Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema Talks About the Smoking Ban in the Red Light District

The smoking ban in part of the Amsterdam Red Light District has a small but clear effect. This is what Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema says at the city broadcaster AT5.

It is unknown whether many fines of 100 euros have been handed out. But blowers do take the ban into account. “What our enforcers notice is that if they meet people on the street who are smoking weed, they immediately put out their joint,” said the mayor. “Which means that people do realize that they are doing something that is not allowed. You set a new standard.”

It was world news, the smoking ban that took effect more than two weeks ago in the most busy part of the Red Light District. “For Amsterdam, the smoking ban is just one of many measures to tackle mass tourism and give residents more quality of life back,” wrote the German website, among other things. Tagesschau.de.

An alcohol ban was also imposed in the same area earlier. The pubs are no longer allowed to stay open all night indefinitely. And the smoking ban is not limited to joints, the use of laughing gas, for example, is also prohibited in the Red Light District.

“The nuisance must be reduced,” Halsema emphasises. And then you have to resort to these kinds of prohibitions. “Amsterdam is simply a magnet for visitors from other parts of the country and for international tourists. We cannot raise a bridge in the city and say: ‘you can’t get in anymore’. It is free movement of people,” says the major. “So you hope that slowly but surely it will also become known internationally that the city hopes for a different kind of tourism. And fewer tourism, because there are really too many.”

At the same time, the smoking ban is not a ‘miracle cure’, says Halsema. “It was a wish of the city council. And I’ve always said it depends on enforcement. And we have limited enforcement, so don’t expect to see anything on the street anymore.”

Residents of the Red Light District have mixed feelings about the measures. On the one hand, they are happy that Amsterdam is trying to curb mass tourism. At the same time, they too are faced with restrictive measures.

Halsema: “What cafes in that limited part of the city center have to deal with is that they have to close earlier than in the past; incidentally, still with very long opening hours. That has always been the conflict in the city center: there is not one opinion , there is not one kind of user of the inner city. There are residents, there are sex workers, cafes, catering, sex shops. There is all sorts of things and they all have different interests. We have chosen to stand aside of the inhabitants.”

The mayor has an additional reason for this: precisely to keep the neighborhood liveable, or to make it more liveable, she wants to prevent people from leaving. “If no more people live there, part of the city will slowly die and you don’t want that. It must remain a living part. So you will have to make do with the fact that as an Amsterdammer you can stay a little shorter in the pub to sit.”