Canada shares a border with the USA (where persecution of cannabis use is a billion-dollar profitable industry) and has made no effort to dissuide cannabis tourism. On the contrary: we welcome it it open doors.
Well good for you, but as someone who lives in the centre of Amsterdam I can understand the motivation to discourage drug tourism.
Edit: to clarify it's not the reams of tourists getting high in coffee shops that I have a problem with, but the knock-on effects of it. Tourists treat the city like an adult themepark and recently the city council have been taking steps to address these problems.
> recently the city council have been taking steps to address these problems
I was in Amsterdam this morning and everyone I talked to explicitly mentioned it being done against drunk Englishmen on stag dos. I remember myself hating fractious drunk English stag parties, and have fond memories of pointing polite and hapless stoned Italians to the street we were already on.
Tourists from the UK are reviled by Amsterdam and they’ve ruined it so much the entire city centre now has an alcohol ban.
Well the UK is near and there are cheap flights so yeah that combined with Amsterdam's reputation and the way certain people like to "represent" the UK abroad is a pretty bad mix. But there's just tons of people from all countries all over the world that are smoking weed under your window, pissing on the street, don't watch out for cyclists and so on. You don't fix Amsterdam by banning the Brits.
Also, Dutch stag parties seem not to be that far off what happens in the UK.
Amsterdam is still clean and quiet compared to other major cities. To be honest, I suspect the main factor to be the red light district. Just visit the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. I'd argue it's much worse and they don't offer legal weed. To be clear, I'm not arguing for or against prostitution, but against prostitution as a tourist attraction.
If prostitution was legal, or decriminalized (I believe sex workers and advocates prefer decriminalization over legalization), everywhere, it wouldn't be much of a tourist attraction.
I think the relatively small size (land area and population) of the Netherlands and the length of time that things have been going on have both contributed to that. A country newly legalizing pot probably has a lot less to worry about WRT rambunctious tourists.
In general, they're not really a completely open border. They're pretty strict about who they let in. They'll check into your US 'criminal record' and make judgements based on that. (A bit of an overeach.. but a bit weird if you have a DUI and they reject you [that's their policy])
I'm not sure why they get a complete pass to claim that they're the good guys when the US isn't as picky. (Yes, the US is a PITA to travel to)
Billions of dollars are spent prosecuting and jailing cannabis users, growers and merchants. The money comes from the taxpayers and goes to the companies and government agencies that do it. If you draw a surface that envelops the prison and policing industry but excludes taxpayers, it will look like billions are flowing in from weed enforcement.
Private prison industry. Incentive wise they have every incentive to fight cannabis reform. Easy convictions -> more convictions -> more demand for prisons.
