Dutch cities are to decide themselves whether to bar foreign drug tourists from so-called coffee shops, after the Government scrapped its unpopular “weed pass” law.

The move will allow Amsterdam to keep pulling in millions of foreign soft-drug users, while allowing border towns to clamp down on drug tourist-related crime.

The Dutch Government announced a year ago that it was introducing a law to ban foreigners from entering dope-dealing ‘coffee shops’, also forcing local smokers to show identification and register in a database.

Called the “cannabis card” law, it rolled out in May in three southern Dutch provinces, close to where many Belgian, French and German drug tourists come from.

The move was aimed at curbing drug-related phenomena like late-night revelry, traffic jams and hard-drug dealing.

But its critics said it simply pushed drug peddling onto the streets of southern cities like Maastricht and Tilburg and led to a rise in crime.

Amsterdam said it would simply keep allowing foreigners access.