The two towns Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom announced in October 2008 that they would start closing all coffee shops, each week visited by up to 25000 French and Belgian drug tourists, with closures beginning in February 2009.[36][37]
In May 2011 the Dutch government announced that tourist are to be banned from Dutch coffee shops, starting in the southern provinces and at the end of 2011 in the rest of the country.
"In order to tackle the nuisance and criminality associated with coffee shops and drug trafficking, the open-door policy of coffee shops will end," (
the Dutch health and justice ministers in a letter to the Dutch parliament)[2]
A government committee delivered in June 2011 a report about Cannabis to the Dutch government. It includes a proposal that cannabis with more than 15 percent THC should be labeled as hard drugs.[38] Higher concentrations of THC and drug tourism have challenged the current policy and led to a re-examination of the current approach; for eg. ban of all sales of cannabis to tourists in coffee shops from end of 2011 was proposed but currently only the border city of Maastricht has adopted the measure in order to test out its feasibility.[39] According to the initial measure, starting in 2012, each coffee shop was to operate like a private club with some 1,000 to 1,500 members. In order to qualify for a membership card, applicants would have to be adult Dutch citizens, membership was only to be allowed in one club. [4]
In Amsterdam 26 coffeeshops in the De Wallen area will have to close their doors between 1 September 2012 and 31 August 2015.[40]
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