Is cannabis legal in the Netherlands?

What "tolerated" means in practice

The Dutch approach is unusual and it is regularly mistranslated. The Opium Act was not amended to permit cannabis. Instead, the Public Prosecution Service publishes a guideline — the Aanwijzing Opiumwet, in its current form in force since 1 March 2015 — which sets out the circumstances in which it will not prosecute. That is the whole of the tolerance policy. It is prosecutorial discretion, written down.

Three consequences follow, and each one surprises visitors:

• A coffeeshop is not a licensed cannabis retailer in the way an off-licence is a licensed alcohol retailer. It holds a municipal tolerance declaration alongside an ordinary hospitality operating licence, and the mayor can close it under article 13b of the Opium Act.
• Advertising is prohibited. The Opium Act separately forbids publishing anything evidently aimed at promoting the sale or supply of a controlled substance. This is why shopfronts are plain, why you will not see a sign describing what is sold, and why a coffeeshop can be genuinely hard to identify from the street. It is also why this site describes rules and never products.
• Tolerance is conditional and revocable. Break a condition and the shop loses it. That is why staff enforce rules on customers more firmly than a visitor tends to expect.

The correct English words are tolerated and tolerance policy. "Legal", "legalised" and "decriminalised" all describe something the Netherlands has not done.

The problem tolerance never solved

Tolerance was applied to the counter, not to the storeroom. A coffeeshop may sell within limits without being prosecuted, but no equivalent tolerance was ever extended to whoever supplies it. Dutch policy debate calls this the back-door problem: the front door of the shop is regulated and visible, and the back door is not tolerated at all.

That gap is what the experiment described below exists to test, and it is the reason the Dutch position has never been as settled as foreign coverage assumes.

Where tolerance stops

The conditions a coffeeshop must meet are known by the initials of their Dutch names, AHOJG, with a sixth criterion, I, added later. In summary: no advertising, no hard drugs on the premises, no nuisance to the neighbourhood, no sale to and no entry for anyone under 18, no more than 5 grams per person per day and no more than 500 grams of trading stock, and — where a municipality enforces it — no entry for or sale to anyone who is not a resident of the Netherlands. Serving alcohol is separately prohibited. These are set out in full, with what each means at the door, in the complete guide to Dutch coffeeshop rules.

Two limits are worth stating on their own, because they are where a visitor most easily crosses the line without noticing:

• Online sale and delivery are not tolerated at all. A coffeeshop may not sell over the internet and may not deliver. Any website or app offering to sell or deliver cannabis in the Netherlands is not a licensed coffeeshop, whatever it calls itself.
• The 5-gram figure is a daily personal ceiling, not a per-shop allowance. Visiting several shops to accumulate more takes you outside the tolerance, wherever each individual purchase was made.

The wietexperiment

The Experiment gesloten coffeeshopketen — the closed coffeeshop chain experiment, usually shortened to wietexperiment — is a statutory trial of whether a fully regulated supply chain is workable, and what it does to crime, safety and public health. It is the state's attempt at the back door.

• A transition phase ran from 17 June 2024 to 7 April 2025.
• The main experiment phase has run since 7 April 2025. In it, coffeeshops in the participating municipalities may sell only regulated cannabis.
• The phase runs for four years in principle, followed by a wind-down.
• The Inspectorate of Justice and Security supervises closure of the chain.

The ten participating municipalities are:

Two consequences a visitor actually notices:

1. Residency is compulsory for the border participants only. National guidance states that in the participating municipalities on the German or Belgian border — Breda, Heerlen and Maastricht — coffeeshops may admit only people living in the Netherlands. Mayors of the other participating municipalities may apply the residency criterion but are not obliged to, which is why Groningen and Tilburg take part and still admit visitors. Sources that claim all ten enforce it contradict themselves; the residents-only criterion explained sets out how that rule really works.
2. Stock rules differ. Participating shops may hold roughly one week's trading stock instead of the usual 500-gram cap. So "500 grams" is no longer a universal figure.

