It looks like tourists have ruined cannabis shopping in Amsterdam and the city is planning to ban tourists from visiting any cannabis selling spots due to their bad behavior.
The Mayor of Amsterdam, Flemke Halsema, is proposing to impose a ban on tourists visiting cannabis cafes after the capital of the Netherlands witnessed years of antisocial behaviour from tourists.
She has proposed that only Dutch residents be allowed to visit 166 cannabis selling cafes so that tourists can focus on other tourism spots and travel to Amsterdam for the right reasons SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
“We would like them to come for its richness, its beauty and its cultural institution. The problem is: there are just too many of them. The drug tourists are the reason for an increase in demand for marijuana,” she explained.
Mayor Halsema had discussed the matter and put the proposal forward in February 2020, but a commissioned report had found that one-third of tourists would stop visiting the country as a result.
“If they were to ban the tourists, 80 per cent of our customers would be gone. It’s totally a lie. They will never ever let that come to pass,” Eve McGuire, who works at a cannabis coffee shop, said for DW, revealing that the ban was unlikely to pass.
Don Cedar, Lawyer and councillor, also said that Amsterdam’s culture must be improved as such a change would attract different types of tourists. Dennis Boutkan, the PvdA Labour party member, also said that the goal was to attract more tourists complies with the city’s vision that “visitors are welcome but not at any price.”
