This is the best summary I could come up with:

“Historic moment,” said the health minister, Ernst Kuipers, on Friday as he scanned the first box of legal cannabis in the Baron coffee shop in the southern city of Breda.

In fact, the drug exists in a legal grey area, which the government hopes to stub out with the four-year trial starting in Breda and nearby Tilburg.

The consumption of small quantities of cannabis is illegal but police choose not to enforce the law as part of a “tolerance” policy that has been in place since the 1970s.

This has led to gang involvement, with a related rise in petty crime and antisocial behaviour that officials hope to stop if the trial is successful.

“The product will be clean, tested, pesticide-free,” said Ashwin Matai, the cultivation director at Holland High farm, which will supply coffee shops legally from February.

One unknown surrounding the planned policy is the Geert Wilders factor, whose far-right Party for Freedom won 37 seats in the general election last month.

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