Amsterdam’s coffeeshops are closing | Hacker News Reader

Amsterdam’s coffeeshops are closing

economist.com

159 pointskristofferR183 comments

Our Dutch softdrug policy was extraordinary 30 years ago but since then has become completely gridlocked in politics.

Producing is illegal. Selling and using sort of legal.

This crazy policy has our police force waste all their time chasing a never ending line of illegal production facilities and kept the production in the hands of criminals.

We need a completely legalised product chain for softdrugs so it can be safely produced and legally traded, bought and used.

I often complain that the US has a mindset of "We're different, so what works in other countries couldn't possibly work for us!". In this case, I'm finally proud to say the opposite: It does work for us, so why couldn't it work for them?

I've only been to Amsterdam once, and I don't pretend to even begin to understand their culture or politics, but legalization here in the US has been great. We've got a lot of people looking for reasons legalization has destroyed our society, and they are coming up empty handed. Meanwhile, we're making a ton of money on taxes. Is there anyone who knows why they couldn't/shouldn't follow our example?

The US is also interesting in that we have a very Frankish-state model with powerful state governments that can set their own policies. So early movers like Washington and Colorado can try various things, and other states can learn from them (while also being at odds with antiquated, rigid federal policy). Success in the early-mover states will inform change in other states.

Idealistically, that's how the US is structured. Practically, the federal government has been centralizing control since the New Deal.

Since the article is about marijuana, let's use that as an example. If you believe the US is a federal republic, then you ought to be able to grow whatever plants you want in the comfort of your own home - the federal government has no business regulating that. That precise case was brought before the Supreme Court during the Bush administration, and even Scalia (who famously championed states' rights in many other decisions) consented that the federal government could regulate the private, intrastate growth of marijuana:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

The states that legalized marijuana could only do so because Obama is personally tolerant of it. Had he not been, he could have directed federal authorities to enforce the federal ban on marijuana - federal laws trump local ones.

This is true, except the battle hasn't heated up enough yet to see whether this is actually true, with respect to Marijuana specifically, and then perhaps states' rights generally.

The state of California might just, by itself, choose to challenge the feds on this for example, and that would be quite interesting.

I really really hope that California does something like this. Unfortunately, California Police don't have a history of supporting state law. When the feds were busting medical marijuana shops in California, they would routinely get help from local police, and the local police would act like their lapdogs.

> except the battle hasn't heated up enough yet to see whether this is actually true

In what way is it not decided? The US Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that the federal government can indeed criminalize marijuana. This isn't something that they left kind of unclear. A 6 to 3 decision affirmed that the congress can completely outlaw marijuana nationwide.

Clearly it's not actually a question then of what the supreme court decided in 1996, because marijuana is legal multiple US states now? Thus it is a classical state VS federal issue now.

It was literally the same issue in 1996. California legalized medical marijuana in spite of the federal government criminalizing it. The Supreme Court ruled that the federal government won over states' rights.

Sure, that sounds correct. And yet apparently the states have continued to ignore that ruling in a sense. So the onus is on the feds to enforce that law and the states can choose to fight such actions (or not to) in whichever way they please.

The difference this time around is that the (legal) marijuana industry has significantly more political clout, social acceptance and financial muscle than 2 decades ago, so I see the states pushing back harder against the feds this time around.

That's all fine but this is decided law. The states could fight and potentially the Supreme Court could overturn precedent, but as of right now the federal government is 100% in control of the legality of marijuana nationwide.

I actually don't see the Supreme Court overturning this precedent because it's relevant to too many other cases, such as outlawing fully automatic weapons. It's far more likely that congress could repeal or reduce its own regulations and leave this to the states. Supposedly both major parties should want this, since the right talks about states rights and the left want marijuana legalized for its own sake.

on the other hand, owning a gun is close to attempted manslaughter, and that means no malintent, just accepting a not so faint possibilitt, whereas farming cannabis sativa has a magnitudes smaller, negligable possibility. Disclaimer: I'm currently biased, if you know what I mean.

> owning a gun is close to attempted manslaughter, and that means no malintent

This is a pretty unreasonable statement unless farming marijuana is also "close" to giving drugs to children.

I agree that machine guns are far more dangerous to allow in broad society than marijuana, but I don't think your comparison is very useful.

Of course I a admitted a degree of certainty and responsibility, that is required in either case. I just argue that it differs, because the lethal dose of cannabis is ridiculously high.

But I can appreciate the Irony of the question, no doubt.

Edit: wording

Edit: well, the LD is probably not that high, i wouldn't recommend to try for it

  outlawing fully automatic weapons

Federal law doesn't outlaw full-auto weapons; it taxes them. Their ownership and use is legal in many states.

It outlaws new ones being purchased directly by civilians.

There's no conflict between federal and state law here - marijuana is illegal under federal law and not under state law (depending on the state).

This isn't an abnormal situation. There are lots of things that are illegal under state laws that aren't illegal at the federal level and vice versa.

Marijuana is still a schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law, and you can be arrested by federal agents, who have jurisdiction in every state, for possession of any amount. It's not likely to actually happen, but it's another tool the feds can use if you annoy them.

Personally, I don't see the constitution gives Congress the power to outlaw possession of anything unless that thing crosses state lines. But over the years the courts have supported an alternate view.

There were many Federal arrests of state-sanctioned dispensary owners under both the Bush administration and the Obama administration. The Feds have changed to a more tolerant position now, but only after years of intense political pressure.

> Obama is personally tolerant of it.

While I understand the spirit of this argument it is not entirely true. Obama has legal levers to pull but not without serious consequences to himself. For example Trump is very vocal about hurting all the "sanctuary cities" and I personally think he will be able to do zilch about it.

The problem with centralized control is that super inefficient. President can jump before a rally and claim he is leading it but the moment he decides to actually control the rally the shit will hit the fan.

Can you elaborate on your perspective?

Medical marijuana was in much more of a grey area than recreational marijuana, and previous administrations have still directed the DoJ to shutter dispensaries. It was very much Obama's decision to tolerate states legalizing marijuana.

It also assumes the President is in complete control over the massive bureaucratic agencies he oversees. In reality those agencies often set their own priorities and have their own competing agendas. And yes, while on paper the President is able to control much about their direction, in practice that's not always true.

Gonzales v. Raich is not really relevant anymore, because while it establishes that Congress has the power to regulate marijuana in the states, Congress has already passed a law forbidding enforcement of federal marijuana prohibition in states with legal medical marijuana.

> The states that legalized marijuana could only do so because Obama is personally tolerant of it. Had he not been, he could have directed federal authorities to enforce the federal ban on marijuana - federal laws trump local ones.

Obama did direct federal authorities to enforce the federal ban on marijuana. Obama's administration raided more medical marijuana dispensaries either Bush or Clinton[0]. Congress even passed a law explicitly stripping the executive branch of the power to do so, and Obama ignored that[1].

He did pull his foot off the gas pedal (so to speak) a bit in his second term, but not entirely - the raids have continued through this past year[2].

[0] https://www.greenrushdaily.com/2016/02/24/dispensary-raids-r...

