Amsterdam studies banning marijuana smoking and restricting prostitution and hospitality

The old town of Amsterdam, the part of the Dutch capital that includes the red light districtsuffers the consequences of mass and party tourism, for which reason the municipality seeks ways to reduce its attractiveness to certain visitors and considers prohibit smoking cannabis in the area and limit the hours of sale of soft drugs.

The city council has a series of proposals on the table, which still have to be discussed with the neighbours, businessmen and the council, and which include ban smoking cannabis in the old town, close hotels and prostitution earlier on weekends, and further restrict the sale of alcohol in the area, the sale of which is already prohibited in shops and cafeterias from Thursday to Sunday after 4:00 p.m.

The municipal government is also investigating the possibility of limiting the distribution of soft drugs in the coffee shopplaces of sale and consumption of marijuana, in the area during the last hours of the afternoon, in a further step towards reducing the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse in the streets.

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The municipality seeks above all improve people’s lives who live in the area, after the exodus in recent years to the periphery due to the insecurities, noise and dirt that living in the old town of Amsterdam is entailing.

“Tourists also attract street vendors which in turn lead to crime and insecurity. The atmosphere can get gloomy, especially at night. People who are under the influence stay a long time. Residents can’t sleep well and the neighborhood becomes unsafe and uninhabitable,” laments the council.

In force in May

The goal, he explains, is “to further counteract the huge disturbances, especially at night,” in the De Wallen area, which includes the Red Light District. Neighbors and businessmen will have four weeks to give their opinion on the proposals, before the full council debates the measures. If the council approves them, they would enter in effect mid-May.

These measures are added to others that are already in place, such as the ban on drinking alcohol in the street, the application of restrictions on street vendors, the limitation of one-way traffic during periods of greatest activity, and the closure of parts of the Red Light District at times of high tourism.

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“If the nuisances do not diminish sufficiently with the smoking ban, the possibilities of prohibit smoking on the terraces of cafes in the area“, warned the City Council, which has intensified in recent years the search for solutions to the most controversial tourist attractions in the city: the Red Light District and the “coffeeshops”.

One of the measures already decided by the municipality is that establishments with a hospitality license close their doors at 02:00 on Fridays and Saturdays (instead of 04:00), while prostitution businesses can stay open until 03.00, instead of until 06:00 in the morning.” “To better distribute the crowds, no new customers are allowed after 1:00 in the morning.”

“We also want close the terraces at 1.00 am in the summer months, instead of 2.00 as now. You can give your opinion for four weeks on the advancement of the schedules of the terraces,” the city council asks the residents of Amsterdam on its website.

Two years ago, Amsterdam wanted to go a step further and prohibit foreign tourists from accessing the coffee shopsdue to the increase in demand for soft drugs caused by “cannabis tourism”, but the measure has not gone ahead, at least for now.

Almost a third of these coffee shops in the Netherlands are located in Amsterdam. According to an investigation carried out by the municipality, a large number of foreign tourists would no longer want to come to Amsterdam if they were prohibited from entering “coffeeshops”, which would mean that, in 2025, the capital only needs 73 stores to serve to local demand.

Amsterdam is also investigating the possibility of moving the Red Light District to a kind of “erotic center” in another part of the capital, away from prostitution in the tourist center, in a bid to attract “a different tourist” to the city, making it a a place where the residents themselves also want to go.

Filed Under Amsterdam, Cannabis, Marijuana, Prostitution