Tourists hoping to light a room in one of the famous coffee shops in Amsterdam after the coronavirus pandemic are likely to be disappointed. Soon all coffee shops in the capital of the Netherlands will no longer be able to sell marijuana to foreign customers.
The mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, on Friday proposed a plan that is expected to be accepted by the city, which only allows marijuana products to be sold to Dutch citizens and residents of the Netherlands. Ms Halsema wants to stop the flow of young tourists visiting Amsterdam to smoke marijuana and undermine the criminal organizations that control the drug trade.
Policies in Amsterdam, known for its liberal attitude towards drugs and its red-light district, have become more restricted over the years as the government tries to regulate the increasing number of tourists coming to the city.
Amsterdam, like Barcelona and Venice, has an increasingly difficult relationship with many such visitors amid complaints that they are flooding historic districts and that short-term stays aimed at them are causing a shortage of housing for locals.
A total of 46 million people visited the Netherlands in 2019, most of whom came to Amsterdam.
Many of these tourists, often young and on a low budget, come mainly to Amsterdam to visit one of the 166 coffee shops in Amsterdam where the sale of marijuana products is tolerated. An entire industry has developed around such visitors, and they have offered everything, from T-shirts that say, ‘I’m to Amsterdam, but can remember nothing’, to stores that sell pancakes dripping with Nutella, which are explicitly stoned. tourists.
Research commissioned by the city shows that 57 percent of foreigners who visit the center of Amsterdam say that a coffee shop is a “very important reason” for their visit.
However, one of the paradoxes of Dutch marijuana laws makes it illegal to produce, store and distribute the drug. This means that the only source of large quantities of marijuana that can be resold in the Netherlands is from criminal enterprises.
A widespread illegal trade in marijuana laid the foundation for a thriving underground drug economy, where organized drug gangs also fought for the cocaine or amphetamine market and killed opponents on the streets of Amsterdam.
“Amsterdam remains an open, tolerant and hospitable city, but we want to end the subversive effects of criminal organizations,” she said. Halsema said.
According to the plan of Mrs. Halsema will reduce the number of coffee shops in Amsterdam to 66, but in return they can buy and store more stock.
One of the owners of a coffee shop, Andre van Houten, said that his industry was blamed for the behavior of groups of British, often men, tourists who fly into cheap airlines, get intoxicated in the red light district and deter the residents of the city center. of sleep.
“What’s the problem here, drugs or alcohol?” He asked as he worked at his coffee shop, Chapiteau. He currently only offers takeaway marijuana and joints, as the Netherlands has been in the loop since December 14 in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
“We always get blamed for everything that goes wrong in this city,” he said. ‘How can I also see where someone is coming from? They might as well put a policeman at our entrance. ”
Several cities in the southern part of the Netherlands have been experimenting since 2005 with rules restricting sales in coffee shops to residents and residents of the Netherlands. A local law is in force to restrict drug tourists from Belgium, France and Germany.
Amsterdam currently houses 30 percent of all coffee shops in the Netherlands. On weekends, even during the pandemic, young people from neighboring countries drive to the city to buy marijuana.
‘Me. Halsema is very brave to tackle this problem, ”says Els Iping, a former mayor of the city of Amsterdam and an activist for a better balance between residents and tourists in the city center. “Amsterdam will no longer be the coffee shop for the world – it’s fantastic.”
Ard van Duijvenbode contributed to this article from Amsterdam.