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...

[2] https://www.theweedblog.com/despite-reforms-federal-medical-...

Thanks for the info and sources!! I did not realize this. I think this is part of the disconnect with Americans and how the view the Obama administration. The left likes to think he was all great and they glaze over the spying, whistle blower imprisonment, predator drones, et. al. and either justify those actions or ignore them. I wrote a post about this recently:

http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-a...

I did not realize this applied to marijuana law as well.

Interesting article, well written and concise.

Meh, that's just partisan wankery. Historically, civil rights progress in the US comes from individual states that lead the way, followed by additional states picking up and improving on the original changes, and the federal government and the courts catching up once there's a solid majority. See the recent changes in marriage law for an example.

Nitpick: Shouldn't it be "Franken-state", if you're talking about a patchwork government stitched into one nation? I feel like "Frankish-state" references the French. :)

It's not patchwork, it's federated.

It does reference the French! It's a reference to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangokratia

Nope, totally different reference. It's to Machiavelli, who distinguished between "Frankish kingdoms" and "Turkish kingdoms". Turkish kingdoms have strong central governments, with local administration subservient to the center. Frankish kingdoms have a much weaker central government, with much power and decision-making in the hands of local leaders.

The US is a Frankish kingdom, in Machiavellian terms.

It seems that the us is a hybrid of the turkish and frankish models considering the split income taxation structure with signigantly more going to federal level.

It's not about taxation. It's about control.

The big difference between the US and a Machiavellian Frankish kingdom is that we have more or less a single military, rather than each state having its own army and lending that to the central government.

I think the downvoting is uncalled for. When I hear Frankish, my associations are of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire and Romanesque building boom. I wasn't aware of the Machiavelli reference until civilian legitimately queried the use of the term (in a non-snarky way).

> I've only been to Amsterdam once, and I don't pretend to even begin to understand their culture or politics, but legalization here in the US has been great. We've got a lot of people looking for reasons legalization has destroyed our society, and they are coming up empty handed. Meanwhile, we're making a ton of money on taxes. Is there anyone who knows why they couldn't/shouldn't follow our example?

Gonna play devil's advocate: shouldn't we wait a generation or something like 10 years to evaluate the situation ?

Starting when? Marijuana use has been widespread in the U.S. since the 1960s.

And legal in California for medical use for 20 years now

I don't disagree that more testing/research/evaluation needs to be done, but AFAIU, things seem to going well enough to push this out for now.

EDIT: I'd be interested to hear studies of things not going well since legalization.

It's also incredibly different in the US in weird ways.

Amsterdam is a place where you can go into any coffee shop and smoke there on premises. If you don't need to buy more, many will let you smoke and use their toilets if you buy a beer, coffee or snacks.

Smoking tobacco is a part of European culture and I was surprised to see smoking allowed indoors in many places, both in the west and east (several states in Germany seemed to allow it, or at least not enforce bans; same in Croatia, Montenegro, etc.) In the Pacific North West US, tobacco smoking bans are stricter than anywhere else I've seen in the US. Few bars even have outdoor smoking areas. I have never seen smoking areas outside pot stores (I think it's illegal).

This actually makes for a vastly different culture. Also in the Pacific Northwest, very few pot stores will take a foreign drivers license, even for alcohol! (In other parts of the US, people don't normally card adults -- it's really weird), so you're not going to see the same type of marijuana tourism seen in The Netherlands.

I'm curious what the culture is like in other places that have approved recreational cannabis. Anyone from Colorado or Maine want to chime in?

Japan is even weirder, no smoking outside when not in narrowly defined designated areas, but smoking inside is still ok. This was Tokyo.

Pacific Northwest will take passports for those things, just not foreign DLs.

I thought that was because it can get so insanely packed in the cities that Japanese would often burn each other unintentionally with cigarettes?

I can't find it now, but I remember posting posting a warning sign that illustrated someone dropping their cigarette hand to the side and hitting a child in the eye.

Japan has a lot of laws like no smoking outside designated areas but you will see a lot still walking and smoking. It's crazy how a lot of restaurants allow smoking inside all the time (they said most of their business comes from smokers so a ban and they would lose a lot of their customers)

Minor quibble...you won't be buying a beer in a coffeeshop. If they sell weed they do not sell alcohol.

Definitely incorrect in my experience, which was about two years ago most recently.

Sure you're not mixing up a former coffeeshop-turned-bar, or one selling 0.0% beer, or one which looks like one place but is actually distinct places (like Bulldog on Leidseplein)?

It's a condition of the license, and they're ridigly checked and shut down for non-compliance (selling to minors, keeping too much on premises, hard drugs, etc).

Upon reflection, I was thinking of a place in Haarlemerstraat that has a bar across the street with the same name. You're correct and I was wrong.

> Gonna play devil's advocate: shouldn't we wait a generation or something like 10 years to evaluate the situation ?

Cannabis is not a "recent situation" - people have been consuming cannabis since prehistoric times. The cannabis prohibition, on the other hand, is. The country-wide cannabis prohibition started in the United States with the founding of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930. We did wait three generations to evaluate the situation, it is obvious that the cannabis prohibition has been a complete and total failure causing uncounted damage to lives and communities, and needs to be repealed as soon as possible.

On the other hand, I don't think the concentration in THC was the same between the cannabis now and then and it's even worse for the processed form.

so, the public recognition of responsible caution should have increased too

One of the main reasons that the Netherlands cannot legalise production is that we signed an international treaty that bans it. Several attempts to open up that treaty have been stymied by... the US!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Sub...

(Side note: the Netherlands probably needs to be a bit more careful in violating international treaties due to it's size and dependence on trade, I don't think I've heard the "we'll be violating a treaty" argument in the US)

"We've got a lot of people looking for reasons legalization has destroyed our society, and they are coming up empty handed".

Most people looking for reasons to oppose legalization are actually not saying anything in the like of "This is going to destroy our society". If you want reasons why legalization is a bad idea. Here goes one :

Legalization leads increased usage of pot amongst adults [0]. Combine this with the fact that usage (not abuse) of cannabis leads to permanent damage to the brain structure. Which negatively impact memory and cognitive abilities [1]. No one here is saying that by legalizing marijuana our society is going to the middle ages. I just don't think that it is wise to legalize one more substance that has known and proven irreversible long-lasting effects on cognitive abilites of people who are most likely going to live longer and longer. Ageism of the general population is a challenge in itself. Ageism of a population that is going to suffer from symptoms of partially altered brains on top of the cognitive challenges naturally coming with age is even more difficult.

[0] : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/18/colorado-mar...

[1] : http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16913.full

alcohol and cigarettes are both much, much worse for health. And the PNAS study itself says that while they measured changes in the brain, the effect of the changes is not known from the study.

Limited Alcohol usage (not abuse) has actually very little permanent effects on health. Alcohol abuse of course has very damaging known effects. Cigarettes mainly affect lungs and pancreas. The increased risk of cancer is reduced to that of a never smoker after 20years.

