For years, The Black Sea was one of the places to buy weed in Enschede. Now that chapter is coming to an end. On October 28, the Council of State ruled that the city had been right to revoke the coffeeshop's permit. The owner had hoped for a different outcome, but the judges weren't buying it. The shop had been allowed to stay open during the appeal. That protection has now ended.
The trouble started in December 2023, when police discovered more than 10 kilos of hash, 63 kilos of weed, 235 joints and nearly €128,000 in cash in properties next to the coffeeshop. The owner said the drugs belonged to a tenant, but the city wasn't convinced. Following an investigation, Mayor Roelof Bleker withdrew the business's hospitality permit in June 2025. The coffeeshop was also refused fresh permission to sell cannabis. The judges found sufficient grounds to uphold those decisions.
And then there's the familiar Dutch headache: the back door. Coffeeshops are allowed to sell weed, but supplying them remains illegal outside the regulated cannabis experiment. They're also generally limited to 500 grams of stock. Not exactly the easiest business model to run. Still, the Council of State decided that Enschede had grounds to act, including concerns about criminal activity and money laundering. For The Black Sea, the legal fight is over. The debate about how Dutch coffeeshops get their weed, however, is going nowhere.
