What is a Dutch “coffeeshop,” really?

In the Netherlands, a coffeeshop is not where you get a cup of coffee — it’s a venue licensed by the local municipality where adults can buy and use cannabis under a policy of tolerance. If you actually want coffee, ask for a café or a koffiehuis instead. It’s one of Dutch’s most useful false friends for visitors: the English-looking word doesn’t mean what English speakers assume, and mixing it up is a classic tourist mistake.

The setup is called gedoogbeleid, “tolerance policy”: cannabis has been illegal in the Netherlands since the 1976 Opium Act, but prosecutors simply don’t pursue small, regulated sales. A coffeeshop can only stay open if it follows strict rules — no advertising, no hard drugs, no sales to anyone under 18, and no more than 5 grams per customer — which is also why the country never actually legalized weed, just chose not to enforce the law against it.