Hazely
The short answer
Nationally, a tolerated coffeeshop may not sell to or admit anyone under 18, may not sell more than 5 grams per person per day, may not hold more than 500 grams in stock, may not serve alcohol, may not have or sell hard drugs, may not advertise, and may not cause nuisance in its neighbourhood. These are the AHOJG criteria, set out in the Public Prosecution Service's Aanwijzing Opiumwet. A further criterion, I, limits entry to residents of the Netherlands and is applied by some municipalities but not others.
On top of that, each municipality sets its own conditions — most visibly opening hours — and each shop sets house rules. In practice that means: bring real photo ID, expect a cash-only counter, expect no alcohol, do not mix tobacco into anything you smoke indoors, do not photograph the interior, and do not linger outside.
Three layers of rules
Cannabis is not legal in the Netherlands. The Opium Act (Opiumwet) still prohibits it; what exists instead is a formal tolerance policy — gedoogbeleid — under which prosecutors do not pursue a coffeeshop that stays inside a defined set of conditions. Understanding that distinction explains almost every rule below: a shop that breaks a condition risks its own tolerated status, which is why staff enforce rules on customers more firmly than a visitor might expect.
The three layers are:
- National. The Aanwijzing Opiumwet, the prosecution guideline that has been in force since 1 March 2015, lists the criteria every tolerated shop must meet. These are the same everywhere in the country.
- Municipal. The same guideline provides for lokaal maatwerk — local tailoring. A municipality decides whether it permits coffeeshops at all, how many, what hours they may open, how close to a school they may sit, and whether it applies the residency criterion. Municipalities can add further conditions in their local coffeeshop policy.
- The shop. House rules, usually posted at the door in Dutch and English. Payment methods, whether you may stay, photography, group size, and how long you may sit are all decided here.
National law is the easy layer to research and the least likely to surprise you. The municipal and house layers are where visitors get caught out.
The national criteria (AHOJG-I)
The criteria are named for the first letter of each Dutch phrase. The wording below is the Public Prosecution Service's own.
| Letter | Dutch criterion | What it means in the shop |
|---|---|---|
| A | geen affichering — no advertising other than a brief indication on the premises itself | Shops may not advertise. This is why frontages are plain, why you will rarely see a sign describing what is sold, and why a shop can be genuinely hard to identify from the street. |
| H | geen harddrugs — no hard drugs present or sold | A tolerated coffeeshop deals in soft drugs only. Anything else offered to you, inside or on the street outside, is outside the tolerance policy and is a criminal matter. |
| O | geen overlast — no nuisance: parking problems, noise, litter, or customers hanging around outside | Staff will move you along if you gather on the pavement. It is not rudeness; the shop's tolerated status depends on it. |
| J | geen verkoop aan jeugdigen en geen toegang voor jeugdigen — no sale to and no entry for minors | Under-18s may not buy and may not come inside, even accompanied. Expect an ID check at the door. |
| G | geen verkoop van grote hoeveelheden — no more than a quantity suitable for personal use (5 grams) per transaction, and a trading stock of no more than 500 grams | The 5-gram ceiling is per person per day. The 500-gram stock cap is the shop's problem, not yours, but it is why a shop can run out. |
| I | geen toegang voor en verkoop aan anderen dan ingezetenen van Nederland — no entry for and no sale to anyone other than residents of the Netherlands | The residency criterion. It is national in the guideline but enforced only in some municipalities. See the residency criterion explained. |
Two national rules sit alongside the AHOJG letters rather than inside them: a coffeeshop may not serve alcohol, and it normally needs both a hospitality operating licence (exploitatievergunning) and a tolerance declaration (gedoogverklaring) from its municipality.
ID and age
The legal minimum age is 18. That is not a house rule and there is no discretion in it: the J criterion bars both sale to and entry by anyone under 18, so a shop that lets a 17-year-old through the door has broken a national condition. Hazely itself is intended for adults aged 21 and over, which is stricter than Dutch law requires.
Bring a physical document. In practice the documents shops accept are the ones used for age checks elsewhere in Dutch hospitality: a passport, a national identity card, a driving licence, or a Dutch residence permit. A photograph of a document, a photocopy, or a phone wallet pass is generally not accepted, and neither is a document that has expired.
Two further points that catch people out:
- Looking over 18 is not enough. Door staff check on sight and check often. Carrying ID is normal in the Netherlands — people aged 14 and over are required to be able to identify themselves to officials on request — so it is worth having a document on you regardless.
