The Hague: Cannabis smokers aiming to keep calm and carry on despite coronavirus queued up outside Dutch coffee shops yesterday after the Government ordered their closure to beat the outbreak. 

Customers lined up in their dozens as they tried to beat a deadline for the closure of the marijuana cafes and stockpile weed supplies for what could be weeks of lock down.

The Netherlands’ famed coffee shops have become as much a part of the country’s popular image abroad as sex clubs in Amsterdam’s famed red light district, which were also ordered to shut by 6 pm along with all bars and restaurants.

 “For maybe for the next two months we will not be able to get some weed so it should be nice to at least have some in the house,” Jonathan, a Dutch buyer, said outside The Point coffee shop in The Hague.

The neighbourhood draws millions of visitors to erotic dance shows, adult clubs and brothels, where prostitutes pose in lingerie behind red-lit windows. The Casa Rosso, Peepshow, Banana Bar and Erotic Museum were among adult entertainment venues along the capital’s old canals that said they would shut.

“In the interest of the health of staff and guests, the management no longer considers it responsible to stay open,” said a statement by de Otten Groep, a company that runs a number of clubs, Amsterdam’s Het Parool newspaper reported.

Similar scenes were reported around the country, with pictures on social media of long queues outside coffee shops in the capital Amsterdam and the historic university city of Utrecht. Whereas days earlier it was supermarkets besieged with people trying to hoard toilet papers and pasta. The sudden announcement of the coffee shop closure meant there were new priorities.

Staff set up separate lines for cash and cards as customers hurried to order supplies of exotically named strains like “Doctor”, “Bubble” and “Purple Haze” before the doors shut. “I wouldn’t mind having a little bit of weed — keep it easy while we’re at home for so long. It might be a long time in quarantine,” said an Irish woman who gave her name as Hannah as she queued in The Hague.

Cannabis is technically illegal in the Netherlands, but it decriminalised the possession of less than five grams (0.18 ounces) of the substance in 1976 under a so-called “tolerance” policy.