Amsterdam Won’t Ban Tourists From Its Coffeeshops After All. It’s Coming For Their Wallets Instead

For years, it seemed like Amsterdam might finally pull the welcome mat out from under its tourist tourists. That plan doesn’t work this week. The ban on foreign guests buying weed was not included in the new coalition agreement of the ruling parties of the cityopen June 3which means that the mecca of cannabis tourism remains open to all.

The agreement between PRO Amsterdam, the combined PvdA and GroenLinks, and D66, called “Jouw stad is mijn stad. Ons Amsterdam (“Your city is my city. Our Amsterdam”)” quietly dropped the so-called ingezetenencriterium, a resident-only rule that barred non-residents from buying cannabis in the city’s roughly 166 cafes. At the same time, the long-discussed plan for an erotic center near the RAI was aborted.

The ban has been in place in Amsterdam since at least 2021, championed for years by Mayor Femke Halsema, who could impose it by decree but has always said she wants the council behind it. The PvdA wrote this into its platform last year. The catch: GroenLinks and D66 never supported it, and once PvdA merged with GroenLinks into PRO, the plan effectively died in the party that promoted it.

The argument that coffee shop operators have been making for years has won. The ban on tourists does not kill demand, but gives it to street vendors. Criminologist Dirk Korff, who has studied the problem for years, found that roughly a quarter of foreign tourists would turn to the black market if shops were closed to them, trading regulated products for what someone sells on the bridge.

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