Six Dutch border town cannabis coffee shop owners seeking to block local authorities from shutting them down lost a court battle last Friday. A judge in Breda in the southern Netherlands ruled that the coffee shop owners had chosen the wrong judicial venue for their challenge of the ban.

[inline:maastricht-coffee-shop.jpg align=left caption="downstairs of a coffee shop (courtesy Wikimedia)"]On Wednesday, seven of the eight border town coffee shops closed their doors. An eighth stayed open, but the owner said he was only selling coffee.

The coffee shop owners are challenging a decision by the mayors of Roosendaal and Bergen-op-Zoom, both near the Belgian border, to close all eight coffee shops in their communities in a bid to stop "drug tourism." An estimated 25,000 foreigners pour into the two towns each week to take advantage of the Dutch policy that tolerates retail marijuana sales. They are blamed for causing problems ranging from public urination to traffic congestion to hard drug dealing.

Under the ban, the coffee shops could stay open and serve alcohol, but could not sell marijuana. If they continued to sell marijuana, they could be punished with a five-year closure.

The ban by the mayors comes as the Dutch government wrestles with how to reduce or eliminate the number of foreigners coming to Holland from more repressive neighboring countries to buy marijuana. Last week, a leaked letter from three Dutch ministers suggested the government would seek a "members only" policy for the coffee houses.

Under European Union law, countries cannot discriminate by nationality, so the Dutch cannot ban foreigners from becoming coffee house members. But the Dutch government wants to get around the law by requiring that marijuana be purchased only with credit cards issued by Dutch banks.