- Where the residency criterion is enforced, ID alone may not be the whole check. The prosecution guideline describes residency being shown by a valid identity document or residence permit together with an extract from the municipal population register. How individual municipalities and shops apply that in practice varies, and reporting suggests it is not always applied literally. If you are travelling to a city that enforces it, check locally before you go — start with can tourists visit coffeeshops?
Cash and cards
Assume cash. The Netherlands is otherwise close to cashless and Dutch shops in general take debit cards, but coffeeshops are a persistent exception: card acceptance is inconsistent between shops and can change without notice, and it is common to find a counter that takes cash only. There is no national rule requiring or forbidding either; it is a commercial reality of the sector.
Practical consequence: if a shop has an ATM inside or immediately outside, treat it as a sign that cash is expected, and be aware that standalone machines in tourist areas often carry higher fees than a bank's own. Do not rely on a card working, and do not rely on a shop being able to split a payment.
No alcohol
A coffeeshop may not serve alcohol. This is a national rule, stated plainly by the government's business portal: "U mag geen alcohol schenken in uw coffeeshop" — you may not serve alcohol in your coffeeshop. It is the single clearest structural difference between a coffeeshop and a bar, and it is why the two are separate businesses rather than one.
It follows that you may not bring your own either. Shops enforce this because serving or permitting alcohol would put their licensing and tolerated status at risk. Soft drinks, coffee and tea are the norm; some shops also sell snacks.
The name causes genuine confusion for visitors: in the Netherlands a coffeeshop is the tolerated cannabis shop, while an ordinary café serving coffee, food and alcohol is a koffiehuis, café, or simply a bar.
Tobacco and the indoor smoking ban
This is the rule most visitors have never heard of, and the one most likely to get you corrected by staff.
The Dutch smoking ban applies indoors in hospitality venues, and coffeeshops are explicitly named among them by both the government and the enforcement authority, the NVWA. Designated indoor smoking rooms are no longer permitted in hospitality either. The ban is a tobacco ban: the NVWA lists among prohibited items "producten die tabak bevatten, zoals een waterpijp of joint met tabak" — products containing tobacco, such as a water pipe or a joint with tobacco.
So the working rule inside a coffeeshop is:
- A joint rolled with tobacco is a tobacco product and falls under the indoor smoking ban.
- Cannabis on its own is not a tobacco product and is not covered by that ban. Pure joints, herbal tobacco substitutes, pipes and vaporisers are the usual alternatives, and shops that allow consumption will tell you which they permit.
- Vapes and e-cigarettes, with or without nicotine, are covered by the ban indoors.
Terraces are outdoors and are treated differently, subject to the terrace being sufficiently open and to local rules. If you habitually mix tobacco, plan for this before you sit down — it is a legal restriction on the venue, not a preference the staff can waive.
Staying vs taking away
There is no national rule that a coffeeshop must have seating, and many do not. Shops fall roughly into three patterns, and the pattern is a house decision:
- Sale only. A counter, no seating, no consumption on the premises. Common in smaller towns and in municipalities with restrictive policies.
- Sale and stay. Tables, soft drinks, and consumption permitted indoors within the tobacco rules above.
- Sale with a terrace. Seating outside, sometimes with different rules from inside.
If you cannot stay, the obvious question is where you can go instead — and that answer is municipal, not national. Several city centres and areas near schools and stations have designated zones where public use is prohibited and fined. Do not assume a park or a canal bank is fine. For Amsterdam specifically, see the Amsterdam guide.
The 5-gram ceiling applies per person per day regardless of whether you stay or take away. Carrying more than the tolerated amount takes you outside the policy and makes possession a police matter.
Photography and phones
Do not photograph or film inside. Almost every shop prohibits it, and the reasons are sound: other customers have not consented to appearing in your photos, and the advertising criterion makes shops cautious about images of their premises circulating. Filming staff or the counter is the fastest way to be asked to leave.
Photographing the exterior of a building from a public street is a separate question and generally not the shop's business — but pointing a camera at a doorway while people are going in and out will get a reaction, and reasonably so.
Behaviour and being asked to leave
The O criterion — no nuisance — is the one customers most directly affect, and it is why staff are stricter about the pavement than about the room. A shop that generates complaints from neighbours risks conditions, restricted hours, or its tolerance being withdrawn. Behaviour that reliably causes friction:
- Standing in a group outside the door, or on the pavement opposite.
- Noise on the street late at night, particularly in residential areas.
- Asking for anything the shop is not permitted to sell.
- Arriving already heavily intoxicated. Staff can and do refuse entry.
- Trying to buy on behalf of someone who has been refused, or who is waiting outside.
