It is as if you see daylight again after days in a dark cellar, the lamps are that bright. “Do you want to wear sunglasses?” asks Paul Pos (52). It is clear that the five hundred cannabis plants, in rows on aluminum tables, do find the light pleasant: the buds are proudly up.
Pos is located among the cannabis plants of Aurora in Wageningen, a company that conducts research into cannabis. The plants they grow may only be used for that purpose. The sweet scent fills the room. It is about 25 degrees. Pos is a member of the board of Aurora Nederland. The parent company is located in Canada.
The difficult thing is to keep all your cannabis plants happy, says Jochen Claeys (41). At Aurora he is responsible for the ‘well-being’ of the plants. “The humidity in the room has to be perfect, just like the temperature and CO2-degree.” In addition to the bright light, they need an irrigation system that delivers the right nutrients in exactly the right proportion. And then you also have to keep plant diseases and pests at bay. Claeys uses predatory mites for this. “We bring desirable critters inside to remove unwanted critters from outside.”
Back door
Aurora does not only research cannabis, but is also a financier and ‘knowledge partner’ of a cannabis grower who is participating in the government’s weed experiment. This month it has been five years since the cannabis test was included in the coalition agreement of the Rutte III cabinet. Goal: to regulate the sale of weed, so that criminality at the back door of coffee shops disappears. Now there is still a policy of tolerance: buying and selling cannabis in a coffee shop is allowed, but growing and selling it to coffee shops is not allowed. In 2020 there were more than 560 coffee shops in the Netherlands. Together they sell almost 103,000 kilos of hemp products every year, the police estimated at the beginning of this year report.
The cannabis experiment is a compromise of the previous coalition, consisting of the same parties as the current one. D66 wanted to legalize weed, CDA and the ChristenUnie did not. The VVD wanted to ‘regulate smarter’. Actually, only D66 really believes that the cannabis trial can combat drug crime. The other three parties agreed during the formation of Rutte III, but are skeptical.
In the cannabis experiment, ten cannabis growers, chosen through pre-selection and then drawing lots, will legally grow cannabis for four years for coffee shops in ten selected municipalities: Arnhem, Almere, Breda, Groningen, Heerlen, Hellevoetsluis, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Tilburg, Zaanstad. Aurora also wanted to participate in the experiment as a cannabis grower, but was rejected by lot. That is why the company decided to become a financier and knowledge partner of one of the growers drawn by lot.
Delay
At the companies of the drawn growers, it should have looked and smelled about the same as with Aurora. But nine out of ten growers don’t have a plant in the ground yet. The experiment, which was supposed to start in the second half of 2021, has been delayed. And that second half of 2021 was already later than planned. In March wrote Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health, D66) and Dilan Yesilgöz (Justice and Security, VVD) in a letter to the House of Representatives that the experiment is estimated to start in the second quarter of 2023. But the ‘growers’ collective’ – as the nine growers who are not yet ready call themselves – wrote in a letter to both ministers last June, which has been seen by NRC, that she does not think that estimate is realistic. They think they will need at least until the fourth quarter of 2023.
Also read: ‘Weed is always cheaper on the street’
Initially, the cabinet wanted all growers to start at the same time. Otherwise there is a risk, for example, that prices will rise extremely in the selected coffee shops or that the consumer will be dissatisfied with the limited supply. But starting all at once means that – if you as a grower are done with your preparations – you can only sell when everyone else is ready too. Until then, you incur costs that you do not (yet) recoup. Not everyone within the growers’ collective agrees that the experiment should start if not all growers are ready yet.
Dagobert Duck
In their letter from March, Kuipers and Yesilgöz write that this is an option. The quantity, quality and diversity of the ‘hemp and hashish’ produced must then be sufficient to be able to supply the participating coffee shops ‘completely and permanently’. However, the ministers do not make this condition concrete, so it remains unclear when the experiment can start.
“That just hangs in the air,” says Gerben Dreijer (64), director of Aurora Netherlands. He and Pos are having coffee in a meeting room of the Aurora building in Wageningen. “It is quite normal that you want to have a view on that when you put so much money into something. We are not Scrooge McDuck”, says Pos. Dreijer: “At a certain point, the grower also has to hire people. They want to give you security.”
Dreijer emphasizes that he does not want to withdraw as a financier, but does want clear criteria when the experiment can start. In addition, he would like the government to promise that, if the criteria are not met in the foreseeable future, the experiment can already start for a smaller number of municipalities. “As an entrepreneur you take a risk, but the risk that you may never be able to start your business can no longer be called an entrepreneurial risk,” says Pos.
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Photo John van Hamond
The only grower who is already ready to start the experiment, Fred van de Wiel, says that he is now in talks with the ministries, municipalities and coffee shops about his proposal to start supplying coffee shops in advance, without having to agree to the collaboration with their ‘illegal growers’ are already breaking up. Every month that Van de Wiel cannot start, he makes a loss. He also sees the proposal as a ‘test of the experiment’. „For example, we can prevent teething problems from the track&trace system to achieve,” says Van de Wiel.
No overt criticism
Three growers say that the experiment has been delayed so much for various reasons. They don’t want to put their names in NRC, because they prefer not to openly criticize the government on which the success of their business largely depends. The growers say that Bibob procedures – with which the government investigates whether license applicants have criminal ties – took more time than previously thought. Also, some growers had trouble finding a location for their cannabis farm, or were unable to get a bank account. The latter problem has not yet been solved for many of them. In the letter from June, the growers’ collective calls on ministers to help with this. That call had already been made before, can be deduced from the letter.
More problems
More problems have recently been added, such as staff shortages, sharply increased energy prices (cultivation of cannabis uses a lot of energy), increased prices of building materials and the long, uncertain delivery times. The growers and selected coffee shops are also experiencing problems with the track&trace system created for the experiment. With this system, the government wants to keep the experiment ‘closed’. Growers, for example, register how much they produce and to which coffee shops they sell. This allows the Justice and Security Inspectorate to supervise.
Ministers wrote in their letter in March that tests have shown that the system “works and is accessible”. The growers believe that the system is user-unfriendly and will cost a lot of time and therefore money. That would also increase the risk of errors.
Also read: A family doctor, lawyer and former politician in the weed
The growers who NRC expressed the view that government control is lacking. He would mainly be busy sticking to the rules of the experiment very rigidly. It is said that the government is now seen by growers and financiers as an unreliable partner.
They emphasize that they still like the experiment, Dreijer and Pos van Aurora too. “I think it’s very important that that back door just goes away,” says Dreijer. “That it will just become a normal, healthy industry that pays tax dollars.” Pos: “But it now feels like the government is more concerned with staying within the lines than helping us.”