Amsterdam will not ban tourists from coffee shops, says mayor
Thursday 01 November 2012
Tourists can continue to use Amsterdam’s 220 cannabis cafes, even if they are not resident in the Netherlands, the Volkskrant quotes the capital’s mayor Eberhard van der Laan as saying on Thursday.
The new cabinet is pressing ahead with banning non-residents from the country’s cannabis cafes, but says enforcing the ban will be carried out together with local councils, taking local policy into account.
This means the city can take its own line, the Volkskrant says. At least 1.5 million of the city’s seven million visitors a year go to a coffee shop – the name for licenced cafes where small quantities of marijuana can be sold for personal use.
