Netherlands Begins Legal Cannabis Sales Experiment

Two Dutch cities, Breda and Tilburg, start selling the country's first legally cultivated cannabis as part of a pilot program to regulate the trade and potentially revise the current cannabis tolerance policy.

Dutch cities Breda and Tilburg have begun selling the country's first legally cultivated cannabis as part of an experiment to regulate the trade.
The experiment aims to provide 'quality-controlled' weed to coffeeshops and shut out illegal growers.
The initial phase of the experiment, known as the 'closed coffeeshop chain experiment', is scheduled to last a maximum of six months and could then be rolled out to 11 municipalities across the Netherlands.
Under the current tolerance policy, individuals possessing up to five grams of cannabis won't face criminal or administrative charges, but the production of cannabis and its supply to coffee shops is illegal.
The final goal of the multi-phased experiment is to explore potential revisions to the current cannabis tolerance policy and investigate the feasibility of growers supplying coffee shops with quality-controlled, decriminalized cannabis.