Why Amsterdam is not in it

This trips up a great deal of English-language writing. Amsterdam-Oost was approved by the cabinet in September 2023 as a proposed eleventh participant and a bill was introduced — but the House of Representatives voted it down on 5 March 2024. Articles written in 2023 that describe Amsterdam as joining the experiment were accurate when published and are wrong now.

Amsterdam's own coffeeshop situation is covered in the Amsterdam guide: no residents-only rule, and a by-law banning cannabis use in the street across part of the old centre.

What all this means for you

Practically, the tolerance policy touches a visitor at four points.

Possession

For an adult carrying up to 5 grams for personal use, the police confirm that the drugs may be confiscated but the prosecutor will not prosecute. Confiscation is still a police interaction and it is recorded. Above 5 grams the tolerance stops.

Where you use it

There is no national ban on cannabis use in public and no national permission either — it is decided by each municipality's by-law, and several city centres have designated no-use areas with fines. See where you may and may not smoke.

Taking any of it with you

Taking drugs out of the Netherlands is always a criminal offence and there is no coffeeshop exemption — including a short train ride to Belgium or Germany. See taking cannabis out of the Netherlands.

Driving

A criminal offence, with routine roadside saliva testing. This applies to a car, and to a scooter or e-bike.

Five things written about this that are wrong

• "Cannabis is legal in the Netherlands." It is prohibited by the Opium Act and tolerated within limits.
• "The Netherlands has legalised cannabis for tourists." Nothing has been legalised, and entry rules vary by municipality — see can tourists visit coffeeshops?
• "Amsterdam is part of the legal weed trial." It is not, and has not been since the vote of 5 March 2024.
• "You need a wietpas." The wietpas was a club-membership card introduced in 2012 and scrapped in November of the same year. English pages still call the residency rule by that name; it is not the same thing and the pass no longer exists.
• "Coffeeshops may hold 500 grams." True outside the experiment. Inside the ten participating municipalities the stock rule is about one week's trade instead.

Related guides

• Coffeeshop rules in the Netherlands The full set of conditions tolerance depends on, plus what your municipality and the shop add on top.
• Can tourists visit coffeeshops? Usually yes, but not in every municipality — and the exceptions are concentrated near the borders.
• The residents-only criterion Why the residency rule is mandatory for three experiment municipalities and optional for the rest.
• Taking cannabis out of the Netherlands The one place the tolerance policy has no effect at all: the border.

All eight reference pages are listed on the coffeeshop guides index.

Sources

All sources below were checked on 4 August 2026.

1. Opiumwet on wetten.overheid.nl. The statute itself, including the prohibition on publications aimed at promoting sale or supply, and the mayor's closure power in article 13b.
2. Rijksoverheid — Gedoogbeleid softdrugs en coffeeshops. Source for the tolerance framing and for the list of conditions.
3. Openbaar Ministerie — Aanwijzing Opiumwet (in force 1 March 2015). Source for tolerance being a prosecution guideline and for the criteria in their original wording.
4. Politie — Wat zijn de regels over drugsgebruik en drugsbezit?. Source for possession of up to 5 grams by an adult being confiscated rather than prosecuted.
5. Rijksoverheid — Deelnemende gemeenten wietexperiment. Source for the ten participating municipalities.
6. Rijksoverheid — Voorwaarden coffeeshops in wietexperiment. Source for the residency condition applying to Breda, Heerlen and Maastricht, and for the changed stock rule.
7. Inspectie Justitie en Veiligheid — Fasering wietexperiment. Source for the phase dates and for the supervision of chain closure.
8. Eerste Kamer — dossier 36279, Toevoeging elfde gemeente. Source for the proposed eleventh municipality and its rejection by the House of Representatives on 5 March 2024.
9. Ondernemersplein (Overheid.nl) — Regels voor coffeeshops. Source for the licence and tolerance-declaration requirements and the ban on serving alcohol. Page states it was checked on 8 January 2026.

This page describes the legal position, not a product. It contains no information about price, potency, availability or quality, and never will. If you find something here that is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it and re-date the page.