The mayor of Amsterdam no longer wants to allow foreign tourists to visit the canal city's coffee shops.

For many visitors to Amsterdam, a visit to the coffee shop is as natural a part of it as a canal cruise, but that may soon be the end of it. Last year Mayor Femke Halsema announced plans to ban foreign guests from local cannabis cafés. Now she has taken the first steps in this direction and submitted a corresponding proposal to the city council. According to the politician, only the needs of the locals should be covered, for which, according to studies, most of the now licensed coffee shops are no longer needed. This is reported by Check 24.

The aim is to keep the market for soft and legal drugs as manageable as possible. Of the current 166 coffee shops in Amsterdam, only 66 will remain, which are reserved exclusively for locals. So far, the cannabis cafés have also been visited by around three million tourists every year. There should be a transitional period for the operators of the shops.

City takes action against mass tourism

According to information from Deutsche Welle, before the corona pandemic, the Dutch capital recorded up to 20 million holiday guests a year, compared to only around one million inhabitants. In order to limit the negative effects of mass tourism, the city administration decided in the summer of 2021 to limit overnight stays to 20 million per year. This makes Amsterdam the first city in the world to introduce such a cap. In addition, a stop was put to the excessive private rentals of living space as holiday homes, as this was only permitted with an officially requested registration number.