Law Could Hamper Drug Tourism in the Netherlands

Nearly a quarter of this city’s more than four million foreign tourists a year will visit its coffee shops, where the sale of small quantities of cannabis is tolerated.

But Amsterdam’s days as a destination for hazy holidays may be numbered. Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s right-wing coalition government is pushing to sharply restrict the operations of the coffee shops and to prohibit the sale of the drugs to nonresidents. If the measures survive a court challenge and the opposition of local officials, the first phase would begin May 1.

“I think that by the end of next year, there will be no drug tourism in the Netherlands,” Ard van der Steur, a Parliament member and a spokesman for Mr. Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, said in an interview in The Hague. “We have created an incredible criminal industry that we need to get rid of.”

Strictly speaking, the sale of marijuana and hashish (a resin extracted from the cannabis plant) is not legal. But a longstanding policy of tolerance — essentially a set of instructions from the Justice Ministry to the police — means that licensed coffee shop operators are not prosecuted as long as they deal in limited quantities and keep hard drugs and minors out. The Dutch are also allowed to cultivate up to five marijuana plants each for their personal use.

In some respects, tolerance appears to have been successful: despite the easy availability, the Dutch are far less likely than Americans or many other Europeans to use marijuana. About 14 percent of Americans use marijuana, versus about 5 percent of the Dutch, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Alex Stevens, a drug policy expert at the University of Kent, argues that the tolerance policy has reduced the harm caused by prohibition, in part by separating the markets for hard drugs like heroin from the market for marijuana, and by getting cannabis dealers off the street and into a regulated environment.

The impetus for changing the policy originated with, of all things, a parking shortage. In the southern city of Maastricht, sandwiched between the German and Belgian borders, hundreds of drug tourists drive in daily from elsewhere in Europe to purchase marijuana, creating an infuriating traffic nuisance.

Spotting an opportunity, clandestine dealers have begun offering foreign drivers the option of buying their cannabis without ever leaving their cars. Even local residents who support the coffee shops are unhappy that drugs are back on the streets.