A well-stocked coffee shop will be able to offer a selection of various sorts of marihuana, hashish and Dutch-grown cannabis. It is estimated that the latter now accounts for over half of turnover. Coffee shop operators obtain their wares from wholesalers or people who have been on holiday and have brought cannabis or cannabis derivatives back with them.
Since the emergence of Dutch-grown cannabis, some coffee shop operators have started growing their own or maintaining contacts with various domestic growers from whom they can buy their goods. This enables the entire production and sales chain to remain free of the influence of criminal organisations.
However, criminal investigations have also repeatedly found criminal organisations involved in the import, cultivation, wholesaling and distribution of cannabis, and in the running of coffee shops and other catering establishments. They invest in property and legal establishments, in the sex industry and gaming halls for example. In such organisations coffee shop operators are often no more than frontmen.
There are also indications that criminal organisations are involved in both the large-scale cultivation of cannabis (indoors and out of doors) and small-scale, professional indoor cultivation in the Netherlands. However, the cultivation of Dutch cannabis in general is by no means dominated by such organisations.
The influence of organised crime is an important criterion in the assessment of the policy on coffee shops. The role of criminal organisations in the supply of soft drugs to coffee shops should be reduced to the minimum, partly because of the aim of keeping the markets for hard and soft drugs separate. After all, if coffee shops are under the control of criminal organisations there is a considerable chance that hard drugs will be sold and that other criminal activities will take place on the premises. Apart from that, criminal organisations should be given as little chance as possible to earn money from the tolerated sale of cannabis in coffee shops. Reducing the influence of organised crime on coffee shops is an important objective of our policy. Policy as regards the criminal law and the supply of soft drugs to coffee shops is discussed in further detail in chapter 5 of this policy document.