Going to a cannabis coffee shop in Amsterdam is on the must-do list of many city visitors.
But with the city groaning under the weight of mass tourism, the City Council has proposed banning foreign visitors from the capital’s weed cafés.
Related: Is overtourism over? Travelers to Europe stay home due to COVID-19 restrictions
Joachim Helms co-owns the Green House coffee shop in central Amsterdam, a popular café for tourists and locals looking to buy weed, hash and space cakes.
The shop has been in business since 1985, but Helms, who was born in Amsterdam, only developed a real enthusiasm for cannabis culture while living in San Diego in the 1990s.
“I came from Amsterdam, and I liked the whole coffee shop system but in America, I really found out more about the activism and cannabis culture,” he said.
Helms now runs five Green House coffee shops in Amsterdam — a sign of how business has boomed over the last decade, with soaring numbers of tourists arriving in the Dutch capital.
In 2019, more than 20 million foreign visitors came to the city, which has a population of just over 800,000 within the city limits.
Over the last few years, Amsterdam’s City Council has adopted increasingly aggressive measures to combat the overwhelming number of visitors. An advertising campaign by the Dutch tourist board in…
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Going to a cannabis coffee shop in Amsterdam is on the must-do list of many city visitors.
But with the city groaning under the weight of mass tourism, the City Council has proposed banning foreign visitors from the capital’s weed cafés.
Related: Is overtourism over? Travelers to Europe stay home due to COVID-19 restrictions
Joachim Helms co-owns the Green House coffee shop in central Amsterdam, a popular café for tourists and locals looking to buy weed, hash and space cakes.
The shop has been in business since 1985, but Helms, who was born in Amsterdam, only developed a real enthusiasm for cannabis culture while living in San Diego in the 1990s.
“I came from Amsterdam, and I liked the whole coffee shop system but in America, I really found out more about the activism and cannabis culture,” he said.
Helms now runs five Green House coffee shops in Amsterdam — a sign of how business has boomed over the last decade, with soaring numbers of tourists arriving in the Dutch capital.
In 2019, more than 20 million foreign visitors came to the city, which has a population of just over 800,000 within the city limits.
Over the last few years, Amsterdam’s City Council has adopted increasingly aggressive measures to combat the overwhelming number of visitors. An advertising campaign by the Dutch tourist board in…
