Shortly after 5 pm on Sunday, the government of the Netherlands issued an urgent decree: To control the coronavirus outbreak, virtually all restaurants and bars were being ordered to shut their doors until April 6, effective less than an hour later, at 6 pm. Included in the ban were the famed “coffee shops,” which sell more pot than pots of joe.
Within minutes of the announcement, lines stretched around the block at shops across the Netherlands as stoners sought to stock up on enough weed to get them through weeks of quarantine. “We were going to get groceries and saw a huge line in front of the coffee shop,” said Guntars Upis, a student in Amsterdam. “We decided to get some too, before it closed.”
