 Hello, my name is Peter Sharosi and you are watching Drug Reporter Cafe, our online video series on global drug policy developments. Today we are going to discuss the plan of the Amsterdam mayor and city council to ban foreign tourists from coffee shops in Amsterdam. The cafes that have been selling cannabis since the 1970s, politicians claim that the coffee shops are generating so-called low-value tourism that these young people are going to Amsterdam to smoke and party but who have absolutely no interest in other sites of the city. We tried to interview the city council but they did not respond to our invitation, but we have here a guest with us who will discuss this issue with us, who represents the association of coffee shop owners and he is a coffee shop owner himself and a researcher and a well-known cannabis activist Joachim Helms. Hello Joachim, how are you? Thank you for accepting our invitation. Yes, Kassenheim to you too. Thank you for the invitation and I like to talk about this subject, so thank you for that. So let's start explaining how the coffee shop system works in the Netherlands, so how it was created and how it is regulated now for those who don't know them. Okay, in a nutshell it's a very bizarre system, if I explain it to you, we are used to it of course, but let me explain how it all started, so 40 years ago roughly the government decided that it would be better to separate the hard drugs, which we consider heroin and cocaine and everything from the soft drugs, so we have a distinction between soft drugs and hard drugs, soft drugs being cannabis, hashis and weed and edibles, so then the coffee shops were created, so to create a safe environment for the people to go inside, to get their information about all the different strains and the effects and also a place to sit down and have a coffee or a drink and be with friends and be safe and smoke a joint as well, so that was created about 40 years ago and it worked really well, we have also the result on public health for example is that young people and a lot of young people like to smoke cannabis, at least to try also and figure out if it's something that they like and if they want to buy it in an illegal situation they have to go to a dealer and they often also have other drugs, so by making that distinction between soft drugs and hard drugs we don't have many hard drugs addicts in the Netherlands, we do have them just like any other country but if you look in the ranking let's say we are very low on the ranking so not a lot of people use hard drugs in the Netherlands compared to other countries, so that worked really well from a public health point of view and then the bizarre thing about it is that they organize that pretty good but then the backside of the coffee shop, so we are allowed it's tolerated to sell up to five grams per person but then the backside of the coffee shop where the weed comes in that's never been organized good, so we always say the front door of the coffee shop has been organized really well and the back door of the coffee shop has not been organized. How did the current COVID epidemic affect your businesses? Yeah it was interesting in the first week of the first lockdown I think every country in Europe and well worldwide probably had a first lockdown and probably everybody remembers what they were at the moment that they announced it. In the Netherlands they announced on the Sunday afternoon at 5.30 they announced that everything has to be closed at six o'clock bars restaurants shops and also coffee shops and what happened then was something that we have never seen before there were huge lines in front of the coffee shop you know and people want you heard that they only had half an hour and to get you know their cannabis and they didn't know how long it would take so everybody was rushing to the coffee shop to get their last few grams because yeah you never know how long it would take right so that is when we discovered that cannabis actually is up there on the on the primary products that the people like to use you know so it was obvious that alcohol and supermarkets etc were accounted as essential business but they tried for 24 hours to close the coffee shops but it was proven pretty quickly that cannabis and the coffee shops were also an essential business so they kept us open for takeaway so we're not open for for hospitality but we are open for takeaway. So some people and including the mayor of Amsterdam say that the coffee shops attract foreign tourists to the city who are not really interested in Amsterdam's cultural sites but more like partying and making nuisance on the street so so what do you think about those accusations? Well I think a lot of things about these accusations anybody that is smoking cannabis know that you know somebody who smokes cannabis is after smoking cannabis is not going on the street and making a lot of noise and causing nuisance so I think that picture of the the smoker is a little bit exaggerated. I also don't really agree with the accusation that the tourists only come for a coffee shop to smoke cannabis because you know the the young people can smoke cannabis anywhere also in their home country you know so of course if you live in England you will find a way to to smoke cannabis if you smoke if you live in Spain or if you live in Budapest you know if you want to smoke cannabis you will find it and and cannabis is really not the only reason why the the young people would come to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a really nice city you know we have we have a very tolerant image we are a liberal city with a lot of freedom and this appeals to a lot of people and after the first lockdown we had in June July August was a little bit lifted the restrictions so what you saw then was that a lot of young people came back to Amsterdam because they like to travel and Amsterdam is very appealing to them so a lot of young people came back to Amsterdam and it is a fact if you look worldwide that you know young people like to smoke cannabis it's cannabis is rising in popularity alcohol is a little bit