What is so wrong with growing cannabis?
“We’ve long had the image of people growing a few plants in the attic. It began in the 1970s when idealistic young people with green thumbs started to grow cannabis on houseboats. The overall production was on a small scale. The turning point came around 25 years ago when a number of entrepreneurs decided to make use of the country’s agricultural colleges and laboratories. They managed to increase the amount of the active ingredient THC in plants from an average of four to nine percent to around 18 percent. Some strains have even reached 30 percent.” Is there more cannabis exported than sold in Dutch so-called coffee-shops? “Yes, demand from other countries increased and prices soared. Foreign buyers would pay three or four times the Dutch price. Some suppliers added iron filings or sand to increase the weight, which previously only happened with cocaine and heroin. There is a lot of demand from Britain, Belgium, Germany, France and the Scandinavian countries. We have estimated that at