I am sure cigarettes would not pass legalization laws if they were "invented" right now. They are legal for historical reasons and many countries are actively trying to fight them by increased taxation, advertising rules etc. So basically, we are creating a new product we will have to fight in the future once we measure how dangerous it is.

We are playing a game of "let's fight back thats dangerous product we legalized 150 years ago when we did not know the adverse effects of it." and at the same time : "Let's legalize that new stuff that we never really could measure the long lasting effects of. It looks fun and kids love it.".

The paper says that it can't precisely measure the effect of those changes to cognitive issues. They just link marijuana with modified brains. If you belive that an altered brain function exactly like a non-altered one, this is your choice. But any sound safety principle should tell you to take care with that stuff IMO.

There are tons of papers measure the cognitive issues that arise with pot usage. Here is just one, but look it up. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3221171/

> Limited Alcohol usage (not abuse) has actually very little permanent effects on health.

Are you asserting that this is not true for marijuana? You believe that infrequent use is somehow definitively linked to cognitive changes despite even heavy use being poorly linked so far?

Regarding cognitive issues, the meta I've personally taken away is that, yes, there is some legitimate concern for permanent cognitive issues regarding pre-adult usage of marijuana.

However, for adults, my "gut feeling" (based on knowing some people who regularly consumed what I consider a modest amount of marijuana) is that if you aren't really heavy on your usage, you don't have much to worry about cognitive wise. Chronic heavy users, of course, may run into issues.

Unfortunately it's difficult to conclude much beyond "gut feeling" because data wise, the studies on long term effects are all over the map. See this evidence based review --https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3037578/ I get the impression that the data just isn't too good right now. You can look up one study, but you can then look up another with a different conclusion.

Part of the problem I'm sure is that the illegal nature of marijuana makes experiments difficult to conduct, and will introduce a bias in the population researchers are working with that they have to be careful to control out.

Alcohol incidentally also has significant cognitive concerns for pre-adults, while not being a real issue for moderate adult drinkers. Strictly enforced age restrictions mitigate this issue to some degree. (Prohibition of alcohol was tried for a while, but it didn't work too well.)

You're basing a whole lot on one study of 50 chronic users in one city. You're going to have to cite more than that if you want to rest your entire argument on that basis.

Is there any study on a bigger cohort, on a longer timescale that says "there is absolutely no adverse effects in marijuana" ?

If not, why would you want to add one more dangerous substance in the stores ?

Pragmatism. People ingest cannabis as well as countless other substances due to a wide array of drives and motivations. They will continue to do so (as well as turn to other, more hazardous options) despite legal status.

One could argue that if the demand can't be removed, then the most sensible course of action would be to keep the entire market/economy for such things out of the criminal realm where it can be tied up in all sorts of other unsavory things (turf wars, tax evasion, money laundering, etc).

Likewise, there's the well-worn concept of the "cure" being worse than the "disease". Even assuming some negative health impact of the ingestion of cannabis or other intoxicating substances, is that negative impact worse than that of criminal penalties or prison?

A good comparison would be alcohol. Lots of people drink too much alcohol for their own good health. A subset of these could be classified as alcoholics. Either way, you're talking about adverse effects. Would outcomes be generally better or worse if every wino and drunk got charged with a criminal violation or put in prison for their unhealthy alcohol use? What about those who just get a bit drunk a few times per year at a cookout, the company Xmas party, and New Year's Eve? Because that's essentially how cannabis is treated when criminalized.

That is indeed, I think, the best argument so far in favor of legalisation.

I'd say if anything it's an even better argument in favor of decriminalization, which I feel is acceptable to many people who wouldn't favor full legalization. I think I prefer the latter, but even the former would be a great improvement (and, in my opinion, should apply to pretty much any drug).

For whatever it is worth the study you linked to does not support your statement: " I just don't think that it is wise to legalize one more substance that has known and proven irreversible long-lasting effects..."

From the study you linked:

"Questions surrounding the effects of chronic marijuana use on brain structure continue to increase. To date, however, findings remain inconclusive."

and

"Despite the observed age of onset effects, longitudinal studies are needed to determine causality of these effects."

Add to that this is one study that included only 110 people and was non-longitudinal. Do you have any other studies you can point to that have demonstrated' "known and proven irreversible long-lasting effects..." in chronic marijuana users? The linked study is helpful, but trying to prove something very controversial requires more evidence.

good point. So lets... throw people in jail?

I'd say prohibition has destroyed our society. The onus should be on prohibitionists to defend the status quo.

I don't remember writing anything about jail. Legalisation and penalisation are two very different issues.

While I'm pro-legalization of cannabis, this is a fair point. Portugal's drug policy is widely lauded, yet we only decriminalized consumption; even pot is still illegal, and being caught selling is a crime.

A Nixon administration official has claimed the War On Drugs was conceived by Nixon's White House to persecute Nixon's politial opponents-- blacks and liberals.

---

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

I simply fail to understand how anybody can accept such a argument. Individual freedom has truly been lost in large part of our society.

Going down that route would mean banning alcohol and sugar, but that is not done because it discriminates against to much of the population, but disriminenting against smaller groups is fine.

I truly believe in human freedom. I also believe that this freedom comes with responsibility : make sure that whatever you do, won't negatively impact your neighbour. In my country, all health services are paid for by the government, which means my taxes. I believe this is a good system as this allows anyone to get medical help when needed. This include people suffering form illness lead by drug abuse. EG: a liver transplant for an alcoholic costs around $100.000 and is fully paid for by the govt.

I dot not want to change this as I believe in the system and I don't want my country to move to a situation where some people are just "left to die" because they made the wrong choices or are not able to pay for medical help.

I don't think that this system needs one more substance to deal with. The three biggest source of spending in the system today are : (without order) Hips replacement for elders. Cardiovascular surgery due to obesity. Treatment for lungs / throat cancer. Notice how two of those are already dur to "just" unhealthy habits. And I fear that in 50 years (when I am old), we will have to provide significant resources to elders with cognitive issues caused/helped by excessive use of marijuana.

I'll have to live in that world and share the limited ressources of the healthcare with those people. So I think I am allowed to voice my concerns, as I will indirectly will deal with the consequences of their choice.

so your argument is that you are concerned about your tax burden 50 years from now? you can't be serious.

what about the tax burden TODAY of paying for police, prison, and criminal justice system to enforce prohibition?

what about the cost to society TODAY of prohibition?

I am totally in favor of dtciminalisation. No jail, no active police force looking for it. Cost becomes close to 0. Problem solved. If a policeman finds someone actively selling on the street, take the stuff, write a ticket, and you are good to go.

I believe there is a massive difference between making something legal, and making it illegal, even if not penalized.

