Amsterdam
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Amsterdam coffee shops
What’s Amsterdam’s biggest draw (pun intended)? The many places where you can sip a coffee and smoke a spliff is one answer. In 1976 the Dutch, taking their normal pragmatic approach to humanity’s weaknesses, realised that the use of marijuana was widespread and (re)classified it as a soft drug. As a result, locals and visitors can now walk into a coffee shop and purchase up to five grams of the stuff for personal use – as long as they’re over 18.
Technically, however, although it has been decriminalised, cannabis remains illegal. Albeit of little concern to the visitor, this does make for some rather potty laws. For example, coffee shops (all licensed and taxed) can sell you the stuff but they are not allowed to buy it. So it comes through the back door illegally but lawfully goes out the front.
The city also has a strangely symbiotic relationship with its coffee shops. On one hand, it values – and can’t deny – their contribution to tourism but, on the other, relentlessly puts pressure on them. Thus a few years ago the council weeded out the more disreputable establishments and stopped granting new licenses. They also clamped down on the selling of spacecake and banned coffee shops from any form of advertising. Owners were even advised to remove any mention of cannabis (in word or image) from their websites.
Obviously, in a community of paranoid stoners, a mild panic ensued. Some coffee shops removed their websites completely and many still just list their address and little else besides. However, the more canny simply found creative ways around the restrictions (keep an eye out). And – for those who like to spend their time in Amsterdam hallucinating in the middle of a street while lying in a pool of their own vomit – several coffee shops have started to bake spacecake once more.
It does seem perverse, however, that while coffee shops aren’t even allowed to put an image of a cannabis leaf on their shop windows, junkies publicly shoot up. Many feel the council should spend more time chasing the real criminals and leave peace-loving potheads to their pipe dreams. Still, perhaps not a huge price to pay for a unique liberty.
See a list of Amsterdam's coffee shops
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