The Mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema announced that the City intends to move ahead with its plans to ban cannabis tourists from coffee shops.
In a letter to the Amsterdam City Council, Halsema outlines a new proposed cannabis policy that would see the reduction of the cannabis market to pave the way for regulation.
Cannabis in Amsterdam is currently regulated under the Dutch Opium Act which states that personal possession of small up to five grammes of cannabis is a punishable offence. However, this is not currently enforced and cannabis can be sold in licensed coffee shops which have been open in the country since 1976. Cultivation and supply to coffee shops is illegal.
Amsterdam has proposed multiple times to ban the sale of cannabis to tourists, with over three million of them visiting the City every year.
Read more: How the Netherlands is trying to reform its world famous cannabis industry
Halsema stated that she hopes to create a regulated cannabis market, and that the plans will reduce the large visitor flows and the associated nuisance.
“Criminal investigations and crime picture analyses give the impression that the current cannabis market is intertwined with serious and organised crime, with violence, threats and rip deals,” stated Halsema in her letter. [Translated from Google]
The new policy
The Mayor stated that in order to properly regulate the cannabis market, it must be limited in size and become more focused on the local consumer.
In order to reduce the attraction of cannabis tourists to Amsterdam, the plans propose to include the introduction of the resident criterion, a ‘coffee shop quality mark’, attention to chain formation within the coffee shop sector, the possible introduction of a smoking ban and the phased start of local regulation.
“We want to work with the milder regime in phases, by starting with allowing a higher trading stock in the coffee shop than the maximum permitted 500 grams according to the Opium Act Instruction. Analogous to the criminal law jurisprudence about ‘stash’ found for coffee shops, one can think of, for example, a weekly stock,” stated Halsema.
“A more lenient enforcement regime with regard to the transport and storage of cannabis for the coffee shops is also discussed in the quality mark.”
Halsema also aims to reduce monopolies on coffee shops, which are currently not always obvious due to lack of transparency, stating that: “This lack of transparency also stands in the way of regulation”.
Reducing street dealing
The letter highlights that the introduction of the plan may reduce the number of young cannabis tourists visiting the City by 45 per cent. Halsema points out that dealing in the city centre is mainly caused by visitors, mostly aged 18 to 35 years old, and foreign party tourists.
According to the letter, around half of these visitors use soft drugs when visiting Amsterdam and 15 per cent use hard drugs “which are almost always bought locally.”
“Street dealers in the city center of Amsterdam are responding to this large latent demand for hard drugs,” states Halsema. “This also became clear during the corona lockdowns when there were virtually no foreign tourists in the city: street dealers were hardly to be found in the city centre, while we know from sewage measurements that drug use in the city was also widespread at that time.
“Amsterdam users therefore largely buy their drugs through channels other than the street. With the increase in visitor numbers, the street dealing has also returned in recent months.”
One measure that could be introduced to reduce street trading is increased camera surveillance in the Red Light District and the introduction of long-term bans. Additionally, alleyways would be made less attractive to dealers through behaviour-influencing interventions.
The city has already begun taking measures to tackle street dealing by introducing daily police “sweeps” and diverting offenders with needs to care via “the nuisance frequent offender approach”, along with media campaigns encouraging residents and visitors to ignore street dealers.
The Mayor highlights that a proposed pilot care programme for vulnerable nuisance offenders, who are able to accept a non-binding assistance programme instead of a longer-term restraining order, will start later than planned.
Business owners’ proposals ignored
The Mayor had requested feedback from the industry for ideas on creating a more manageable market, which put forward the proposal to raise the minimum age for access to a coffee shop to 21 years.
However, Halsema highlighted this was deemed unwise “since it means that young adult Amsterdammers will have to rely on the illegal market”.
According to reports, a white paper was put forward by SensiSeeds, Best Friends and Barney’s with alternative proposals. The proposals include eight suggestions such as a coffee shop delivery trial and an extension of the current pilot to move coffee shops to other locations.
This “controlled cannabis supply chain experiment” began in 2019, when a number of coffee shops were selected to receive legal supplies of cannabis in a bid to combat the black market. However, Amsterdam did not take part in this experiment. As part of the pilot, researchers will be comparing ten cities where the closed coffee shop chain is implemented with a control group of ten cities where the current situation is maintained.
Amsterdam’s cannabis businesses say they have been ignored, states NL Times, noting that “the entrepreneurs do not understand why the officials are sticking to their position, because “research shows that this measure will lead to nuisance and a larger illegal market”.”
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