You make it sound as if there is no possible ground between (a) fully legal consume as much as you want, get it easily virtually everywhere or (b) invest millions of dollars to puts hundreds of people in jail.

there's lots of middle-ground. regulation of potentially harmful substances for adult use is a middle ground that is more legal than decriminalization, and produces better outcomes in my opinion.

decriminalization leaves control of the substance in the hands of black market vendors who are ultimately connected with black market producers. the social harm of organized crime related to black market producers is a major issue that is solved by legalization and not by decriminalization.

additionally, there is the argument for liberty. why should a police officer be allowed to confiscate something you own, if your society basically agrees that its ok for you to have it? decriminalization is an incoherent policy. why would anyone support a policy that basically says "we think this is bad but we can't be bothered to do anything about it". if its not bad enough to do anything about then why is it illegal?

legalization allows for quality control of product, inspection of businesses, collection of tax revenues, and social normalization so informed responsible use by adults can take place.

in my opinion, there is no good argument for decriminalization besides the weak "it's better than militant prohibition". any of the goods that come from decriminalization are also present in regulated legalization, and then there are significant additional goods from legalization that cannot be achieved by decriminalization alone.

I don't disagree with your concerns, but the way I see it we should either go all the way and ban stuff like alcohol, or accept that if it's legal, then legalizing marijuana if anything will improve things as they are.

I think alcohol by far the more dangerous drug, at least based on what we know now, and yet it's completely accepted in society and often there's even pressure to 'partake'. I would not argue that weed should reach a similar status, and honestly based on the effects it's unlikely to, but even if it did, it would be an improvement.

Plus, when you consider the typical 'abuser', it tends to be an either/or situation when it comes to weed and alcohol. I knew many more people who exclusively use one or the other as a coping mechanism than people who use both.

My ideal approach to figure out what the longer-term impact of weed could be on society is pretty much exactly the coffeeshop approach: don't make the substance as easily available as alcohol (or cigarettes, in many places), but make it relatively possible to get legally if you want it. Basically, give it the status of something like a massage or going bowling (that might be a pun there, I'm not sure). Not something for every day (I'd hope!), but still something easily accessible and defanged of its status as 'illicit'.

See, for me that is a problem.

If a country truly wants to commit to tax payed healthcare for all, needs to provide it for its free citizens, not its worker drones.

Its a problem of any Statist system that if the state does something, all the externalizes associated with it, are costs to the state. That typical solution is for the state to internalize/control these externalizes. Without some system to figure out what is to much, you are on a slippery slop.

That's the exact point Hayek made in the 'Road to Serfdom'. Not every state intervention will automatically mean that you slide into dictatorship, but rather he argued that if you logically respond to each problem with the natural solution of intervention you will end up in dictatorship. You need some higher level of thinking about the problem otherwise you have a problem.

His next 2 two books attempted then about how to design a system of law and governance that effectively balances the needs of individual freedom and state intervention. I don't think he was fully successful, but they are good books either way.

this is from the acknowledgments section of your [1] citation

> We thank Tim McQueeny for assistance with the behavioral data. This work was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse Grant K01 DA021632.

in other words, the study was funded by an institution with a legal mandate to promote cannabis prohibition. the conflicts of interest makes this dubious science.

NIDA is funded by the Us Gov. So you mean that this is a federal study. We are not speaking of a private company here.

correct, it is a federally funded study. NIDA specifically is chartered with funding studies that support a prohibition agenda.

>"I'm finally proud to say the opposite: It does work for us, so why couldn't it work for them?"

Does the U.S know that it works yet? It's early days yet. Colorado and Washington the two states to first pass legislation legalizing marijuana did so only 4 years ago. Compare this to Amsterdam which did so almost 30 years ago.

I'm not making a statement for or against legalization, but rather that 30 years of a policy vs only 4 years to conclude that "its working" is maybe not enough to to know. The majority of the 28 states that legalized it did so much more recently than 4 years ago at that.

The real question to ask, in the US at least, is does this work economically, in a way that makes the Cannabis industry powerful enough to challenge policy? It would appear so.

Note that US state systems are almost the opposite of the Dutch systems in this regard: regulated from "seed to sale", heavily taxed, operated legally (at the state level anyway).

California legalized (for medicinal purposes) marijuana far earlier than Colorado and Washington.

I only mention this because you stated 28 states later, but there isn't 28 states like Colorado / Washington. Most are more similar to California's original law.

Right, absolutely. That has changed now though in California with Prop 64. The situation in California was a bit odd. In some cities like Los Angeles, "dispensaries", the name given to marijuana shops are pretty ubiquitous. Much higher than what the population of legitimate medicinal users could support. Getting a medical marijuana card was something of a running joke.

It will be interesting to see if those states that now have the original California type legislation will move to full legalization for recreational or if they simply liberalize their view on what constitutes an ailment for which marijuana is prescribed - anxiety etc.

The "medicinal purposes" concept was always a fig leaf for de facto legalization of purchases, given that there are many specialty 420-specific "clinics" that have literally never declined a prescription request.

Just look through the back half of local newspapers (e.g. Metro in the Silicon Valley area) and look for the ads with mostly green graphics featuring hot girls wearing stethoscopes.

> given that there are many specialty 420-specific "clinics" that have literally never declined a prescription request.

Surely there's an age limit?

If you go to a coffeeshop in The Netherlands you need to be 18 in order to receive marihuana. If you're younger than 21 you need to show your ID, and if the clerk thinks you are younger than 18 he can ask you for ID.

Of course, that can be faked. But if there's minors in your coffeeshop you got a big, big problem if the police find this out.

Disclaimer: I worked in a coffeeshop in Amsterdam.

I don't disagree that the time-frame isn't very long. I also think we need more research/studies/etc, but so far everything I've read seems to indicate that it is indeed working. I'm open to sources saying otherwise, but I haven't seen any.

From what I read in this and other articles there are striking similarities caused by inconsistent policies e.g.:

Netherlands: Coffee shops can only store 500g causing multiple deliveries a day exposing couriers to robbery.

US: Coffee shops are excluded from the banking system exposing them to an increased risk of robbery.

Rules have to make sense and be somewhat consistent otherwise side effects can be severe.

In CO the local credit unions that are in state only are the banks for pot shops and that is where the (federally) illegal money sits. You know, just like any other business really. Yeah they are restricted to certain credit unions, but those guys are head over heels for the very lucrative business accounts. So the pot shops are excluded from inter-state banking, but they are not excluded from all banking.

>So the pot shops are excluded from inter-state banking //

For real. I thought pot had been legalised in some states, how does that work - you can work legally in a field but you're not allowed to bank your proceeds, was that bill sponsored by organised crime syndicates??

Anyway, they should probably do one of those tax-dodge deals that big corps do, buy trademark rights [ostensibly from themselves] and then send the money from the trademark licensing out of state. Surely there's already a similar "method" in place, investing in movies or some crock??

> I thought pot had been legalised in some states...

what the states think is legal, and what the feds think is legal do not, and have never had to agree. the feds have massively longer lists of illegal things than most states.

state legalization generally has no effect on the feds.

It seems like that should be something to sort out. If it's possible for a State legislature to pass laws making something appear legal that is actually Federally prohibited doesn't that show that the Federation is broken, why doesn't the Federation fix that - either by saying States can't pass laws allowing Federally prohibited activity or by saying the State gets ultimate jurisdiction and only if the State hasn't established a law on something does the Federation's legislation take over. Presumably half the States would go one way and half the other??

Any insights for a European on this?

