NCJ Number
222082
Date Published
2007
Length
182 pages
Annotation
This study examines the production process and the organization of cannabis cultivation and police efforts and approach to cannabis cultivation in the Netherlands.
Abstract
The logistic process of cultivating and trading cannabis basically entails ten steps. In addition, the logistic process indicates that it is strongly democratized: there are many people who have the necessary knowledge and skills to cultivate cannabis. In the organization of professional cannabis cultivation, four principal variations are distinguished: (1) independent growers who operate at their own risk and use their own money to grow anywhere between 100 and 1,000 plants on their own premises; (2) larger-scale independent growers who operate plantations in commercial properties or farm sheds, where 1,000 plants or more are cultivated; (3) operators who install five to ten plantations in other people’s houses, mostly acquaintances in their social network; and (4) criminal cooperatives which are involved in buying, processing and selling cannabis products on a large scale, and in addition, often run their own sizeable plantations. A considerable share of the cannabis produced in the Netherlands finds its way to foreign buyers with large numbers of drug tourists from Belgium, Germany and France. At the present time, the approach to cannabis cultivation in the south of the Netherlands is mainly focused on individual cannabis plantations. However, several interventions are presented in efforts to curtail and stop cannabis cultivation, such as the integral approach to individual cannabis plantations (producing positive results), grow shops, and intervention through short-term criminal investigations or the seizure of luxury goods once networks from which home growers are recruited are identified.