The fight against the image of the “city” drug tourism” has led to the fact that in the popular tourist metropolis began mass repression against tourist shops. In Amsterdam, seven tourist shops were closed at once, which sold joints to tourists and were officially charged with the illegal sale of soft drugs.
According to the Dutch media, seven souvenir and tobacco shops in the center of Amsterdam were closed on this charge. The vendors were caught red-handed – a police investigation revealed that these shops had a significant amount of drug mixtures, which in Amsterdam can only be sold in special “coffee shops” under strict health and safety rules.
At the same time, it is noted that it is profitable to sell weed in the most touristic places. All affected shops are located in the city center and located on the main tourist routes. According to the city authorities, “trafficking, use and the presence of drugs adversely affect public order”, and this can lead to “insecurity of tourists and local residents due to inconvenience and attraction of the store to criminal activity.”
When In December 2022, the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, announced plans to deploy special control groups for illegal “jambs”. The first raid was carried out on March 23, and here again the police checked ten stores and said that seven of them contained soft drugs. To give you a sense of scale, police say they found 2,540 pre-rolled joints containing a total of 1,270 grams of cannabis. Moreover, the stores are owned by Q&Q Tabak & Souvenirs BV, run by 44-year-old Davud Kvadri, who, by the way, arrived in the Netherlands as a refugee from Afghanistan twenty years ago.
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