If you're thirsty for, ahem, 'coffee', you'd better hurry

I saw that info on the elevator TV screen yesterday and that the tourist industry wasn't too happy about it For those of you who don't live in Manhattan and are able to ride up elevators with interesting factoids floating past you in the AM and PM, the plan is to ban tourists from the "coffee shops" in the Netherlands. Locals can still use them. Pam

I smell a black market 'coffee' shop market brewing already. Something tells me it will still be as easy to get 'coffee' as it is tea. If you have ever seen our fellow travelers in one of those, I was just accompanying a friend, mind you :), then you would see why the Dutch are doing it. Oh, and American tourists seem to be some of the best behaved at these. I'm not sure, maybe it's experience.

"I was just accompanying a friend, mind you :)" But of course ;-) Pam, for a second I forgot that you're in NYC; I was wondering if you were perhaps trapped in an elevator LOL! My rides are nowhere near long enough to follow a news story!

"...If you have ever seen our fellow travelers in one of those, I was just accompanying a friend, mind you :), then you would see why the Dutch are doing it..." Sorry, I've been inside them and I'm mystified why they are doing it. If they want to cut down on the weekend rowdiness they need to be shutting down the pubs...not the coffeehouses.

"If they want to cut down on the weekend rowdiness they need to be shutting down the pubs...not the coffeehouses." That's what the guys in the video said, in a nutshell (well, at least that the bars were rowdier than the coffee shops). Seems like a hazy, dopey idea (snicker).

"If they want to cut down on the weekend rowdiness they need to be shutting down the pubs...not the coffeehouses"
Couldn't agree more...as a former bartender. Dealing with stoners was pleasurable, drunks, not so much. It's the combo that's killing them along with all the Newbs adding on all the extras they have never had and then hitting the bars. The regulars know to just hit the convenience store. Party on.

The article doesn't mention the other reason- the current situation was an ideal gray market for organized crime to expand their operations and launder money. It's not just peace-loving ex-hippies who run these businesses.

Organized crime is always an issue with any drugs. Of the various reasons that my wife and I stopped using many years ago, the biggest may have been the unsavory people that you had to deal with to get soft drugs. And although organized crime may be behind much of the marijuana supply TO the coffee shops, it is certainly not at the user end (e.g., check the mother and daughter shop "La Tertuglia"). Which is why we will miss this experience. And more so because as we do not smoke for health reasons, we love the idea of being able to purchase an edible for old times sake. Again something we will not do here because of the how you must obtain it. We readily admit to having planned and spent one day of each of our to multi-day visits to Amsterdam "baked" on a baked treat, and we will miss that, but that will not keep us from Amsterdam. And I doubt that this new law will do much to remove the presence of marijuana from the air there. We definitely had several mild contact highs simply from taking long walks in the Centrum.
it is a shame that the hypocritical and punitive laws of other countries are forcing the Dutch to this extreme because of the foreigners. I am certain though that the law will keep us from buying on the street, just as we stopped doing that here.

I guess we'll all have to switch over to sniffing glue.

" ....Although it's been years since I've been in Amsterdam, we had a similar experience to James's. We were offered all kinds of drugs on every corner while walking around at night. More than a bit creepy...." My first trip to Amsterdam back in 1996, there was indeed a lot of drug dealing all around the city... even outside the RLD. In addition there were lots of junkies walking around looking for hand-outs, and committing strong-armed robberies. Caribbean gangs had taken over certain parts of the city. The trams were covered with graffiti, and used hypodermic needles littered the streets.
Since that time the city/police have have almost completely eradicated all of the above issues. Even within the RLD these days it's extremely rare to find those drug dealers or even needles anymore. Perhaps this quality of life campaign merely moved it to other cities, but if the police simply do their jobs, the existence of coffeehouses does not necessarily go hand in hand with urban blight.

