Francesca Street, writing for CNN:
When international tourists finally return to the canal-lined historic streets of Amsterdam, one of the city's main travel attractions might be off limits.
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema has proposed a new policy that would ban foreign visitors from accessing the city's coffee shops.
There are several reasons why people like traveling to Amsterdam—captivating museums, historic churches and castles, gorgeous fields of tulips, lazy canal rides, refreshing public parks, scrumptious stroopwafels, and the allure of legal prostitutes. But one of the most compelling reasons that tourists flock to the city is to visit the coffeeshops:
[An August 2019 survey] questioned 1,100 international visitors between the ages of 18 and 35 who were visiting Amsterdam's Red Light District, an area of the city that's been the focus of much of Amsterdam's most recent tourism regulations.
In this survey, referenced in Halsema's most recent correspondence, over half of those surveyed said they chose to visit the Dutch capital because they wanted to experience a cannabis cafe.
The results were that 34% indicated they'd come to Amsterdam less often if they weren't able to visit coffee shops, and 11% said they wouldn't come at all.
For a long time Amsterdam was the gold standard for buying and consuming cannabis in public, but those days are coming to an end now that there so many other places in the world that allow people to do those things. Hopefully this legislation won’t pass, because I’d like to return to Amsterdam and visit some coffeeshops in the post-pandemic world. But even if it does, I could see it getting overturned in the future after more countries legalize marijuana.
And if you’re wondering what the number one reason that people visit Amsterdam is, it turns out that it’s actually pretty wholesome and healthy:
While Amsterdam's 2019 tourist survey suggested coffee shops have a strong appeal for visitors, those surveyed said the most common reason for visiting Amsterdam isn't the coffee shops, the Red Light District or even the city's museums and cultural attractions.
Instead, visitors championed the pretty wholesome appeal of walking or cycling around the city.
Banning tourists from coffeeshops most likely won’t kill tourism in Amsterdam, but it certainly would diminish it quite a bit.