reducing if you look at at America in Canada where it's really legal you see that a lot of young people like to smoke cannabis so it was it was not the in my opinion not the the reason that they would come to Amsterdam I think a lot of young people like Amsterdam as a vibrant tolerant city and that will always be like that I think and and and they also go to the Misia and they also go to the shops and they stay in a hotel of course there will always be people that you know come in the car and and you know can't afford a hotel but they like to see the city so they sleep in the car this is something that the the police can do something about you know and and if it causes news and of course they have to act on that but that's not the majority of the tourists that come to Amsterdam it seems it's not only the coffee shops that are debated but also like there are proposals to push the red lamp district out from the city center and create a so-called kind of sex zone outside of the city center so do you think that there is the same purpose here behind this that they want to push the coffee shops outside of the city center and create somehow this coffee shop zone outside of the city or or what is the what is it behind this yeah it's a it's a complicated issue I think you know it's not there's not a quick fix solution to to that issue you know and I was talking about the coffee shops are around for 40 years but of course the red light district has been around for hundreds of years you know so it's such a historic thing and I think people always want to come and have a look and and the people that really would come and also make use of that of the red lights that that we have I think if you look at it from a broader perspective I think for a city like Amsterdam who has an issue with tourism like any other big city in in in the world really you know if you look at London has that problem Paris Barcelona I've been to Budapest it was very busy in the center every inner the center center of the big cities are very busy so I think if you look at that problem I think part of the solution is definitely to spread out the you know the attractions where the people want to go over the city you know and that doesn't not only go for the red light but that also goes for coffee shops and that also goes for mizia and it also goes for cinemas etc hotels it's very important of course to spread it out over the city so that not everybody comes to that small part of the city and with the result that it gets too busy there so what do we know about those bands that were introduced in other cities of the Netherlands because we know that in some of the border towns they already introduced bands on foreign tourists to buy Caribbean coffee shops do you see the impact of those bands yes we do see that and you see also the results of that this this started in 2012 when the government made that extra rule to ban the tourists from from the coffee shops so we have a couple of rules you know as a coffee shop that's we can't advertise no hard drugs no young people in the shop and 500 grand maximum in stock and they added the extra rule no tourists in the coffee shop and then they decided that the mayor of the city can decide to you know if they want to if they want to maintain that rule so if you know enforce that rule so a lot of cities are not enforcing that rule because they foresee big problems if they do one big city in the south of the Netherlands which you might have heard of is Maastricht because the Netherlands is kind of like ends in and like a small part on the right bottom and it's next to Belgium Luxembourg and Germany so there's a lot of countries around it and of course if Maastricht is the place where you can you know legally by or we there were a lot of people driving with the car to Maastricht and and and all the cars in the center were causing the disturbance you know so Maastricht enforced enforces the rule still but there are a lot of other cities that that turned back the rule actually they were enforcing the rule for example in Flesing and now they are stopping on the 1st of April because they see too many street dealers in the street and there's a lot of disturbance from them and then they see they see that the the tourist ban is not working for them it's causing too many problems and they're turning it back so they are having a trial for one year on the from the 1st of April but there's many other cities that turn it around they did enforce it but they turned it around because there was too much too much disturbance on the street so actually the result of enforcing that rule is is already quite clear do you have the numbers on like how many coffee shops are in Amsterdam and how much tax revenue they they generate for for the state well the tax revenue is is a probably a complicated number there's 167 coffee shops in Amsterdam there's about 500 and something in the Netherlands there's an average number on all coffee shops but but what it makes it difficult is that you have in the Netherlands some some big coffee shops if there's only two or three coffee shops in a city with many people then the coffee shops are much bigger and in Amsterdam we have 167 coffee shops so that means in the center we have coffee shops but there's many many coffee shops outside the center as well and they are those little coffee shops that serve the the local people and that's exactly the coffee shops that you would like you know so what they talk about now is that we have to make make the coffee shops smaller again by closing coffee shops but then of course if you close coffee shops then the coffee shops that remain will become bigger so our point of view is always if you want to make the coffee shops smaller to serve the local people then of course you should not close coffee shops but actually you should open more coffee shops the video you are watching now is produced by the rights reporter foundation a non-profit organization which is not supported by any governments or political parties if you like this show please support our work on our website the drugreporter.net make a