A few anonymous tips were enough to send police to Anita R.'s home in Apeldoorn on September 1, 2023. What officers found wasn't exactly a forgotten joint at the bottom of a drawer. Thousands of pre-rolled joints and various other cannabis products were stored inside the house and shed. According to reports, the stash was intended for coffeeshop ’t Bunkertje. And that landed Anita in a situation Dutch coffeeshop owners know all too well: selling weed is tolerated under certain conditions, but getting hold of the stock is another matter entirely.
Dutch coffeeshops are generally allowed to keep no more than 500 grams of stock on the premises. Sounds simple enough, until you realise that a busy shop might sell considerably more than that in a single day. Fresh supplies have to come from somewhere. Yet outside the regulated cannabis experiment, supplying coffeeshops remains illegal. Storing the weed somewhere else doesn't magically fix the legal problem. It just moves the cannabis, and sometimes the trouble, to a different address.
The case returned to the headlines in late October 2026 as the now 57-year-old woman appeared in court. Her lawyer is pointing the finger firmly at the government, arguing that the problem stems from a system that allows coffeeshops to sell cannabis without offering them a normal legal way to buy their stock. That's a defence argument, not an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card. The court must decide what Anita can actually be held responsible for. So far, a final ruling in this particular case has not been confirmed.
And that brings us back to the famous Dutch back door. At the front, you can buy weed from a coffeeshop tolerated by the local authorities. Behind the scenes, storing that same weed can land someone in court. ’t Bunkertje has also had disputes with the city over stock levels and compliance with the rules. Anita's case is about her own actions and legal responsibility, but the bigger question isn't going away: how long can you allow a business to sell cannabis without properly sorting out how it gets supplied?
