END OF AN ERA

Amsterdam Weed Tourism Faces Threat of Extinction

The mayor of Amsterdam proposed a rule Friday that would ban the sale of weed to foreign visitors in an attempt to reduce the number of tourists visiting the city to use marijuana.

Amsterdam’s reputation as the weed capital of the world may be on its way out. The city’s mayor proposed a rule Friday that is likely to pass outlawing the distribution of weed to all out-of-country visitors. Other cities in the Netherlands already have similar rules. The law is meant to curb rising crime rates in the city, which some believe are driven by tourists as well as organized crime, which in many cases supplies weed to the coffee shops where it is sold. The country doesn’t have a legalized system for growing and distributing the plant so the task falls to seedy criminal organizations that also traffic in cocaine and amphetamines. “We always are blamed for everything that goes wrong in this city,” one coffeeshop owner told The New York Times. “Also how can I check where someone is from? They might as well put a cop at our entrance.”