AFAIU in Europe's not quite federated system European laws get ratified and become national laws in time (with selection and modification where the original law allows). That seems a natural and appropriate way to spread laws to member states.

you might consider hitting up wikipedia or something to read about how the different layers of government in the US interact.

> Presumably half the States would go one way and half the other??

if they want!

> That seems a natural and appropriate way to spread laws to member states.

allowing them to be differ from one another was part of the system's original goal!

Oh wow. Yeah, the laws here in the US are not like a lot of other places except maybe Australia. All of our states really are nations in their own sense that then submit certain rights and responsibilities to the federal government. Each state has it's own "army" too (we call it a national guard, again it's weird). When a disagreement between laws happens, which really is pretty often, like daily, then you go to the courts and typically the supreme court if things are really strange and complicated. For other people from other countries, it is a pretty weird system, we know.

Umm, you may want to do some research on this stuff, as a HN comment is not even going to come close to covering all the important topics, and there are a lot of them.

Essentially, the way it work in the US is that each state will do whatever the hell it wants to do until the Federal government forces them to stop, usually via some sort of money method, but occasionally via the military (bleeding Kansas, civil war, civil rights movement, etc). Our government works because we all hate each others' guts, but we hate equally. Most Americans are very happy/disgusted with the system, typically both at the same time. Again, we know it's strange.

I know a couple people involved in the MJ business in CO. My understanding is that the risk is that the feds could seize assets in a federal bank so nobody is willing to take the risk of depositing assets that could be seized. Allowing MJ businesses into the banking system would certainly help things, but that would require removing MJ from the federal controlled substances list.

I'm also told that notwithstanding the possibility that some bank might take your deposits, the MJ business is effectively cash-only because of the risk of seizure. It's also not as high margin as I initially thought. Honestly, from talking to a few people, it doesn't look like that great a business to be in. For one thing, CO rules require tracking from seed to sold. For any particular item in your inventory, you have to be able to track back to who grew it, who processed it (for oils and extracts), who manufactured the product - the paper trail is extensive and the penalties for messing up are stiff.

Well they can do banking, but just inside the state only. You still have to buy lightbulbs and doormats as a business, so you still need a bank to help keep the money and help deal with normal business stuff. It's just that you can't transfer the money out of the state, as it's considered illegal federally. Unless of course there is some agreement with the other state that says they you can, but that has not happened yet. We do have that kinda thing with some firearms. Utah and Arizona have an agreement that a concealed carry in one state is good in the other one too, so you can just walk across the border and not be in legal hot water. That agreement is not true for all the other neighboring states.

... b/c zero tolerance policies

I want to add that, in the past, we (The Netherlands) could not legalize the whole chain because of pressure from the USA and France.

And currently the stubborn opposition to change from the national government is largely due to international treaties.

I find this so incredibly ironic:

- The Netherlands chooses to (kinda) allow softdrug use and thus gains tourist income throughout the 90s and 00s (and maybe earlier?)

- The US pressures them to avoid full legalization and supply chain development

- US states then partly legalize two decades later, and quickly surpass the Dutch system in size, scope, and income

What should the Dutch learn from this?

Dutch should learn their adoration for the US is misguided and hurts more than helps.

Why does this adoration exist, do you think?

I predict that this will be a major issue in the US, very soon. We too, have a quasi-legal system, if very different from the Dutch policies.

Our incoming administration will have to contend with an industry that has grown large reasonably quickly, and with a conflicting Federal policy. States that have chosen legalization want this money now. Many citizens from across the social spectrum have staked their livelihoods on it.

If this becomes a states rights issue, and the Feds choose to switch policy and start raiding, things could go downhill quickly for the administration.

Of course none of this has anything to do with softdrugs or cannabis. It's all about control and money. I suspect the Dutch policy shift has similar economic motives somewhere below the surface.

American-Dutch person here. This article misses a few key points.

1) Dutch softdrug laws are heavily influenced by other/bigger EU countries like France and Italy that don't like their citizens visiting NL and using, or bringing back drugs. Hence the closings of coffee shops in border areas.

2) Closing of window prostitution in Amsterdam is a completely different issue than closing of coffeeshops. There might be a moral argument for both, but in my cynical mind most of the windows being shutdown have more to do with snapping up key real estate in the middle of the city than anything else. Some people claim it is about cleaning up the criminality, but I think it's just connected people getting better access to good real estate.

3) There might be a real estate angle to the closing of coffeeshops as well, but I'm not as familiar with it to really say. Amsterdam, like other major cities, has started to see an influx in foreign capital buying up homes for investment purposes. It's rather disgusting and has lead to rises in home prices in the city.

on 2. the official statements have always been that it is to stop human trafficking (indeed cleaning up criminals). If there is a conspiracy behind it, I don't know.

on 3. I know that in my city the coffeeshop rents the building, rent protection law does not allow the owner to kick a renter out without very good reason (not going to get specific here). The owner (renting company) wants the coffeeshop out, it has tried more than once. They want to re-purpose the building and make more money of the big building in the centre of the city.

My guess would be that is that it's not an outright conspiracy, but opportunism by individual actors (circumvrenting rent protection for example, or populism) combined with a general push toward making the city center more proper for all sorts of reasons that affect a lot of popular cities (rising value, 'fancy' tourists, etc.).

I think it's a sign of a bigger societal/urban change, and that the bigger, underlying problem is rapidly increasing segregation.

My experience with any coffeeshop is that the vast majority of its clientele is, off the top of my head: 1) left-wingish 'hippie' type, 2) muslims/'ethnic' groups, 3) working-class individuals or 4) a certain subset of tourists. Most coffeeshops have at least a whiff of seediness.

anyways, what all these groups have in common is that they're not particularly liked by those who have a stake in the future of urban centers. These places should be clean, expensive, commercial, and acceptable to as many people as possible.

Given the net result is pushing sex work into illegal spaces, thereby making trafficking and other exploitation harder to report, I'd say that the most likely actual reasons behind said official statements are (a) moral puritanism of various forms (b) hidden commercial interests.

As to how much of which, stuffed if I know (and even ignoring real estate, the funding and attention given to 'rescue organisations' as part of soi-disant anti-trafficking efforts probably gives them at least an incentive under both a and b).

Though "pressure from an increasing level of (a) at The Hague" also seems plausible.

(tl;dr - I dunno exactly, I doubt there's a conspiracy as such, but I also don't believe the official reasons are even close to the whole story)

I agree, after living there for a while I couldn't really see the sense in allowing people to consume or sell something that was produced illegally.

Anyway, it's as shame to see things going backwards in Netherlands ;(

The Vice show Weediquette had a good episode [1] where they looked at these aspects of the cannabis industry in The Netherlands. It's bizarre that the coffee shops are fully allowed to sell something that there is no legal way to produce or acquire in the country. The government even prosecutes many distributors and growers. And they wonder why organized crime is having such an impact on that industry?

[1]: https://www.viceland.com/en_us/video/half-baked/56fae505be4a...

