The city of Amsterdam, a popular destination for tourists who visit its marijuana coffee shops, will ban smoking cannabis in public in the red-light district as part of a campaign to clean up the area.
Smoking the drug in the streets will be prohibited in a canal-lined section of town where there are brothels, sex shops and strip clubs, the city council said in a statement.
The move has been called an “historic intervention” by Amsterdam’s Het Parool newspaper, and the city council said the ban may be extended to the terraces of cannabis coffee shops at a later date.
It is part of a campaign by Amsterdam’s first female mayor, Femke Halsema, to make the neighbourhood more liveable for residents. The area draws millions of tourists every year, but also attracts crime.
Holocaust, the 1978 TV series that helped Germany break the silence about its past
Auschwitz survivors to visit home of former camp commander Rudolf Höss
Trump’s Panama Canal seizure threat revives memories of 1989 US invasion
Trump’s blunderbuss strategies on climate and energy may backfire in ways he has not envisaged
“Residents of the old town suffer a lot from mass tourism and alcohol and drug abuse in the streets”, the city council said in the statement.
“Tourists also attract street dealers, who in turn cause crime and insecurity,” it said.
The city also plans to cut back opening times for restaurants, bars and sex workers, and to further tighten the sale of alcohol in the red-light district, it said. - Reuters
