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Comment by bregma | Hacker News Reader

Canada shares a border with the USA (where persecution of cannabis use is a billion-dollar profitable industry) and has made no effort to dissuide cannabis tourism. On the contrary: we welcome it it open doors.

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> On the contrary: we welcome it it open doors.

Well good for you, but as someone who lives in the centre of Amsterdam I can understand the motivation to discourage drug tourism.

Edit: to clarify it's not the reams of tourists getting high in coffee shops that I have a problem with, but the knock-on effects of it. Tourists treat the city like an adult themepark and recently the city council have been taking steps to address these problems.

I am personally more annoyed by the drunk people than i am by the high/stoned people.

If people were just smoking weed that wouldn't be a problem.

In other words, heavy tourism is a problem, no matter what drives it.

Amsterdam is still clean and quiet compared to other major cities. To be honest, I suspect the main factor to be the red light district. Just visit the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. I'd argue it's much worse and they don't offer legal weed. To be clear, I'm not arguing for or against prostitution, but against prostitution as a tourist attraction.

It's hard to see how you can have prostitution and it not be a tourist attraction.

If prostitution was legal, or decriminalized (I believe sex workers and advocates prefer decriminalization over legalization), everywhere, it wouldn't be much of a tourist attraction.

In Germany prostitution is legal and with the exception of st Pauli the red light districts are the opposite of tourist attractions.

I think the relatively small size (land area and population) of the Netherlands and the length of time that things have been going on have both contributed to that. A country newly legalizing pot probably has a lot less to worry about WRT rambunctious tourists.

> recently the city council have been taking steps to address these problems

I was in Amsterdam this morning and everyone I talked to explicitly mentioned it being done against drunk Englishmen on stag dos. I remember myself hating fractious drunk English stag parties, and have fond memories of pointing polite and hapless stoned Italians to the street we were already on.

Tourists from the UK are reviled by Amsterdam and they’ve ruined it so much the entire city centre now has an alcohol ban.

It has nothing to do with weed.

Well the UK is near and there are cheap flights so yeah that combined with Amsterdam's reputation and the way certain people like to "represent" the UK abroad is a pretty bad mix. But there's just tons of people from all countries all over the world that are smoking weed under your window, pissing on the street, don't watch out for cyclists and so on. You don't fix Amsterdam by banning the Brits.

Also, Dutch stag parties seem not to be that far off what happens in the UK.

> we welcome it it open doors.

In general, they're not really a completely open border. They're pretty strict about who they let in. They'll check into your US 'criminal record' and make judgements based on that. (A bit of an overeach.. but a bit weird if you have a DUI and they reject you [that's their policy])

I'm not sure why they get a complete pass to claim that they're the good guys when the US isn't as picky. (Yes, the US is a PITA to travel to)

>where persecution of cannabis use is a billion-dollar profitable industry

Source?

Billions of dollars are spent prosecuting and jailing cannabis users, growers and merchants. The money comes from the taxpayers and goes to the companies and government agencies that do it. If you draw a surface that envelops the prison and policing industry but excludes taxpayers, it will look like billions are flowing in from weed enforcement.

google "war on drugs" and "prison industrial complex"

Private prison industry. Incentive wise they have every incentive to fight cannabis reform. Easy convictions -> more convictions -> more demand for prisons.

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