Not that we condone going to the Netherlands just for the pot or anything (seriously, we really like the Van Gogh Museum), but if that's your type of tourism, there's some good news: the Dutch have done away with their silly weed-pass rule, which would have banned tourists from smoking legal dope in their "coffee shops" without a locals-only "cannabis card." Well, it's not like they really care about your high. It's all about the money, and now cities will get to decide for themselves how important your ganja-stained tourist dollars are. "The move will allow Amsterdam to keep pulling in millions of foreign soft-drug users, while allowing border towns to clamp down on crime related to drug tourism," reads the AFP report on the reversal.

Back in April, the country had been considering passing a nation-wide "weed pass" law by the end of the year, much to the chagrin of "coffee shop" owners and non-local coffee aficionados: it essentially would have given locals weed cards, which would have been necessary to purchase legal marijuana while banned tourists from smoking — a kind of members-only gateway. "Away from the Dutch border cities — which suffer most from drug-tourism related incidents — Amsterdam said it would simply keep allowing foreigners access," reports the AFP. 

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Alexander Abad-Santos