The Netherlands is well known around the world for its rich history with cannabis. One could easily argue that Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, was the first international cannabis tourism destination. Cannabis consumers have traveled to Amsterdam to partake in local offerings for decades.
In recent years, the Netherlands has ceded, to some degree, its title as the world’s top location for cannabis. Several governments around the world have modernized their laws and regulations to permit various cannabis activities, including cannabis commerce.
Cannabis is now legal for adult use in Uruguay, Canada, Malta, Luxembourg, Germany, South Africa, and Czechia. Recreational cannabis is also legal at the state level in the U.S. in nearly half of the country’s states. Comparatively, while recreational cannabis activity has historically been largely tolerated in the Netherlands, it is not expressly legalized.
Regional adult-use cannabis commerce pilot trials are operating in ten municipalities in the Netherlands. The research-based pilot trials permit participating adults to cultivate, sell, and purchase cannabis in limited instances to gather data and information to help national lawmakers and regulators when crafting national policies. Pilot trials are operating in Almere, Arnhem, Breda, Groningen, Heerlen, Hellevoetsluis, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Tilburg, and Zaanstad.
According to reports from the Netherlands this week, researchers and lawmakers are finding that the unregulated cannabis market in the Netherlands is still thriving, which should not come as a shock given the limited nature of the pilot trials.
“Researchers are currently not seeing any significant differences between municipalities that are participating in the trial and the ones that are not, the first report since the start of the cannabis trial has stated. They do not want to draw any definitive conclusions as of yet.” reported NL Times in its local coverage.
“In questionnaires, cannabis users stated that they often buy their cannabis from outside the coffeeshops due to price, or because they can then buy more per purchase. Municipalities participating in the trial saw prices drop quicker than other areas; however, the price of hashish rose faster than in the other municipalities.” the outlet also reported.
The reported findings at this point should be expected by any objective observer. While the pilot trials are a great option for participants, a vast majority of cannabis consumers in the Netherlands are not participating in the trials. The fact that a proposed expansion of the pilot trial program to Amsterdam was previously denied by members of the Netherlands Parliament, and that the nation’s largest cannabis consumer market is effectively shut out of the pilot trial program, highlights how much more room for cannabis policy improvement there is in the Netherlands.
Until the Netherlands fully embraces the cannabis industry and has a regulated cannabis industry model that is more like what is in place in Canada or at the state level in some U.S. markets, the industry will obviously continue to cede considerable market share to the unregulated market.