It is not so much a problem in Amsterdam, where the main issue is to make sure there is no trouble from users (that's why Amsterdam is opposed: now it is controllable, what will happen if consumer sales move into the streets). It is worse in the south, where non-Dutch drug trafficers cause a lot of trouble near the shops as well as on the way there and back. That, and the hardcore organised crime in the south of the Netherlands concerns soft drugs. Requiring a membership to a coffeeshop is not going to stop them, but it does provide for some more options to stop drug related crimes. They have been discussing these issues for years now, and it seems that the current parliament is willing to implement the membershipcards as soon as possible, despite the controversiality.

Hmmmm, I've visited Amsterdam several of times, and regular visits to the coffeeshops were a planned part of my daily itinerary...I am not a street urchin, nor a criminal... I've visited Anne Frank House, the Museums, and several other cultural and historical sites within the city and thoroughly enjoyed them all. I am a mature, university educated, articulate, and socially responsible adult who spends quite a bit of money in the local economy while there. I find it quite unfortunate that some here can so callously categorize users of marijuana based on a few stoned youth seen in the streets. If that's your logic, and I were to adopt the same reasoning, then I would be iclined to think that anyone who has ever had a glass of wine, beer, or liquor is a worthless boozing bum..that's based on my observation of the street alcoholics I've seen in every city I've ever visited..if the description fits one it must fit all according to the logic expressed by a previous poster..

"on a few stoned youth seen in the streets". Based on my experiences in Tilburg on a weekend, it was hardly a "few". A Dutch friend of mine who lives in Breda made almost the exact same point as James, except she was talking about her own city, not Amsterdam.

Although it's been years since I've been in Amsterdam, we had a similar experience to James's. We were offered all kinds of drugs on every corner while walking around at night. More than a bit creepy. On a side note, also around the same time we traveled to Amsterdam, I was working in an adolescent substance abuse center. If I had a nickel for every time I heard "when I'm 18, I'm totally going to Amsterdam"....

Tom mentions a major point - perhaps THE major point - about the organized crime. My apologies - I tried for an entire day to get the original (and MUCH better) article to post; apparently there was something about it that the Helpline software didn't like...so I finally found one that would 'go through'. That crime aspect is pretty integral to the whole topic. Unfortunately, by the time I'd found a link that would 'go through', I'd read so many similar articles that I completely missed the fact that there was no mention in this article of organized crime, etc. A big 'oops' on my part. I've never made it to The Netherlands - yet - and when I get there my first, second, or seventy-third stop won't be at a 'coffee shop'; a coffee shop? Oh, yeah - for coffee LOL! So, I have no horse in this race, but it's a topic that comes up from time to time, and the only thing ever mentioned about this law up until now that I'd seen is the ban at the borders...so I thought I'd put this article out there (bad/incomplete article though it may be). Carry on...

There's a big difference between what's happening in border towns like Roosendaal or Maastricht and what's going on in Amsterdam. In the border towns, French and Belgian drug dealers were coming over the border to buy hassle-free pot and taking it home to sell. Remember, with Schengen, there's no more border guards. Amsterdam is full of American and British tourists who know that they can't take home what they buy. And no, not all of them are street urchins. And yes, some of them do go to the museums. Don't forget who the proprietor of this website is. I was in Amsterdam in the 90s and early 2000s when hard drug dealers would approach you on the street. That doesn't happen anymore. I don't live there, but I have spent a lot of time there and it seems that the police have things pretty much under control. If this does come to pass there are going to be a lot of cheap hotel rooms available...

"...If this does come to pass there are going to be a lot of cheap hotel rooms available..." ...and a lot of the local "munchies" oriented fast food places (like FEBO) will be out of business;)

Eileen, I prefer tea anyway :-) How easy is it to get tea in Amsterdam?

Eli, maybe we'll start seeing 'tea shops'; they can serve something 'very soft' along the lines of '3.2 beer'. Perhaps tiny, dainty 'tea cakes'... NOT that I'm implying that tea is wimper than coffee, even if it is...;-) I think I'll visit The Netherlands a couple of years from now; maybe those hotel rates WILL come down.