It's funny, I was in Amsterdam this year and different from the experience of most of my international visitors, the whole place felt restrictive in terms of marijuana, not liberated. Denver, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver / Victoria (Canada) and parts of California now have what I believe to be much more liberal "marijuana cultures" than Amsterdam now. Vancouver literally has hundreds of marijuana dispensaries in its downtown even though pot is still technically illegal in Canada (for now.)

The Dutch coffeeshop model was cutting edge back in the 90's when no one else was doing it, but as you said it's incredibly outdated compared to the explosion of high quality dispensaries we are seeing across the Pacific coastal areas of Canada and the U.S.

I don't know about that. The dispensaries in California only allow sale to people for medicinal purposes, and only with permission from a doctor. California has recently legalized marijuana possession for non-medical (recreational) use, but there's still no legal way today to sell marijuana in California for non-medical purposes (though that should be coming in a couple of years).

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands you didn't need permission from a doctor or anyone else to buy marijuana from a coffeshop. Recreational marijuana use was implicitly sanctioned -- something that most of the United States still has a problem with (though a handful of states are changing their mind).

Then there's the Federal laws against any kind of marijuana use, a very hard-headed, close-minded policy that forbids even the use of purely medicinal marijuana derivatives without psychoactive effects, much less recreational use.

Finally, there's the issue of drug testing, which no states (to my knowledge) have opposed. So you could still be effectively be prevented from using marijuana if you have to submit to drug tests or anti drug policies at your place of work.

I will clarify that most of my experience is with the Pacific Northwest of U.S. and Canada, most of which now enjoys defacto legalization driven in part by the medical loophole.

The article sounds like they're not selling drugs on the street. That wasn't my experience when I visited Amsterdam.

On certain streets every couple of hundred feet there was some pusher asking if I wanted drugs. By the third day or so I was getting really annoyed with them. I was also offered drugs in a couple of nightclubs that I visited. I don't ever remember visiting a place where the drug sellers were so aggressive.

It's a very beautiful city and I recommended visiting. The people were friendly, the food fabulous and I would like to get back there some day.

>On certain streets every couple of hundred feet there was some pusher asking if I wanted drugs. By the third day or so I was getting really annoyed with them.

Get out of the RLD! The street dealers are a truly obnoxious blight on the city, but they are really only concentrated in certain areas. They prey on the gullible, party-driven young tourists on stag-dos and the like. Most often what they sell is fake, and infamously some years ago one fool was selling white heroin as cocaine, leading to several deaths and a city-wide campaign to encourage people to ignore street dealers and not to fear punishment for seeking medical help.

Maybe things changed in the past year, but my experience is exactly as you describe. In my entire time in Amsterdam I was never approached by dealers, except when I was in the Red Light District. Even after almost a decade, entering the RLD is still a bit of a 'culture shock'.

(and even much of the RLD is dealer-free; it's specific streets)

This was also my experience when I visited a few months ago. I didn't once get approached on the streets, but I certainly noticed that the RLD was a different culture (including one guy approaching someone else as a 'friend' then trying to start a fight with him in order to probably mug him). I can imagine that pushers are through that area but I guess I look big and ugly enough that they didn't bother approaching me.

Certainly outside the RLD throughout greater Nieuwmarkt was more hustle-bustle than the rest of the areas of Amsterdam that I saw, but I never felt like I was in a place I shouldn't be.

Dutch policy has become regressive, and has been overtaken by other countries. The semi-criminality of soft drugs in Netherlands still keeps the trade partially illegal and therefore of interest to organized crime. Complete legalization with healthy regulation would be a much better idea.

This article has… too many puns.

  > A report by the Bonger Instituut, a criminology think-tank named after a professor at the University of Amsterdam, is blunt

  > But as fewer coffeeshops are expected to cater to ever larger groups of stoners, that approach could leave them out of joint.

I hate this sort of ubiquitous, juvenile attitude about cannabis. It is completely annoying.

Articles in The Economist are always full of puns.

I love it.

> The Economist explains, man

I had to google "Bonger Instituut" to convince myself it wasn't a joke.

Mostly-non-toxic and non-habit-forming drugs that have the potential to change your values are dangerous to the status quo, and therefore morally reprehensible.

Alcohol and cigarettes, toxic and dangerous to users and bystanders, don't change your values, and enable control of a population.

The only reason this continues its farcical conflict in modern societies is the moral majority shout louder (and have more money) than potheads do.

Marijuana while generally not physically addictive can be habit-forming though. How else do you explain stoners? I'm not bashing pot but I know people who were different people before adopting "pot as a lifestyle." I'm drawing the distinction here between recreational user and non-medicinal multiple times a day daily user, with "stoner" being the latter.

You're right, I misspoke, it is habit forming and non-addictive.

>the moral majority shout louder (and have more money) //

Yet, the very rich seem to be doing drugs like nobody's business. Half of the stories you hear on TV couch shows seem to be "well all us celebrities were high on cocaine, again, and blah, blah, blah".

If you wanted to round up drug users you could probably just do a pat-down at the BBC and supplement that with a dawn-raid on the top 20 media personalities of the moment.

I think there is a genuine risk that widescale and easy access to certain drugs can damage a country's productivity, which in turn damages the elites' profits; personally that seems the most likely reason for most drug laws, mixed in with a not-insignificant amount of protecting people from themselves, for sure.

Our drug laws should approach psychedelic drugs differently from the rest. I strongly believe this.

I've been to Amsterdam 6 times over the past 10 years and every time it gets harder to find a coffee shop. Pubs galore, obviously.

I was there recently. In the Canal District they looked very abundant still.

I was there a few days ago and it wasn't hard to find the coffeshops, but it's was often really hard to find available seating.

Thankfully quite a lot of pubs that sell alcohol (but not weed) allow/encourage people to bring and smoke their own joints (as long as they don't contain tobacco, which is banned).

The tobacco thing is only really enforced if you ask them if it's allowed. We roll with tobacco and at the most they'll come ask you to hide your fag packet/filters in case the police come in.

And the weirdest thing is that the prerolled joints are 95% of the time rolled with (a lot of) tobacco. And those are perfectly fine to sell and smoke in the coffeeshop!

Are they? I've only ever seen them mixed with that incense stuff.

Huh, not as far as I know. There certainly are a lot that are sold with tobacco. Maybe it depends on whether or not the coffeeshop has an isolated smoking room, which means they could have tobacco inside.

There are some bars that encourage weed smoking, often those that were once a coffeeshop themselves but lost their license (Hill Street Blues, for example). The vast majority of bars in the city however would be quite upset with it and do forbid it.

I visited Amsterdam almost 20 years ago. I'm very square. I struggled to find a place to just buy a coffee!

Re: Comments about crime, things may have changed but I found it to be very safe. Perhaps not as safe as Tokyo, but better than the South side of Chicago or the tenderloin in SF.

It's safe. There's no question about that.

I don't think this is the issue.

One thing is that the laws have never really been clear. In 2016, it's hard to have 'local flex' on many things.

Everything is observed.

This is one of the big drawbacks of globalization: every little bit of odd-behaviour is scrutinized from a global and legal perspective.

'Local cultural context' is not possible, and basically ignored.

