One advantage of the collapse of the Dutch government is that the socalled wietpas might just be scrapped, at least nationally. Tomorrow it will be rolled out in the southern provinces, which means foreign socalled drugs tourists will no longer be able to buy dope in a coffee shop in Maastricht or any other southern […]
Nine years ago, Portugal decided to try and solve its persistent drugs problems through decriminalisation: the results are encouraging: As the sweeping reforms went into effect nine years ago, some in Portugal prepared themselves for the worst. They worried that the country would become a junkie nirvana, that many neighborhoods would soon resemble Casal Ventoso, […]
I’ve posted before about the “wietpas“, the current Dutch government’s attempt to slowly strangle the coffeeshops by depriving them of foreign customers, but that’s not the only measure they want to introduce. Another proposal doing the rounds right now is the idea to close any coffeeshop that’s too near a school, for the sake of […]
Is there a more typically Amsterdam scene than seeing a world famous rap star bicycling to his favourite coffeeshop, like Snoop’s doing here during a 2008 visit? Yet, as I’ve blogged about two weeks ago, the current government wants to ban foreigners from all Dutch coffeeshops and today they confirmed that yes, even Amsterdam coffeeshops […]
With a new rightwing government in power in the Netherlands it was just a question of time before the coffeeshops would be targeted again. Attitudes towards cannabis and coffeeshop culture have been hardening on the right in the past decade or so, at least amongst national politicians and there’s less and less support for continuing […]