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Drug-Sniffing Drones Take To the Skies In the Netherlands
Ryan writes "Unmanned, drug-sniffing drones have been introduced in the Netherlands. They fly over houses (video), sniff for weed, and scan for grow lights. Police say they are not breaking the law because the samples can be taken without entering the building."
The Dutch tourist industry goes bankrupt.
I am not from Amsterdam but I have family there, so I am there fairly often, perhaps I can help.
Your question depends on your definition of 'quasi-legal'. Cannabis is *not* legal in Holland. However, they have made a decision not to prosecute small time offenders. This means, a blind eye is turned to possession when the amount is very low (personal use amounts). They also grant licenses to owners of 'coffee-shops' to sell cannabis with some fairly tight regulations. I believe the idea behind this is that, as has been discovered in basically every other country on earth, people want to smoke a joint from time to time, and it is better they get it from a regulated (and more importantly, taxed!) business, rather than some guy on the street who will almost certainly try to push the more addictive stuff on to the customer for higher (tax free!) profits.
However, what is not tolerated, is massive scale, cannabis farming which is then sold on for huge profits (without tax being paid, are you spotting a theme here??).
The Dutch are an eminently sensible race. Probably my favourite bunch of people. They are smart, direct (this comes across as rude at first, but once you get used to it, it's quite charming!), and very business minded. They actually are quite liberal, but they are also completely aware of how much extra gold goes in the coffers from all those tourists who you will see sparked out on a public bench at 10AM.
People will smoke weed, people will pay for sex, it simply cannot be prevented in any society that has the slightest freedom (or isn't batshit crazy religious!). The dutch say.... ok, get on with it, pay your taxes and don't make a nuisance of yourself and you are fine by us! I reiterate... eminently sensible!
As I understand it the law allows one to possess mary jane, but growing it is illegal.
Yeah, it's like the prostitution laws in Canada; you can legally sell your body for sex, but it is illegal to advertise that you are willing to sell your body for sex. And so too medical marijuana is legal in Canada and yet people are (at least sometimes) arrested for growing medical marijuana, and after they win their court case the police refuse to compensate the victims.
This is another case of police fanaticism; they don't only want it to be illegal, but they will go out of their way to hunt you down for growing it, no matter how discrete the grower may attempt to be. I don't understand why the police would go out of their way to make portray themselves as evil.
Do you REALLY believe this shit?
The cops can locate grow-ops FAR easier by tracking electrical usage and using infrared detectors(the heat detected is outside the house, so no warrant needed).
I think what you REALLY have is 1984 flying over your houses, and it ain't just looking for pot. It is CCTV flying around the place, nothing less. What ELSE might they be looking at?
Is that REALLY what you want your cops doing with your taxes?
Considering there is no human on board to generate a murder charge, that little fucker wouldn't last a minute over Los Angeles, but then again, we got guns.
No, we're not sensible. We aren't a race either.
Making cannabis semi-legal is a huge mistake. It attracts a lot of drugs tourism, from the US and UK, Germany, Belgium and France.
The result is that 4 billion euros are pumped into a half-legal economy yearly. The stores that sell it (the coffeeshops) are mostly legal, but everything else, from distributors to growers is illegal.
Some city districts have been tranformed into cannabis growing plantations. People grow large scale cannabis in their lofts and in their cellars and they can make quite a lot of money with it (usually to supplement their unemployment benefit). Of course, it's still illegal...
So if you get into trouble. You distributor won't pay you, or you get ripped off by someone who specializes in this, you have nowhere to go but to hire other criminals to protect you and your business. More and more deaths are turning up in and around cannabis plantations.
It's legal to grow up to five plants in Holland, so perfectly ordinary people start out that way. Make some money and then want to make more. To avoid detection they normally tap illegal electricity for the necessary lamps.
So what have we got here? A nice system for turning ordinary citizens into criminals. What a great idea!
It's madness in my opinion. I have nothing against legalizing cannabis, but do it the right way. Legalize everything so that professional growers (or amateurs turning professional) can make legal money with it or don't legalize it at all.
Also do it *at least* Europe-wide. We really don't need all European losers to come here to get high.
The Dutch solution is not sensible at all. It's cowardly and stupid.
BTW: One of your favourite bunch of people just killed five innocent people celebrating the queen's birthday. Perhaps you need a reality check.
X. (yeah Dutch)
>>If drones start to significantly hurt their business, they will invest in the development of anti-drone technology.
Huh, I just can't see a bunch of Colombians walking into General Dynamics and investing in anti-drone technologies. I mean, maybe they'll figure out that a 30 ought 6 can take one out, but that doesn't take billions. It also doesn't have the slightest impact on Columbia, since they probably don't need to use grow lights. And if they shut down production in the Netherlands, well, more demand for them to supply, right?
Fortunately, aerial flyovers of houses with thermal sensors scanning for grow lights was ruled unconstitutional in America (unconstitutional search and seizure) without a warrant, IIRC.
5 plants in a household, to my knowledge.
As to the legality of growing weed, one of the big issues is that people do it in attics, connecting several megawatts worth of electrical equipment in really haphazard ways, often bypassing the electrical meter. This in turn is a massive fire hazard.
In the winter it's pretty easy to spot the growers though. If all the roofs in a street are covered with snow except for one, it might be time to get a warrant(or send this toy for a flyby).
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I live in the Netherlands, the background to this story:
Using cannabis is considered a victimless crime and thus low priority for law enforcement. This is true for most countries in Europe, but the Netherlands is known for this because it's in the open. So, yes, it's tolerated, but this is far from unique and has little to do with government income from taxes, as someone on this thread suggested.
The national laws regarding drugs are somewhat hazy (the same with squatting). This is intentional, it gives city councils room to adapt their policies to the local situation. Some cities on the borders get thousands of drug tourists a day, which creates all kinds of problems. Maastricht has banned its coffeeshops to a `drug boulevard' outside the city, other places work with a pass system so that only locals can visit coffeeshops. Most other places don't experience such problems, so do not need such measures.
However, things have changed in the last decade. Modern designer plants literally drip with THC, the content of some weed is actually so high that it is considered hallucinogenic and thus a hard drug. Also, the growers are not old ladies or hippies anymore. It's now big business run by criminal gangs that grow for export, not just local use.
These are reasons for the police to crack down on the growers. It's also part of a political trend, the current coalition includes two christian parties. They are the parties responsible for the Netherlands joining Bush's wars. The former minister for science belongs to one of them, she kept telling universities they should look into ID, so they're quite extreme. Both parties spout rethoric about moral reconstruction of the country, they're also pushing for stiff jail sentences for squatters. City councils are against this, they tolerate squatters to make life difficult for real-estate speculators.
Concerning the drone, the police says they'll only use it if they suspect the presence of a cannabis farm. Maybe they get tipped of by electricity companies (growers rig their meters). What worries me far more than this silly drone, which seems to be mainly a deterrent, is a proposed law concerning smart meters. The ID woman is now minister of economy, and she's trying to make smart meters obligatory. Refusing to have them installed would be an economic crime, which implies high fines and even jail.
These meters send data about your minute-to-minute electricity use over the interwebtubes to your energy company, they in turn provide records to government upon request. So it just comes down to government spying, and since the meters have been hacked already, it means criminals can spy on you as well. They can then burgle your house while you're on holiday, so as not to inconvenience you too much. So it's a win-win situation. The motivation for this bill is that it will help consumers to be more energy efficient.
Most. Transparent. Excuse. Ever.