donation today and become our supporting member it makes a difference thank you you know i'm wondering whether behind this kind of attacks and accusations against coffee shops now is it is it is it some hostility against cannabis itself or is it is it just that Amsterdam residents are really fed up with the mass tourism and it's its effect so is it because of cannabis or is it because of the the tourism that's a very good question and it's a question that i wonder myself every day the last couple of months because the discussion started really with the tourism you know there's too many tourism in the city that's what that what they say and we have to do something about that and then they started to talk about the tourist ban if what if we enforce the tourist ban maybe it will result in less tourists coming to Amsterdam you know so maybe being part of the solution this is how the discussion started but that's a complicated discussion because on one hand you want to make this the inner city you know better you know you want to also make it good for the people that live here but to do that if you close the coffee shops for tourists of course you will create a whole nother problem that's the problem of street dealers you know and those 24 hours that i just talked about that we were closed in in march last year showed us that that that creates a lot of problems because the street dealers went on the street and and of course they saw their chance they saw their chance so they you know handed out the menus to all the people they could buy everything on the list and not just hash and weed but also ecstasy and and everything else so you could see straight away the the results so by closing the coffee shops for tourists in the center you actually make the situation worse so now we have a second discussion and that's not the tourist situation anymore but that's we want to regulate the supply for the coffee shops but the coffee shops are too big so now we have to make them smaller and that's the reason why we have to do the tourist ban so we are a little bit lost in the discussion and and we have the same question that you just asked is this to solve the tourism problem because actually that was the original problem and and and we have solutions for that so that is not really that should not be the problem we can actually be part of the solution or is the problem that you know we want to close coffee shops and of course in the you know I've been in this business for 25 years and I've been fighting for legalization always and not just legalization from a business point of view but also from an activist point of view that I think you know cannabis is something that is not really that bad and it's actually really nice for some people and it's a really great alternative for people that don't want to get too drunk in the weekend so so yeah also for that reason I'm fighting for legalization yeah you already mentioned that there is a so-called backdoor policy so that the coffee shops are supplied through the backdoor illegally and cannabis is cultivated illegally do we know where the cannabis which you can buy in coffee shops in Amsterdam is grown in the Netherlands or is it imported from other countries yeah that is different for all the coffee shops and also that's part of the problem of not having it organized in a transparent way you know so we have always been lobbying to give the coffee shop the chance in a way of a license or or a tolerating system to produce the weed for its own supply because with that you you know you create a much safer product also because you are making sure that it has no pesticides you make sure that you know exactly what's inside the THC the CBD no heavy metals all those things you know so the cannabis consumer should have exactly the same rights as a beer drinker for example if you buy a beer bottle it says exactly what's inside that beer right I mean so many alcohol percentage and and these these different flavors etc so that should be the same for for the cannabis so at the moment it's not transparent coffee shops do have a way to to test that the product is clean there's basic basic things you can do you know you can look under the microscope there's easy ways to test the THC and the CBD so all the the good coffee shops do this already so they make sure that it's clean they look under the microscope and they check also how much THC and CBD is inside but it would be much better of course if we can do that in a in a well organized way a few years ago the Dutch government started an experiment with growing cannabis legally in some cities as pilot projects how is that experiment going well the experiment is not started in a way of production yet they are still in the phase of of selecting the growers well the growers have been selected and now they are going to do the procedure of getting all the checks that they are okay to start and then after that they will start building the facility and then they start growing of course and the government is in a rush they want to start quickly we noticed that luckily as you know I'm the spokesman for the for the industry for the for the for the coffee shop association and yeah it was it was a big step for the government also to speak with us because you can imagine if the justice department speaks with us the people that buy the weed illegal at the back door it puts them in kind of a situation officially of course because we are doing something illegal so the first meeting was a little bit awkward in a way to you know to to to meet with them and to to talk about our experience but we have a lot of experience from Canada and from America what we see in all the legal facilities so they saw that we bring a lot of information to the table and that we can really help them to build an experiment that would be successful so they were very content with that and they invited us many other times to to speak with them to come up with a system that works really well for the coffee shops for the government but in the end of course also for the consumer because the consumer is in the end you know the guy