The discussion around legalising weed cultivation has been thrown open. This can be attributed to two Radboud University jurists, who proved that the government can allow weed cultivation in some situations. Noël Vergunst (GroenLinks party) hopes for an experiment in Nijmegen.

You can buy it and use it, but not cultivate it. The soft drugs policy in The Netherlands confuses a lot of people. Especially in municipalities, where officials have a big job fighting illegal cultivation and trade of, for example, marijuana.

The discussion about changing the policy around soft drugs is alive, but no consequences have come out of it so far. ‘Until now, the argument always was that UN agreements stood in the way of legalising cannabis cultivation’, says jurist Piet Hein van Kempen. ‘That is why we never seriously discussed it. We have proved that there are possibilities for governments to allow regulated weed cultivation.’

The ‘we’ Van Kempen refers to is Masha Fedorova and himself – both associated with the faculty of law as jurist in criminal law. Van Kempen and Fedorova studied hundreds of articles, rulings and other legal documents to create an extensive research.

‘A state has the task to protect its civilians.’

Dangerous situations
The central government needs strong reasons to allow weed cultivation, the study shows. ‘A state has the task to protect its civilians. Only when legalisation of weed cultivation leads to better protection of public health on one hand, and the reduction of crime and lack of safety on the other, the government has the possibility to allow it.’ Conditions are support from society and active governmental discouragement of weed use.

Noël Vergunst is happy with the work the two jurists did. He is, besides Radboud employee, council member for GroenLinks and started the discussion in the council two years ago. Nijmegen major Hubert Bruls decided, together with other majors, to ask for research on this topic. Van Kempen and Fedorovas research report is a result of this.

Vergunst now wants action and wants preparations to be made for an experiment in Nijmegen. ‘So that next year, after the elections, we can start regulating the weed production.’ Permission from The Hague is necessary for allowing weed cultivation.

Shooting
The most important reason for this experiment is the fight against crime, says Vergunst. ‘Two weeks ago, there was a shooting in Malvert, a part of Nijmegen, which might have been a drug-related crime. More than often there are fires in residential area’s, because of unsafe weed production.’ Regulated cultivation can also help controlling the health hazards, like the amount of tar in the cannabis. ‘So that we can separate the well-meaning cultivators from the malicious ones.’