To be fair if you look at where the regions this is happening are on a map and read the local news (which admittedly isn’t so easy if you don’t understand enough Dutch) its clearly not even the Dutch who are wholly to blame.
gedoogbeleid (tolerance) was started in 1972 long before the Schengen agreement so it wasn’t so easy to travel across Europe – and it was kept going during better economic times in the hope a progressive wing of politicians across the EU would introduce it in their home nations. The EU came close to this in the late 1990s but it never happened.
I’ve managed to read a few local newspapers websites and its clear that NL still has trouble with criminality, drugs-related anti-social behaviour and dealers fighting over turf same as we do in the UK, and coffeshops only add a influx of drugs tourists to all this so NL was having to incur costs from drug users from other EU nations.
During good economic times and when the shops were paying their taxes gedoogbeleid wasn’t seen as a problem but times have changed. And it wasn’t only Wilders’ party but another centre right party (VVD) which wanted the coffeeshops closed as well.
