Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory Forums

They keep mentioning "CRIMINAL ACTIVITY" surrounding the C.S.
What exactly are they talking about ?

Boner wrote:I love the way people are atill coming back to the money aspect, does Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, London and so on rely on cannabis for their touist money? Amsterdam is obviously the biggest cash cow in Holland and has a sleazy name attached to it because of the cannabis and rld, if they got rid of both they could quite easily rebrand themselves as a city of culture and imo that would more than recoup what they'd lose in cannabis tourists.

Sorry to say this but if you're planning on a trip to Amsterdam for the coffeeshops I'd so in the next 6 months as I think the clock is ticking.

Spot on, and the political establishment here is not really too thrilled with the label of being a drugs-tourism destination. They may well decide to sacrifice tourism money for an improved image...but who knows.

NedFlanders wrote:i think changes are pretty sure. what do you think is a realistic time till a ban could be installed. i wanted to make a trip in summer, is worth to bokk or is it too risky?

If you read everything then u will see that this idea is still up in the air, nothing is in black and white yet. Like i said in my post earlier as soon as they officially announce the ban there will be a huge surge in opposition, the dutch labour party for instance, they hate this new coalition and will attempt to block anything they try do, and they are second biggest party. There will be parliament debates galore plus the possibility of court battles. If in worst case scenario it does go ahead then i think it would take about year to implement, they will need to give CS owners chance to make changes and goverment will need time to make the pass system to. I cant see it happening in amsterdam tho, what is stopping people from buying weed of the street and then going in to smoke friendly bars to smoke it.

Also just something to think about, when the coalition annouced there policy agenda, one of the new things they wanted to do was introduce a national police force, to help tackle national crime and propably to help enforce there new ideas like banning burqas, head scarves and tourists in coffee shops, well they have scrapped this idea now and are not making a national police force. This tells me two things, one, the coalition is full of empty talk without the means/will/balls to follow through with what they say. Two, how on earth in a city like amsterdam with as many CS' as they have do they intend to enforce a tourist ban i, especially as they are not getting a new police force, they just wont have the man power to check all CS' and smoking bars, not to mention parks and streets etc.

Marco wrote:

Boner wrote:I love the way people are atill coming back to the money aspect, does Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, London and so on rely on cannabis for their touist money? Amsterdam is obviously the biggest cash cow in Holland and has a sleazy name attached to it because of the cannabis and rld, if they got rid of both they could quite easily rebrand themselves as a city of culture and imo that would more than recoup what they'd lose in cannabis tourists.

Sorry to say this but if you're planning on a trip to Amsterdam for the coffeeshops I'd so in the next 6 months as I think the clock is ticking.

Spot on, and the political establishment here is not really too thrilled with the label of being a drugs-tourism destination. They may well decide to sacrifice tourism money for an improved image...but who knows.

IMO cannabis tourism $$$ won't affect the decision, we agree on that. But the NL will definitely feel an immediate financial impact the first year or two after the law changes. the bigger question would seem to be if the will of the government is strong enough to sustain that monetary impact long enough to see through with the change longterm. There will no doubt be legal challenges by someone in the cannabis trade in Holland -- is it possible a court challenge would succeed? would it even delay the law?

TwoCanucks wrote:

Marco wrote:

Boner wrote:I love the way people are atill coming back to the money aspect, does Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, London and so on rely on cannabis for their touist money? Amsterdam is obviously the biggest cash cow in Holland and has a sleazy name attached to it because of the cannabis and rld, if they got rid of both they could quite easily rebrand themselves as a city of culture and imo that would more than recoup what they'd lose in cannabis tourists.

Sorry to say this but if you're planning on a trip to Amst
erdam for the coffeeshops I'd so in the next 6 months as I think the clock is ticking.

Spot on, and the political establishment here is not really too thrilled with the label of being a drugs-tourism destination. They may well decide to sacrifice tourism money for an improved image...but who knows.

