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Comment by ideonexus | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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).

>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...

> 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.

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.

> 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...

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.

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.

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