Marijuana Ban In Netherlands Has Tourists, Coffee Shops Outraged

Planning a trip to the Netherlands? Be warned: if you were planning to buy a little, ahem, marijuana with your coffee and baked goods, a new rule that bans selling the drug to tourists has rolled out today. Now, coffee shops (which sell marijuana in other food products) and protesters have taken to the streets against the new rule.

The new rule would make it illegal for coffee shops to sell to anyone not registered for a "weed pass" or with a local address, says the Washington Post.

In Maastricht, Netherlands, a border town close to Belgium and Germany, 300 coffee shops signed a protest to the mayor against the new ruling, One coffee shop was given a warning for not producing a list of those registered to openly buy marijuana from the shop, reports Radio Netherlands Worldwide. Those opposed to the ban say it's actually creating more crime by pushing the drug-selling trade underground. Nearby in Tilburg, coffee shops continued to sell ready-to-smoke joints next to food items in defiance.

However, the ruling may never take effect in Amsterdam, home to nearly a third of the country's coffee shops.