The police are finding fewer and fewer weed nurseries in Brabant. This downward trend has been visible for more than five years. At first glance, this decrease seems to be good news. An illegal industry disappears. But appearances are deceiving. There seems to be more going on.
One of the most important metrics to determine how much hemp is grown is power theft. Nurseries need a lot of power for the grow lights. That power is often stolen.
Grid operator Enexis also sees that fewer hemp farms are being broken up. “At first glance it seems like good news, but this does not mean that the number of nurseries is actually decreasing,” said the network operator. Figures from Enexis show that approximately 1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity are stolen in the Netherlands every year. The power distribution companies say that most of it is used for cannabis farms. And their numbers have been the same for years.
An average plantation consumes 35,000 kilowatt hours per year. Set against those billion kilowatt hours, this means that there are about thirty thousand weed nurseries in the Netherlands, according to the network operators. In comparison, by 2022, more than 1,600 farms will have been discovered across the country. That would mean that there are almost twenty times as many hidden.
The network operators are therefore heavily robbed by the growers. “If this electricity would have been sold normally, it would have a value of almost 200 million euros,” the network operator writes. Power theft that is not related to hemp is not included in this estimate.
Police priorities shifted
The experts and the police see that criminals are smarter at hiding hemp farms, making them harder to track down. Tracing weed is also less of a priority for the police.
Until a few years ago, the police had several teams actively looking for hemp farms. These teams had in-house experts who were specially trained for this and who worked full-time on this. The teams held, among other things, so-called ‘sweeping actions’, which actively searched streets where there were suspicions of cannabis cultivation.
But nowadays the police mainly focus on serious drug crime in the various crypto investigations, such as Enchrochat and Exclu. These cases mainly concern cocaine, XTC and other hard drugs, various experts say in conversation with Omroep Brabant. The experts do not want to be named.
According to the experts, other matters are currently taking priority with the police. “Everything is aimed at clearing backlogs in sex crimes. Furthermore, digital fraud and theft are increasing and more work is required,” say the experts. They also point out that the past few years have been hectic due to the corona supervision and deployment of the Mobile Unit.
West Brabant
The Zeeland – West Brabant police confirms that the hemp teams are gone. “We see that cannabis cultivation is often not separate from other forms of drug crime. That is why it has been decided not to appoint specific hemp teams, but to investigate and combat this more broadly,” the police said in a written response.
In the police region, the entire regional hemp team and the four district hemp teams have been disbanded. “We have several specialists who focus on subversion and act as boosters in a police base team when it comes to combating drug crime. We also have a drug coordinator for the entire unit. Reports of hemp are picked up by someone from the police base team,” the police said.
East-Brabant
The East Brabant unit writes in a response that the hemp teams no longer exist there either. Their work has been taken over by operational experts who deal with drug crime. But East Brabant emphasizes that they still have special promotions: “The commitment to cannabis cultivation continues unabated. Part of this are action days, on which extra attention is paid to illegal cannabis cultivation. It is therefore important to us that citizens share signals about suspicion of cannabis cultivation with us,” said the East Brabant police.
There was another day of action in January. In Best, among others, this resulted in three nurseries with 1600 plants.
Omroep Brabant is investigating the closure of drug premises in Brabant. Do you want to comment or do you have a tip? Email our research editor
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