Almost two million tourists who visit Amsterdam every year to consume cannabis in its famous “coffee shops” will still be able to get stoned legally after January next, despite fears that a controversial new ban would exclude foreigners.
Although the ban will still come into effect across the Netherlands in the new year, the new Liberal-Labour Party coalition government has given local councils the power to opt out – and the mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard van der Laan, says the city’s 220 cannabis cafes will remain open to everyone.
The tighter regulations were proposed by the Liberal-Christian Democrat coalition that lost power last April, and the new opt- out clause is part of a wider rethink that will substantially relax plans to turn the coffee shops into private members’ clubs open to Dutch residents only.
The rethink will also abandon the hugely unpopular requirement that even Dutch users of the cafes would have to register for a wietpas or “weed pass”, which customers maintained was an unacceptable invasion of their privacy and coffee shop owners said would ruin their businesses.
Source: Peter Cluskey, Irish Times, 03/11/2012
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