Netherlands: experimentation with legal cannabis cultivation to take place without the country's main cities

The Dutch government is preparing its experiment in legal cannabis cultivation. Dutch municipalities had until June 10 to decide whether or not to allow the coffee shops of their municipality. A total of 26 municipalities have signed up, but none of the country's five largest cities are taking part.

A contested experiment

The aim of this experiment is to put an end to the inconsistency of the Dutch system, which makes the sale of cannabis legal in coffee shops but its production remains illegal. As a result, legal supply is based entirely on illegal production. By approving a dozen or so producers over a four-year period, the government is seeking to test a form of legal supply for coffee shops.

That said, many communes have decided not to participate, as the details of the experimental plan do not suit them. These include the country's largest cities, where the majority of the country's coffee shops Amsterdam (175 cafés), Rotterdam (40 cafés), The Hague (36 cafés), Utrecht (11 cafés) and Eindhoven. They were all interested in the experiment, and some had even requested it. However, they withdrew because they did not agree with the conditions of the experiment.

In particular, the cities criticized the fact that the experiment did not include the possibility of extension in the event of success, the fact that all the coffee shops of the city are forced to participate, and the fact that they have an assigned supplier - a regulation that makes them vulnerable to shortages, forces them to offer an undiversified range of products and exposes them to loss of earnings. Amsterdam's mayor had already made it clear that these conditions were intolerable, and that it was impossible to ask the capital's 175 coffees to change their source of supply all at once.

Other mayors echo the same sentiment the mayor of Eindhoven, initially to s‘finally retracted at the end of May: «I realize that this goes against the offer I made to the firm in 2017 to help define this experiment, but now that the details are known I have no choice but to give it up». The mayors of The Hague and Rotterdam spoke of «impractical» regulations. The Hague withdrew from the project last month. The mayor of Utrecht, meanwhile, stressed that his city would participate in «a viable experiment» and called on the government to review the plan's conditions.

Despite the June 10 deadline, Minister of Justice and Security Ferdinand Grapperhaus hinted that municipalities could still register later. The rules governing the experimentation of legal cultivation have yet to be discussed in the Lower House. They are likely to be reworked, as some are already questioning the relevance of an experiment that does not include any of the country's major cities. The Commission in charge of the issue considers it important «that at least one of the [4] major cities takes part in this national experiment».

Among the 26 municipalities declared registered by the Ministry of Justice and Security, only 4 are of significant size: Tilburg, Almere, Breda and Nijmegen. However, these are all sub-districts. The city of Groningen, the sixth-largest municipality in the Netherlands, is also «in favor» of the experiment, but none of its twelve municipalities is "in favor". coffees wish to participate under these conditions. This summer, the government will select six to ten municipalities to take part in the trial.