Tourists in the South of the Netherlands
Drug tourism in Maastricht.
Last weekend it was a strange weekend in the South of the Netherlands as the owners of shops in Maastricht had decided to let foreigners in their establishments again. By the local law coffeeshops are not allowed to sell cannabis to people who are not registered as citizens of the Netherlands. But the local coffeeshop owners decided to sell their fine herbs to tourists on Sunday the 5th of may (National Liberation Day) as it seemed an appropriate move to not ban tourists from the shops.
Unfortunately the local government didn’t agree with the action and on Monday at least 3 people got arrested in during a police raid in coffeeshop “Mississippi”, one of the local coffeeshops.
In total 3 different coffeeshops got raided in the last weeks and there will be a court case on the 12th of June. Hopefully the judge will decide the mayor is wrong and foreigners might be welcome in the coffeeshops again after that. Tha mayor of Maastricht, Onno Hoes, does not seem to promise to much hope for coffeeshop owners. For now street dealers are still very much around in Maastricht, selling weed to foreigners, but also to locals.
We strongly advice tourists to not visit Maastricht for cannabis related reasons at the moment. It is a beautiful city and definitely worth a visit, but be careful with street dealers there. It would be better to travel to a city a bit less South to be able to purchase weed. Maastricht is only 200 kilometers away from Rotterdam and a very nice city as well.
We will try to keep you updated if anything changes to the drug laws in the South of course.