or the woman who buys the product and wants to smoke it so in the end it's the consumer that will make the experiment just success or not you know within civil society there are some discussions and debates on how Europe should regulate cannabis and some people are lobbying for an American kind of you know commercialized model and we also see some Canadian companies coming to Europe to to lobby for the very similar like regulation others are pointing out that Europe has its own way to deal with this like the Spanish cannabis social clubs and things like that what do you see what is what is your view how how we should proceed with regulating the cannabis market should we follow the U.S. or Canada or should we create a European star system well I think of course I have the most experience with the coffee shops you know and and what I like about the coffee shops is compared to for example the cannabis social clubs in Spain where you really have to be a member it's not really accessible for tourists and and the system is good you know it's better than having with illegal but what I like the social aspect of the coffee shop so I like that people from different cultures can come together you know if you would come to Amsterdam and you would join us at our table for example and we would have a coffee and maybe enjoy some cannabis in this way you meet so many different people you know and and not just the same people but also different people different religions and different cultures and I like I really like that aspect of the coffee shop so in that way we still have kind of a unique situation in the world but of course we have that limitation on the back door so if I would say what is my ideal situation then it would be to combine the Dutch situation where we have the coffee shop with the social element and then the system like in America or or or not in Canada really in some states is different of course but in America you can just grow the weed and you have that whole vertically integrated system so you have from from seed to you know the sale of the product everything's transparent with track and trace you can see where it's coming from and I think that's the system that works really well in Canada in yeah the the biggest state maybe where you know in in Ontario for example the the licensed producer first have to sell to the to the to the government to the OCS and then they will sell it to the dispensary or to the final consumer but in my opinion the government should not interfere so much with it in the end they have to accept it as any other product and and it has to produce it has to be produced in a safe way and the people have to you know get the information that they need to use it in a safe way but I think it's not something that the government should be involved with what do you think why the the Americans did not adopt the coffee shop system because there you can just go and buy it in the store but you can't smoke it there yeah what's the reason behind that I think the reason is that it's just a matter of time I think of course if you compare it with 10 years ago when the war on drugs was still full on and you know they were they were chasing after you know the growers and everything and people were locked up in prison I think they came from very far so in a way they already moved on way further than what we have here so if you look at it from that perspective I think they have come really far and what you see now in in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco you already have lounges where you can smoke also consumption lounges so I think it's just a matter of time and for example in Los Angeles you have already some places where you you can also smoke so there's a restaurant and in the restaurant you have just like in a wine restaurant where you have the sommelier talking about you know the different wines that go nice with the food in that restaurant you have a weed sommelier you know that gives the advice about you know what weed or concentrate or extract go nice with some of the dishes that they have on the menu and then you can have your vaporizer there or you can roll a joint and in a way that's also unique that's something that we don't have so I think it's it's growing and it's going very rapidly also in Las Vegas every time we travel there it moved on already way ahead of what we have in Europe so I think it will get there and also in Canada every year there are new things going on so also there it will happen so before we finish this conversation can you tell those young people who are watching us from other countries and maybe they want to go to Amsterdam to have fun after this lockdown is over and they may have plans to go to coffee shops so what can they expect if they go after the lockdown will they find still purchasable cannabis in coffee shops or are you seeing that this ban will be introduced no they are definitely welcome and they are also welcome in the coffee shop it's a debate that is going on it's a complicated discussion of course we want to be part of the solution and we don't want to be part of the problem but the good thing is that maybe it's also because of the lockdown I'm not sure but everybody's talking with each other and having discussions so there's a lot of things going on but the mayor and the city of Amsterdam are not moving that fast so it will take at least until 2022 probably the end of the year until if something would change but watch the social media everybody in Hungary because there's a lot of things on the social media truths and sometimes not truths but yeah people will see it if you are not welcome in the coffee shop anymore because it's really something that gets a lot of coverage yeah Joahem thank you so much for being with us and accepting our invitation yes good luck with your work yes and and thank you for those who are watching us on Facebook please share with this video with your friends and we are a non-profit organization depending on private donations so if you like Drug Reporter Cafe please give us a donation it makes a difference thank you very much and goodbye