Court finds owner of biggest cannabis cafe guilty, but rules out punishment

Checkpoint was for years the biggest cannabis café in the Netherlands, serving between 2,000 and 3,000 customers a day
Dutch News (Netherlands)
Tuesday, November 28, 2017

The owner of the former Checkpoint cannabis café in Terneuzen, close to the border with Belgium, has been found guilty of trading in soft drugs and membership of a criminal organisation but will not face any punishment after a legal process stretching back to 2010. The appeal court judges in Den Bosch said the owner had broken the terms of his licence from the town council but said this is inevitable ‘when you run a profitable coffee shop’. The government is under pressure to tackle the grey area between coffee shop sales and the supply side, which is often in the hands of organised crime. It is planning to launch trials of licenced marijuana production in several local authority areas.