- Attempting to buy above the daily limit, whether in one transaction or several.
Staff instructions carry weight beyond ordinary customer service here. Following them is the reasonable default.
What changes from city to city
The national criteria are constant. Four things are not:
- Whether coffeeshops exist at all. A majority of Dutch municipalities have none. Tolerated shops are concentrated in a minority of municipalities, so "the nearest town" is often not an answer.
- Opening hours. Set locally, and shorter than visitors expect — frequently well before bars close, with different hours on Sundays and public holidays. See coffeeshop opening hours.
- The residency criterion. Held in policy by many municipalities, actively enforced by only a handful, mostly in the border regions. See the residency criterion.
- Public-use zones and fines. Set in the local by-laws (APV), and signage is not always in English.
Because of this spread, national guidance is a floor rather than a complete answer. Check the municipality you are actually visiting.
Outside the shop
Three rules apply once you leave, and none of them are house rules.
Public consumption
It is not universally permitted. Municipalities set no-use zones in their by-laws, typically covering busy centre areas and the surroundings of schools and stations, with on-the-spot fines attached. The existence and boundaries of these zones differ by city, so check locally rather than assuming. This is covered in full in where you may and may not smoke cannabis.
Driving
Do not. Driving under the influence of drugs is a criminal offence under the Road Traffic Act, roadside saliva testing is routine, and a positive test leads to a blood test. Statutory blood limits apply to individual substances, and where a drug has been combined with alcohol or with another drug, the government states that zero limits apply. The Public Prosecution Service puts the maximum penalty for driving under the influence of drugs or medicines at one year's imprisonment or a fine of €21,750, with a driving disqualification that can reach ten years for repeat offences. Cycling under the influence is also unwise and can be penalised.
Taking anything out of the country
The tolerance policy is domestic and stops at the border. Crossing into Belgium, Germany or anywhere else with cannabis is drug trafficking under that country's law, and being able to buy it lawfully-in-practice in Rotterdam has no bearing on how Antwerp treats it. The same applies to airports, including transit. See taking cannabis out of the Netherlands for what the Dutch government itself says about export.
Four things that are not rules
- "Cannabis is legal in the Netherlands." It is not. It is prohibited by the Opium Act and tolerated under defined conditions. The distinction matters the moment you step outside those conditions — see is cannabis legal in the Netherlands?
- "Tourists are banned from Dutch coffeeshops." Not nationally. The residency criterion exists in the national guideline, but whether it is enforced is a municipal decision, and most of the country does not enforce it. Reporting that generalises one city's policy to the whole country is a common and consequential error.
- "You can smoke anywhere in Amsterdam." No. Designated no-use zones with fines exist, and the indoor tobacco ban applies to venues regardless.
- "The 5-gram limit is per shop." It is per person per day, and possession above the tolerated amount is a police matter wherever you bought it.
This page is general information, not legal advice. Rules are set both nationally and locally and can change without notice. Hazely does not sell cannabis, take orders, handle payments or make reservations, and does not recommend or rank shops. Always follow the instructions of the shop and of local authorities, and confirm current requirements with an official source before you travel.
Related guides
All eight reference pages are listed on the coffeeshop guides index.
Sources
All sources below were checked on 4 August 2026.
- Openbaar Ministerie — Aanwijzing Opiumwet (in force 1 March 2015). Source for the verbatim AHOJG-I criteria, for lokaal maatwerk, and for how residency is demonstrated.
- Ondernemersplein (Overheid.nl) — Regels voor coffeeshops. Source for the 18+ rule, the 5-gram and 500-gram limits, the ban on serving alcohol, the advertising ban, and the licence requirements. Page states it was checked on 8 January 2026.
- Rijksoverheid — Gedoogbeleid softdrugs en coffeeshops. Source for the tolerance policy framing.
- NVWA — Rookverbod. Source for coffeeshops being covered by the indoor smoking ban and for the ban applying to tobacco-containing products including a joint with tobacco.
- Rijksoverheid — Waar geldt een rookverbod?. Source for coffeeshops being named among indoor smoke-free venues and for smoking rooms no longer being permitted.
- Rijksoverheid — Drugs in het verkeer. Source for saliva testing and for zero limits on combined use.
- Openbaar Ministerie — Meer over drugs (verkeer). Source for the maximum penalty of one year's imprisonment or a €21,750 fine and for disqualification of up to ten years on repetition.
Where this page says a rule varies by municipality, that is because it does — treat the national picture as a floor and check the city you are visiting. If you find something on this page that is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.