Dutch Conservatives Crack Down on Coffee Shops

For international travelers, Amsterdam has long served as a kind of nirvana. Considered a forward-thinking capital light years ahead of the rest of the world, much of the city's exceptional status is due to its coffee shops -- essentially marijuana bars -- where smoking pot is perfectly legal. Coupled with other liberal sex and drug laws that have ensured a level of tolerance no European city can rival, Amsterdam has acted for many as a role model of what an enlightened 21st-century city should be.

But things aren't always what they seem. In recent years the Netherlands, like many countries around the world, has witnessed a rise in conservative power and, with that, a corresponding tightening of its once-famous looseness. The legendary Dutch credo "anything goes" is increasingly becoming a thing of the past, and nowhere is this more apparent than in its coffee shops.

The signs began to appear back in 2004, when the Dutch government consented to ban smoking in public -- a measure fiercely resisted by coffee shops fearing they'd take the biggest hit. The government quickly U-turned, bowing to pressure from the hotel and catering industry, and lifted the ban "indefinitely," giving the industry time to exhale. Marijuana retailers, always considered a separate sector, were quickly made exempt, and within days it was back to lighting up as usual.

While the uproar settled and coffee shops seemingly avoided extinction, their existence continues to be silently and systematically stubbed out. Those who flock to the Netherlands seeking its unique tourist niche may not know it, but new coffee shop licenses are rarely issued, and strict regulations have further curbed existing numbers. Closed shops go unreplaced, and the overall number continues to dwindle, dropping from 1,500 nationwide to roughly 737 today. Amsterdam, once the Wild West of the European drug trade, has 250 shops where it once had 800.

"You have to think three times about everything you do. It's getting worse every year," says Ferry Hansen, owner of Get A Life coffee shop in Amsterdam. Hansen, who has been in the business for 14 years, has seen government policies tighten as once vague laws, set in place for years, have become rigorously enforced. "The government is trying to control more and more. If you follow the law, they can't say anything, but in the long run, they'll probably get what they want."

Much of the push towards more stringent control can be attributed to the Christian Democrats (CDA), the most powerful party in the Dutch coalition government, which went on the offensive as soon as it won elections in 2002. Headed by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, a devout Christian who blamed growing juvenile drug use on the cannabis industry -- even though the minimum legal age to enter a coffee shop is 18 -- the CDA immediately promoted a "zero option" on tolerance. "This is not a battle we're going to win overnight," Marcel Maer, a CDA spokesman told Britain's Sunday Times just days after the election. "But we will chip away at the coffee shops, greatly reducing their number over the next two years until hopefully we can get rid of them altogether."

Many of the regulations the government now enforces were actually established in 1996 in an effort to standardize the industry, which had developed from being reasonably discreet in the late 1970s to unrestrained in the late 1980s. It was then, at the height of ecstasy consumption, that a number of coffee shops peddled both hard and soft drugs, bucking the division of markets they purported to support. Bowing to international pressure, the Netherlands began restricting coffee shop numbers, working in tandem with the Bond van Cannabis Detaillisten, a union of organized coffee shop owners who agreed -- much to their commercial advantage -- that their numbers should be halved and remaining licenses be made nontransferable.