By Fred Pals
March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Joop van der Zeeuw isn't a fan of indoor gardening. The civil servant will evict anyone he finds growing more than five cannabis plants in a Rotterdam apartment.
Van der Zeeuw's team of seven has shut down 600 indoor marijuana farms since the second-largest Dutch city formed the task force with police, energy companies and landlords in 2005. There are 6,000 active producers in the city, he said.
``There is still a lot to do,'' said Van der Zeeuw, 51, as a colleague checked the power meter outside a suspected farm in the western part of the port city. ``We are eliminating the smaller growers and now we're getting to the professionals.''
Dutch officials are stepping up raids on an estimated 40,000 indoor hemp plantations, which cause two fires a month in Rotterdam by tapping into power lines for lights that feed their crops. The crackdown is making it harder to supply marijuana shops with the Super Skunk and Purple haze their customers crave in a country that decriminalized use of the drug in 1976. The Dutch cannabis trade is worth $4 billion a year, police estimate.
A crop of 100 plants, which can be grown in a living room, uses as much as 144 kilowatt hours of energy a day, compared with 9 kilowatt hours for the average household. The thefts cost energy companies 200 million euros ($266.6 million) a year, or 1 percent of their revenue, according to Energiened, an industry organization.
Rotterdam is the biggest urban cannabis production center in the Netherlands. Mayor Ivo Opstelten decided to create the task force in 2005 because of the increasing risk to public safety.
Anonymous Tips
The team investigates about 100 anonymous tips each month. An energy company representative checks the meter and listens for the sound of ventilators used to aid cultivation. If both are found, police enter the building and arrest the grower.
``It is a problem to the society and the energy companies, and it only can be solved with a common approach,'' said Sjoerd Marbus, an Energiened spokesman. Energy companies want teams similar to Van der Zeeuw's to be created in all large cities.
Rotterdam's effort to limit cannabis growing is part of a larger drive to curtail the marijuana trade.
The so-called coffee shops that sell marijuana aren't allowed to keep more than 500 grams of the product on the premises at a time. Police recently stepped up enforcement of that rule, introduced in 2001, by immediately revoking the licenses of stores found violating it.
Goa, in Amsterdam's red light district, now employs ``runners'' to periodically go to storerooms over the course of the day to keep the shop supplied.
``It has become increasingly difficult to get the products,'' said Derrill Bagley, who works the counter at Goa.
`Space Cake'
Shops also are being asked to limit what they sell. Two months ago, police ordered Goa to cut the drug content in ``space cake,'' baked with cannabis, because they deemed it too strong. ``That's never happened before,'' Bagley said.
The measures are working: Amsterdam now has 241 coffee shops, down from 323 in 1998, according to figures provided by the Amsterdam city government. Last year, 2,500 hemp plantations were dismantled nationwide, the most recent figures from the Dutch prosecutor's office show.
The Netherlands relaxed its marijuana laws 30 years ago, after clashes between students and police. It stopped short of fully legalizing the drug because international treaties prohibited it from doing so.
In 2001, 4 percent of the Dutch population used marijuana, according to a 2005 drug report published by the Trimbos Institute, the nation's mental health and addiction center. The U.S. rate was 6 percent in 2004.
The Netherlands may be a victim of Rotterdam's success: hemp growers kicked out of the city are being pushed to other regions.
Rising Crime
That may increase crime and drive up prices, says Martin Jelsma, a director at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, which studies the impact of poverty and drugs. Prices reached a record of almost 4,000 euros a kilo in December, up from 2,500 euros at the end of October.
``Crime will rise, and professional growing will become harder and tougher,'' Jelsma said. ``The social damage done with this policy is huge'' as growers are forced to relocate.
The police disagree. ``There's more damage done to a neighborhood and its people if you don't root this out,'' said Van der Zeeuw.
It is most often the smaller hemp farmers that are caught, says Andre Beckers, a lawyer who has defended some growers. Larger farmers are harder to catch because they often lease industrial sites and pretend to run normal businesses.
``The policy is erratic and illogical as the coffee shops need to be supplied,'' said Beckers, who calls for cannabis growing to be legalized.
Van der Zeeuw isn't concerned. He said a February raid turned up 80 kilos of cannabis with a street value of $400,000.
``That made my day,'' he said. ``I don't feel sorry for anyone who gets caught. It is dangerous, not allowed and it should stop.''
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... fer=europe
That last statement sounds something that an American politican would say.
Peace.
