The Guardian reports.. Drug supply experiment falters as Netherlands plan for greenhouses stirs anxiety among local residents
A Dutch trial of state-regulated cannabis cultivation farms to supply coffee shops risks being derailed by an outbreak of nimbyism after locals protested about the location of one of the new facilities.
The plans to take over greenhouses on the outskirts of Etten-Leur, a town in north Brabant, near the Belgian border, and replace blackberries with cannabis plants, triggered large local protests and a request by the local mayor for central government to block the scheme.
Board members of the initiative, known as Project C, have now warned that the other projects will face a similar backlash once their locations become known, threatening the success of the experiment.
Joep van Meel, an IT expert and former member of the provincial parliament for Noord-Brabant who is one of four board members of Project C, said: “In the three years of preparation we did everything transparently but when it became public where we wanted to build our facility, a lot of people living nearby protested. People said that friends of their children wouldn’t be allowed to come to the house and play because they lived near the facility.”
Read the full report at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/03/dutch-high-hopes-for-legal-cannabis-farms-hit-by-nimby-protests
