and on highways around Maastricht have been a true plague for police and judiciary for years. Hoes' predecessor, Mayor Gerd Leers, already hit the drums hard a few years ago to move The Hague to additional measures. Then- Minister of Domestic Affairs Guusje ter Horst indeed made funds available for a number of concrete projects, but it has not come to an actual containment of the drug runner problem since.