The mayor of Amsterdam is considering a crackdown on weed tourism and cannabis cafés.

Femke Halsema has revealed local government bosses may look into the possibility of restricting the sale of the drug to tourists at the city's famous coffee shops.

She is also understood to be investigating ways to reduce visitor numbers to Amsterdam in a bid to tackle over-tourism.

Halsema wants to reduce numbers in an effort to clean up Amsterdam's seedy reputation for the benefit of its 1.1m permanent residents.

The move follows the results of a new survey which showed over half of young visitors chose to travel to the city purely to go to a cannabis café.

The poll - by the Dutch Office for Research, Information and Statistics - looked at the most popular reasons for visiting the dutch capital, and what would happen to visitor numbers should those reasons 'reduce or disappear'.

The survey was also aimed at revealing just how many people are drawn to the city because of the relaxed rules on cannabis, the legal prostitution zone and by cheap flights.

Respondents to the poll, carried out in August 2019, were aged between 18 and 35.

Some 57 per cent of those admitted that cannabis cafés were the main reason they would visit the city.

The report suggests that as many as 34pc of foreign tourists would return less often to Amsterdam if they were denied access to cannabis. A further 11pc said they would not return at all.

The mayor's survey also questioned visitors about whether they would pay an entry fee to visit the Wallen/Singel areas - the heart of the city that houses the Red Light District.

If forced to pay, 32pc said they would stop going, while 44pc said they would visit less often.

Only 1pc of those surveyed mentioned window prostitution as the main reason for their visit. Meanwhile, 72pc said they'd visited a coffee shop when in Amsterdam.

Tourists have been visiting Amsterdam since the 70s, when the Netherlands adopted a relaxed approach to cannabis - however the drug is technically still illegal with the exception of registered coffee shops and dispensaries, most of which are located in the city's Red Light District.

Cannabis is currently available in coffee shops in Singel, Amsterdam, where the red-light district is located and prostitution is also allowed.

A wave of new measures are set to be introduced to the city, including a ban on night-time tours of the legal prostitution zone which have been deemed 'disrespectful' to sex-workers, by deputy Mayor Victor Everhardt, who claims the workers are regularly abused and photographed without their consent by those on guided tours.

The will also be the introduction of fines for tour guides lingering in 'places that are sensitive to pressure', such as narrow bridges.