Soon, a ban on foreigners visiting coffee shops, where you can legally buy marijuana and other hemp derivatives, may appear in Amsterdam. At the beginning of the year, the mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema proposed in an appeal to the city council to close all 166 coffee shops in the city for foreigners and allow only Dutch citizens to enter them. In this way, she hopes to reduce the scale of drug tourism. The city needs to be made, in her words, attractive not with drugs, but with its own “beauty, diversity, cultural diversity.”
Amsterdam, with its 850,000 population, is visited by almost 20 million tourists annually. And very many of them do not come for the sake of canals and museums, but with one single purpose – to visit a coffee shop. The crowds of drunken and stoned foreigners in the city center have long become a real problem for local residents, and the city budget does not get much benefit from party guests, because they spend money only on alcohol and drugs.
Restrictions on the sale of marijuana to foreign tourists have been introduced in the Netherlands gradually since 2012 and are currently in force throughout the country. At the same time, the law prohibiting the legal sale of marijuana and other soft drugs to foreigners leaves freedom of choice to local governments, which can decide how much to impose restrictions and whether to impose them at all.
Foreign tourists are essential for business
But not everyone in Amsterdam sees the ban as an effective measure to curb party tourism. Especially among the owners of coffee shops, this measure causes discontent and anxiety. Coffee shops, like the rest of the restaurant and travel business, are going through hard times amid the constraints of the pandemic. Many coffee shop owners fear that the ban on foreign tourists will be introduced at the most inopportune moment and will lead to serious losses in income. Moreover, they fear that the marijuana trade will go to the black market.
“If we close the door to tourists, we will lose 80 percent of our clientele,” says Eva McGuire, a saleswoman at an Amsterdam coffee shop, in an interview with DW. “The Dutch don’t sit in coffee shops, they buy cannabis and go home.”
Eva McGuire from Reefer Coffee Shop
According to the director of the Cannabis Museum in Amsterdam, Gary Gallagher, the tourism industry is experiencing a decline in profits and in the number of visitors, although the restrictions on entry into Holland caused by the pandemic have been eased. Therefore, he considers it unlikely that a ban on visiting coffee shops by foreigners will actually be introduced. “They can change the rules, but not our culture,” Gary Gallagher is convinced. “Amsterdam has a certain image, and it will remain so.” In addition, he said, the risk is too great that the ban will provoke the flourishing of illegal trade. “When the coffee shops were closed during the lockdown,” Gallagher recalls in an interview with DW, “the niche that had formed was unceremoniously occupied by street vendors. A few days later, the city backed down and allowed the coffee shops to reopen.”
Director of the Cannabis Museum in Amsterdam Gary Gallagher
Eva McGuire of Reefer also doesn’t believe the ban will be imposed. “They can never do it.” She says that numerous EU citizens who live and work in the city, but do not have a Dutch passport, would also be banned. “In theory, they will have to present their residence permit. But they do not have such a document, because they are EU citizens. Therefore, they will also fall into the category of foreign tourists despite the fact that they live in Amsterdam. It’s a paradox.” Nonetheless, McGuire is well aware of why banning the sale of soft drugs to foreigners is attractive to many. She, too, is sometimes annoyed by crowds of screaming and deranged tourists, and she was glad when the pandemic brought calm to the streets of Amsterdam.
The downside of party tourism
Especially residents of the central districts of Amsterdam feel the unpleasant side of party tourism. Milan, 26, lives in a semi-basement apartment in De Wallen, a red-light district popular with foreign tourists. “One night I’m lying on my bed and I see someone crouch at my window and then vomit,” he recalls. Milan welcomes the initiative to limit party tourism. “These people behave disrespectfully, people live in this area, but they do not understand this,” the man says.
Amsterdam has already taken some measures to limit the influx of drug tourists. In response to complaints from locals tired of an overabundance of “undesirable behavior” visitors, in the summer of 2021, the city decided to allow a maximum of 20 million tourist overnight stays per year. Thus, Amsterdam became the first city in the world to impose such a restriction. To reclaim living space, Amsterdam also showed Airbnb a red card. From October 1, renting out living space through this site in Amsterdam can only be subject to registration. Airbnb had to remove all ads without a registration number. As a result, the number of apartments and overnight stays in Amsterdam offered on Airbnb has dropped by 80 percent.
Red light district in Amsterdam
In Amsterdam, not only the ban on the sale of soft drugs to foreigners is being discussed as a measure to improve life in the central areas of the city. The Mayor of Halsem has also proposed re-planning the center and relocating the red-light districts to the outskirts. And her initiative has supporters. As Dutch News previously reported, Amsterdam has invested 160,000 euros in tourism and non-drug attractions such as street art and Europe’s tallest swing, as well as projects to clean up plastic canals. The aim of the campaign is to attract tourists interested in culture, not just drugs, tourists who will enrich the life of the city with their presence and behave decently.
Gary Gallagher, director of the Cannabis Museum in Amsterdam, believes a stronger police presence in downtown Amsterdam would benefit more than bans and restrictions. “Until now, the police turned a blind eye to all this, but now there is an opportunity to change that.” Local residents, he said, will only be happy about effective measures against party tourists and disorder. “But not letting tourists spend money with us is, of course, not a very smart idea,” says Gallagher.
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