With a microphone a camera and a twitter feed on every corner, everything must be 'sanitized'.

I'm willing to accept a few greasy wheels, a bit of foul language so long as I know that the locals can handle/deal with it.

This is a very true point and sad consequence of both globalization and technological interconnectedness.

In New Zealand I have heard stories about how a few decades ago in rural parts of the country, pubs used to stay open well past national closing hour limits, due to a general nonchalance and attitude among the locals that we "we-just-do-things-differently-here." Local police just looked the other way.

That kind of flagrant disregard for laws where they don't fit the desire of local populations is starting to die out, as globalization combined with technology is sterilizing the power of local cultures to develop their own quirks, customs and ways of doing things without accountability. Where local discretion used to reign, rigid codified standards have taken over.

I think Amsterdam is safe, in the sense that I don't feel there's much reason to fear for your physical well-being. However, when I visited (mid 2000's), the main train station's PA message loop included warnings about pickpockets.

Yeah, Amsterdam is very safe. But there has been an influx of pickpockets in Amsterdam as well as many other cities. Even cities like Utrecht (close to Amsterdam, but still a relatively small town) seem to have significantly more beggars and homeless these days. I also noticed an increase of beggars in the trains, leaving notes and packs of gum or whatnot at every table in the cabin.

It worries me slightly, not because I'm bothered by it but because I can imagine it having significant effect on the rise of populism.

Is it safe even for muslims?

Yes? I'm not sure what you're getting at...

if there are pickpockets a station will warn. it happens sometimes but not always.

I remember those signs! They have one of my favorite Dutch words, 'zakkenroller' (pickpocket) :)

Other than "every cafe in town?"

This is what happens when you take two bad ideas - illegalization of victimless vice and overregulation of industry - and make them sleep in the same bed.

The coffeeshop model was a cute Dutch experiment in the beginning but it is groaning with scale. The model has to be scrapped and re-thought, or it will continue to be manipulated by "well-meaning" laws that shutter coffeeshops becaue they just happen to be located within the prohibited radius of schools, even if such schools only teach hairdressing to adults.

Petty-internet-argument-deflection-shield: soft vices like marijuana are victimless when safe and legal. Criminalization puts it in the hands of criminals.

last time i checked there was still a street next to the Dam with ten or so of these operations. They're not going away anytime soon. But you have to realise pot stinks immensely. it is no fun to have a street smell of weed. So some restrictions in the center of Amsterdam are in order, else the inner city will be clouded in pot-smog.

Weird, I've never heard anyone describe the smell of weed as stinky. It's strong and distinct, sure, but not bad smelling.

Anyway, you have it backwards. Because the coffeeshops are getting overcrowded people are basically forced to smoke outside instead, which is obviously way more smelly than people smoking inside coffeeshops (which can be odorless outside if done properly).

Weed has always smelled to me of skunk spray. By potheads it's been described to me as "gods vagina" smell, which doesn't seem much better. If one had sensitivity to scent, a cityscape reeking of weed would be fairly unpleasant.

I think it's an "acquired taste" kind of thing: it doesn't smell nice... until it does.

God's vagina is actually a really clever way to describe it. Pungent, and to a large degree unpleasant to many people, but irresistible if you're into that sort of thing.

Pot smoke is routinely described as stinky. Lots & lots of people, including me do not like the smell.

That said I'm not sure the smell would be a reason to criminalize it.

Indeed it's a distinctive smell that many find obnoxious, like cigarette smoke to non-smokers (personally I don't mind either). In the UK the police at various times have handed out scratch-and-sniff cards with a "smell this smell nearby, call the police" because of the distinctive nature of the smell. I'd say another analogue would be ripe cheese, to a cheese lover it's probably delicious to someone else it's sweaty-foot smell.

Oh yes, the smell of weed is most certainly stinky. I lived in Washington, D.C. for a time and you could regularly walk past a group of folks and get hit in the face quite abruptly by the repugnant odor.

Yep. "Damn, that shit smells skunky!" is generally an observation that it smells as though it's high quality. The similarity to the smell of a skunk is certainly there, though personally I don't find it nearly as offensive as driving past a roadkill skunk, and further the scent doesn't stick around for very long at all (unlike the smell of tobacco, which I believe is due to the fact that the tar content of marijuana smoke is significantly lower than tobacco, so it isn't as 'sticky').

I have. It usually implies quality.

There are around 155 coffeeshops in Amsterdam, a number which is only decreasing as the Gemeente are not issuing new coffeeshop licenses and coffeeshops have and continue to be closed due to city cleaning-up initiatives and on occasion related crime, but still far more than 10.

And that is why San Francisco and LA are going to EXPLODE with tourist. Snapchat central, here we come. The Kids are running the show now. Amsterdam was cool, but that's kind of last year.

LA is rocking! :-)

Question from someone who hasn't been to the US in 2 decades:

Is the MJ culture of the US where it's legalised (Colorado, LA, etc.) such that you get coffeeshops like the Netherlands, or is it more a dispensery style arrangement where you buy it for consumption in a private premises such as your home, or both?

Dispensary style. Public consumption is almost universally outlawed AFAIK.

Do they serve coffee at these shops?

Yes. They cannot serve alcohol but otherwise they can serve snacks and other non-alcoholic drinks. I enjoyed a decent espresso coffee and some juice.

Culturally, it's a place where people come to e.g.: play a game or three of chess with some mates and just chill and socialise. Barring alcohol, the rest of what you can purchase more or less aligns with what you'd expect people would want in that sort of situation.

People go to Colorado now instead?

The Economist is up to turning Dutch economy hotter. Nice PR piece.

Honestly Amsterdam has in many ways become a place for British tourists being super annoying. If closing coffeeshops is what it takes for the place to become more enjoyable for the rest of us I'm not mad.

Fascinating from the perspective of someone who lives just outside of Washington DC, where marijuana has essentially been legalized. My friends who smoke tell me that, while it's illegal to sell weed, it's not illegal to give it away. So there are now shops that sell old newspapers for $50 each, but you get a free bag of high-grade weed along with it. It will be interesting to see the effects this has on other crimes and illegal drug use in a few years of study.

Having toured Amsterdam on a business trip, I was surprised that, even with the easy access to weed and prostitution, taxi drivers would not take me to certain historical sites in the city because they were too dangerous. The "safe" section of the city was fairly small, with the rest of it overrun with harder drugs and crime. With more American states legalizing and decriminalizing, we'll soon get to compare with the Dutch experiment.

Small side note, Amsterdam has it's issues here and there with crime, for sure, but saying there is only a small "Safe" section is complete nonsense. Most historical sites are completely safe, except maybe for pickpockets, like any major tourist congregation.

The major problem in Amsterdam is the taxi drivers. They refuse to take you somewhere because the distance is not enough for them to make some money on (even though this practice is illegal). They are aggressive, do not know their way around town and are general assholes. The market was deregulated, i.e. everybody with a roof light is now a taxi, they even have fake signs from "reputable" taxi companies.

TL;DR Amsterdam is safe Amsterdam Taxis are crazy bad.

