This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands.Amsterdam’s residents have spent the past two years acclimatising to a city largely devoid of the usual tourist crowds who arrive ready to hotfoot it to one of the Dutch capital’s infamous coffeeshops. The pandemic-enforced disappearance of stoned visitors was both liberating and slightly morose. After all, what is central Amsterdam without red-eyed holidaymakers stumbling around canals in cannabis-leaf print beanies?
Advertisement
Thankfully for weed-inclined tourists and coffeeshop owners, the lifting of travel restrictions means that the sector is up and running again. Or it is for now, at least.Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema, elected in 2018 as the green left candidate, has had enough of the anti-social behaviour that comes with drug tourism. In January 2021, she formally proposed plans that would see tourists banned from buying marijuana in any of the 167 coffeeshops currently permitted to sell the drug. Going forward, only locals would have access to these spaces.Halsema maintains that closing the cafes to tourists would make Amsterdam a safer, more liveable city for its 900,000 or so residents. Not everyone is convinced by the plans: Some city council members have raised concerns that banning tourists from legally purchasing weed would only drive them to street dealers. Unsurprisingly, the proposal has proved incredibly unpopular with coffeeshops owners and their staff.In 2019, shortly after Halsema mentioned her proposal publicly for the first time, 100 tourists aged between 18-35 took part in a survey that found 34 percent would be likely to visit Amsterdam less often if coffeeshops were forced to close their doors to tourists.A few years and a pandemic later, what do tourists make of the mayor’s plans? To find out, I spent an afternoon at Prix D’Ami, the first cannabis cafe a tourist ambling out of Amsterdam Central Station might come across. For reasons of privacy, the stoners I spoke to asked to keep their surnames secret.
Advertisement
‘If [the mayor’s plans] go through, I won’t be back again’
‘I’ve accomplished a lot thanks to cannabis’
Advertisement
‘I just think [weed] is fun’
‘I love weed’
‘I wouldn’t exactly cry, but I would feel discriminated against’
Advertisement