IMO cannabis tourism $$$ won't affect the decision, we agree on that. But the NL will definitely feel an immediate financial impact the first year or two after the law changes. the bigger question would seem to be if the will of the government is strong enough to sustain that monetary impact long enough to see through with the change longterm. There will no doubt be legal challenges by someone in the cannabis trade in Holland -- is it possible a court challenge would succeed? would it even delay the law?

I don't know enough about Dutch law to answer that. Much of what I understand about Dutch politics is from some very bright colleagues at my office, but I am not too keen to ask too many questions about Cannabis law with my boss, if you know what I mean.

I would not say the $$$ will not affect the decision, it will be a factor.

Cannabis isn't legal so I dont see how anyone could try and argue against any changes, the EU certainly wouldn't side with the cannabis industry.

If their trying to improve the image of the city they should get rid of the RLD. Banning pot tourists is only going to flood the streets with dealers harrasing locals they mistake as tourists to buy coffeeshop weed. The locals might celebrate at first, but will soon realize what a big mistake it was.

Oh and don't forget about all the people coming into the city for the RLD harrassing the locals to run into a coffeeshop to buy them some weed. They have no idea what a huge mistake their planning to make.

Stanky Danky wrote:Oh and don't forget about all the people coming into the city for the RLD harrassing the locals to run into a coffeeshop to buy them some weed. They have no idea what a huge mistake their planning to make.

You do realize that 99% of the country never sets foot in the RLD?

Marco wrote:

Stanky Danky wrote:Oh and don't forget about all the people coming into the city for the RLD harrassing the locals to run into a coffeeshop to buy them some weed. They have no idea what a huge mistake their planning to make.

You do realize that 99% of the country never sets foot in the RLD?

You do realize that 100% of tourists set foot outside the RLD? All the good shops are outside the RLD anyways.

Boner wrote:I love the way people are atill coming back to the money aspect, does Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, London and so on rely on cannabis for their touist money? Amsterdam is obviously the biggest cash cow in Holland and has a sleazy name attached to it because of the cannabis and rld, if they got rid of both they could quite easily rebrand themselves as a city of culture and imo that would more than recoup what they'd lose in cannabis tourists.

Let's look at your examples.

Barcelona: Weather, some of the best museums in the world
Paris: Please don't make me list the tourist attractions of Paris.
Madrid: Weather, Prado Museum
Brussels: WWI, food
London: British museum as well as sixty billion other things to do

My point is that as a tourist destination Amsterdam can't hope to top any of those cities(except maybe Brussels) for cultural attractions and climate.

As it stands the Netherlands makes at least 200 million Euros in taxes from coffeeshops(it has been estimated at 400 millionbut I'm trying to be conservative).

Maybe there are things in Amsterdam that are unbelievably cool that I missed. I'm not so sure, though. Either way, there would have to be a cultural revival of epic proportions to attract enough tourists to generate 200 million Euros in tax revenue.

SGawain235 wrote: As it stands the Netherlands makes at least 200 million Euros in taxes from coffeeshops(it has been estimated at 400 millionbut I'm trying to be conservative).

Maybe there are things in Amsterdam that are unbelievably cool that I missed. I'm not so sure, though. Either way, there would have to be a cultural revival of epic proportions to attract enough tourists to generate 200 million Euros in tax revenue.

Keep in mind these numbers

NL GDP 2009=$794.777 billion, so at 400m euros that is about 0.05% of the Dutch economy.

I have to learn dutch and get a dutch id to be prepared for the worst case! To learn dutch is planed anyway.
How much is an id card? Does anyone know that?

Colina wrote:I have to learn dutch and get a dutch id to be prepared for the worst case! To learn dutch is planed anyway.
How much is an id card? Does anyone know that?

You see that is the thing, you don't need a Dutch ID card to live here as an EU national. I carry around my French ID.

Colina wrote:I have to learn dutch and get a dutch id to be prepared for the worst case! To learn dutch is planed anyway.
How much is an id card? Does anyone know that?

Priceless