Sheher Khan, head of the local Denk party, said: “Our main objection is that young people will be tempted under the wing of the large drug criminals. Others worry about street dealers increasing, especially as Amsterdam and other cities try to protect vulnerable young men from crime. “If someone grows cannabis, they are criminal, but I see my business as separate from hard drugs and other crime.” “The government allows us to be entrepreneurs this way, but never finished gedoogbeleid ,” he said. He told the Observer that research for the Bond van Cannabis Detaillisten business group found just under half of tourists came for cannabis, and 24% would still come, even if banned. “I have had my coffee shop for 30 years and the moment do anything with cocaine, I throw them out figuratively and literally,” he told the council. Mark Jacobsen, co-owner of The Rookies, believes hard drugs have nothing to do with his sector. “The dealers come for the tourists, the tourists come for the coffee shops,” she told the Observer. The bachelor parties and the European tourists who come here by car to smoke weed, sleep in their car and make noise are not adding any value to the city.”Įls Iping, a former Labour politician involved in the residents group Stop de Gekte (“stop the madness”), and the Wallenwacht – which reminds misbehaving tourists that families live there – said locals believe tighter controls on brothels, alcohol serving-times and coffee shops are essential. “Amsterdam is too beautiful for that and the residents deserve better. “It’s one of the few ‘knobs’ that we can turn on a local level to curb the major nuisance in the city centre and adjust our drink-drug image,” local party leader Claire Martens told the Observer. Some parties agree, including the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which proposed a ban two years ago. An influential 2019 report on the capital’s “dark side” suggested revisiting the residents-only rule to help tackle this “ urban jungle”. Smoking and possessing weed for personal consumption are “ tolerated”, but commercial growing is not – so coffee shops must buy from criminals. In April, in a 13-page policy proposal, the mayor asked for the council’s support to temporarily enforce the residents-only law, largely because of concerns about the “criminal back door” of the coffee shops. The Easy Times coffee shop, Amsterdam, which currently sells marijuana for personal use under the country’s ‘toleration’ policy. “My good friends,” she said, “we will let the i-criterium simmer in your heads.” At the end of a long council meeting on Thursday, Halsema was not deterred. Now that coronavirus travel measures have gone, the red light district is as rowdy as ever, and there is increasing pressure to tell people wanting a “ moral holiday” to go elsewhere. In her view, and that of the local heads of police and prosecution bodies, banning tourists from coffee shops is unavoidable in order to reduce the size of the soft drug sector, tackle tourist nuisance and attack hard- drug criminality.Ī recent study suggested that 100 of the capital’s 166 coffee shops in effect serve only the needs of tourists. The mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, who has the last word on law and order, wants a temporary ban on non-residents in coffee shops – by enforcing a national residents-only rule, known as the i-criterium.Įven though there will be no majority for the ban when councillors vote on Wednesday, Halsema has not given up. But it’s nice that it’s legal and well done, there’s good-quality weed and a lot of respect from people.” “We come for the museums and the people and the ambience, not just to smoke. “We just really love the city,” says Fouquet, 26.
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