In 2023, the Netherlands kicked off a multi-year experiment with regulated adult use cultivation and sales. The plan, which the country’s lawmakers first approved in 2019, is to collect data to determine whether to eventually make a regulated adult use system permanent.
To that end, researchers published their first report on the pilot for the Dutch Parliament last week. While the short takeaway from the report is that it is too soon to say much that is definitive, the report still offers a glimpse into what is and isn’t working so far.
First, some context: Ten municipalities were selected to participate in the pilot, as Cannabis Wire previously reported, and researchers will compare those ten with another ten municipalities that aren’t participating. In the participating municipalities, all “coffeeshops” (the tolerated storefronts that have long sold unregulated cannabis) have to sell cannabis only from selected growers.
From December 2023 to April 2025, shops were allowed to sell cannabis from both regulated and unregulated growers, as the regulated ones were just coming on board. This report is focused on what took place after April 2025, when the regulated system was fully in place.
The Ministries of Justice and Security and Health, Welfare and Sport selected the Trimbos Institute, Breuer&Intraval, and RAND Europe to collect and compile data on the pilot, and to draft reports annually. In 2029, the government will assess the data and decide its next steps.
This first report begins by noting some early growing pains that appear to be easing with time. For example, the legal supply was initially perceived to be limited “both in terms of quantity and product diversity.” As “the availability of products from growers improved,” however, “concerns about the limited supply have diminished.”
There were also some “startup” issues with the seed-to-sale tracking system, which was seen as “complex and time-consuming, partly due to technical issues and limited compatibility with existing systems.” However, many of those issues “appear to have been resolved.”
Other areas will clearly need work looking ahead.
On packaging and advertising, for example, stakeholders “report ambiguities in regulations and responsibilities,” so there isn’t consistency across shops. Therefore, the report notes that “more uniform rules and clearer agreements are considered necessary.”
A related issue is product potency with vapes, edibles, and concentrates, as “it is not always clear to users how strong these products are and what an appropriate dosage would be.” While the researchers note that there is no evidence that this has led to an increase in “health incidents,” stakeholders expressed “a need for clearer national guidelines, for example regarding maximum potency and information on packaging.”
Several other aspects of the experiment’s rollout have yet to offer any takeaways. For example, the researchers found no meaningful change in how many people visit coffeeshops, or how often, in either the participating or the comparison municipalities. They found “indications,” however, that visitors in the participating municipalities purchase more cannabis “per transaction” than they did when the researchers conducted a baseline assessment in 2022.
Still, researchers noted that “although visitors in the intervention municipalities purchase more grams of cannabis per visit, the frequency of use has not increased.”
Another area where little has yet changed is the illegal market. The one thing that researchers noticed is that the amount of hash bought outside of legal shops went up in participating municipalities and down in the comparison municipalities. “This may be related to the availability of regulated hash in the initial phase, although this cannot be established with certainty,” they note.
Overall, the report found that “stakeholders generally describe the functioning of the controlled supply chain as positive.”
Looking ahead, the report is clear that “further measurements are needed to assess whether observed trends persist or change over time, and to draw conclusions about the longer-term effects and policy implications of the experiment.”