I was surprised by the parent comment as well. I visited Amsterdam last summer and walked to pretty much every part of the city, also took a train to other towns and didn't see hard drugs & anything even moderately unsafe.

I find that US average cities are order of magnitude more "run by hard drugs and unsafe". In SF I walk by sketchy areas and piles of needles everyday, you can't really avoid it.

I have found this out also. Amsterdam is a fantastic place I encourage all to go and visit.

>Most historical sites are completely safe

I'd contend literally every site of historical interest in the NL is safe. Which would you consider unsafe?

Neglecting, of course, pickpockets; they're not really a threat to personal safety, they're in every city with lots of tourists, and among big tourism destinations in Europe (Paris, Rome, Barcelona, etc.) the pickpocket issue is anecdotally much less severe.

Yes, Amsterdam is safe, especially within the ring.

Those pickpockets though - rapacious and bold. Much worse than Rome or Paris for example.

>Much worse than Rome or Paris for example.

Anecdotally, I think the opposite is true. There are far more noticeable scammers and pickpockets in for example touristy areas of Paris, or even its metros.

It's surprisingly hard for me to find concrete data on this, however. I'm curious to know.

I can confirm on Paris. Been to Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Paris has been definitively the worst, with all the scammers around Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur. Lisbon also felt a bit weird in some places.

All the other cities were fine, though I've heard many stories from my colleagues about Barcelona.

Scammers yes worse in Paris, but not pickpockets in my experience. Might have been lucky.

TBH probably depends what time of the year and where you go.

What really annoys me is the acceptance of these cities with their existence. Amsterdam trams will warn you whether there are pickpockets on board (zakkenrollers). So they're easy to spot by the locals. But I've never seen real policing. I have seen pickpockets do almost full body searches on unsuspecting tourists on crowded trams.

And they get very menacing when they know that you know what they're up to.

What can they do? It's obviously in the city's interest to squash the pick-pocketing as much as possible, but it's not easy to police against. It's like bike theft. Bikes get stolen all the time but there's little that can be done to stop it.

I tend to avoid areas where they'd congregate and I don't especially look like a tourist, so there's probably some confirmation bias at play.

What about using surveillance cameras?

I presume that pickpockets aren't going around wearing masks, so it should be possible to identify them from surveillance camera footage, no?

Stations and even heavily trafficked parts of the RLD are already covered with cameras, so they're clearly only so effective.

I take it you didn't read any discworld novells. There, the thieves guild is allowed a low ratio of unprocecuted thieving in return for their protection from unlicensed thieves.

I did my share to piss of Amsterdam Taxi drivers. I stayed 8 days at the hotel attached to the airport. Every morning I walked across the skybridge and hired a taxi to drive me to a datacenter on the other side of the airport (Perhaps 8km/10-12min).

> The "safe" section of the city was fairly small, with the rest of it overrun with harder drugs and crime

Do you have any stat to support this? I've never heard anything like this about Amsterdam

From a quick (and totally unscientific) search on google, the first result report that Amsterdam has less crime that many other cities https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp being listed 273th vs Washington's 46th and many other cities

I'm surprised by this. My parents live in Amsterdam so I've been there a lot and they've never told me to stay away from certain places at night. It's a city so it's not perfectly safe but I've never encountered this there

It's because there's really nowhere you should avoid for your own safety at night, and the OP was fed a fantastically untrue story of the city.

>Having toured Amsterdam on a business trip, I was surprised that, even with the easy access to weed and prostitution, taxi drivers would not take me to certain historical sites in the city because they were too dangerous. The "safe" section of the city was fairly small, with the rest of it overrun with harder drugs and crime

You were fed nonsense by the taxi driver. This sentiment that only a small part of Amsterdam is safe and that the rest is overrun with crime and hard drugs is positively ludicrous and unfounded. It's blatantly untrue.

Here it's ranked 5th safest city in the world by the Economist:

http://safecities.economist.com/infographics/safe-cities-ind...

Friendly advice: Next time you're in Amsterdam don't get a Taxi. Rent a bike.

Cycling in a cycling-friendly city is a great experience you shouldn't miss.

That's unlikely - I lived and worked in Amsterdam downtown for half a decade till a couple of years ago, and I didn't find a single issue in that regard. Please note this involves going out weekly, late at night and everything else.

A different topic is Taxi drivers. Possibly the least reliable, most obnoxious, literally dishonest people I had the pleasure to interact with in the NL. I'd rather walk home for 30+ minutes in a cold, dark night than having to interact with them in any form.

Amsterdam is one of the safer cities in the world - I really don't know where you got that impression from. I can only think of Tokyo at the top of my head for a safer "world class city" experience. You likely couldn't get into serious trouble in Amsterdam even if you went out seeking it.

Yes, the taxi drivers suck and should be avoided whenever possible.

> taxi drivers would not take me to certain historical sites in the city because they were too dangerous. The "safe" section of the city was fairly small, with the rest of it overrun with harder drugs and crime.

I live in the Netherlands about 25 minutes south of Amsterdam, and there is no place in the Netherlands even remotely unsafe. The country as a whole is ranked either as the safest or second-safest country in the world, and Amsterdam in particular is ranked as one of the safest cities in the world. I have carried expensive scientific equipment through the "shadiest" parts of Amsterdam around 1am - typically the worst hour for crime - and did not feel unsafe for a minute [0].

Additionally, pretty much the only place in Amsterdam even remotely "unsafe" is the Slotermeer [1], to the far west of the city. There is pretty much nothing remotely historical there; if there are any tourists in the area it's because they are lost.

By the way, in 2015 Washington DC had 119 murders with a population of 658,000. Amsterdam had 15 murders with a population of 1.3 million. That's 18 murders per 100,000 in your home city vs barely one per 100,000 in Amsterdam.

Aside from the numbers, I have been in places that are legitimately unsafe, like the over-the-hill area in Nassau, Bahamas (neighborhoods with more than 90 murders per 100,000) or dangerous areas of Ukraine (where the police won't do anything unless you pay them.) There's a certain atmosphere of crime that you can feel, and Amsterdam does not have that at all.

[0] Funny enough, the only time I had a problem carrying the equipment was in the Charles de Gaulle airport, where I was harassed for about an hour by the supremely stupid airport screeners while they tried to figure out if it was a bomb. Meanwhile, they let two full bottles of water through. Security theater at its finest.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Am...

Too many replies for me to reply to each individually, but I did some further research and stand corrected on my understanding of Amsterdam and safety. The crime statistics do not support what I was (mis)lead to believe. I appreciate all of the feedback.

http://mpdc.dc.gov/marijuana

As a result, it is legal for a person who is at least 21 years old to:

Possess two ounces or less of marijuana; Transfer one ounce or less of marijuana to another person who is at least 21 years old, so long as there is no payment made or any other type of exchange of goods or services;

A person can still be arrested for:

Selling any amount of marijuana to another person; Possessing more than two ounces of marijuana;

Like what, the cabbie could be car-jacked in Amsterdam? I do not belive you. Maybe the cabbie figured he wouldn't find a passenger for the return ride and declined.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com