Research paper
Global patterns of domestic cannabis cultivation: Sample characteristics and patterns of growing across eleven countries

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2014.12.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Online survey of small-scale cannabis cultivators in eleven countries (N = 6530).

  • Broad similarities but some notable differences across different country samples.

  • Most respondents neither socially nor criminally deviant.

  • Intent to profit by selling cannabis not a motivational factor for most respondents.

  • Involvement in ‘social supply’ of cannabis very common.

Abstract

Background

This article aims to provide an overview of: demographic characteristics; experiences with growing cannabis; methods and scale of growing operations; reasons for growing; personal use of cannabis and other drugs; participation in cannabis and other drug markets; contacts with the criminal justice system for respondents to an online survey about cannabis cultivation drawn from eleven countries (N = 6530). Important similarities and differences between the national samples recruited will be discussed.

Methods

This paper utilizes data from the online web survey of predominantly ‘small-scale’ cannabis cultivators in eleven countries conducted by the Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium (GCCRC). Here we focus primarily on descriptive statistics to highlight key similarities and differences across the different national samples.

Results

Overall there was a great deal of similarity across countries in terms of: demographic characteristics; experiences with growing cannabis; methods and scale of growing operations; reasons for growing; use of cannabis and other drugs; participation in cannabis and other drug markets, and; contacts with the criminal justice system. In particular, we can recognise that a clear majority of those small-scale cannabis cultivators who responded to our survey are primarily motivated for reasons other than making money from cannabis supply and have minimal involvement in drug dealing or other criminal activities.

Conclusions

These growers generally come from ‘normal’ rather than ‘deviant’ backgrounds. Some differences do exist between the samples drawn from different countries suggesting that local factors (political, geographical, cultural, etc.) may have some influence on how small-scale cultivators operate, although differences in recruitment strategies in different countries may also account for some differences observed.

Introduction

The traditional view of a global cannabis market consisting of production in developing countries for export to consumers in the developed world is increasingly outdated. Large scale outdoor cultivation has been long established in countries like Australia, Canada, USA and New Zealand. With the advent of indoor cultivation techniques and the wide dissemination of both technical expertise and growing technologies, cannabis is now produced on a significant level across most of the industrialised world (Potter, Bouchard, & Decorte, 2011). With ‘traditional’ producer countries in the developing world continuing to cultivate, the UN confirms cannabis production to be a truly global phenomenon with 172 countries and territories reporting cultivation in the 2008 World Drug Report (a year where particular attention was given to the phenomenon of cannabis cultivation; UNODC, 2008). This globalisation of cannabis cultivation continues to be a significant feature in global drug markets, and also a particular problem for researchers: “Providing a global picture of levels of cannabis cultivation and production remains a difficult task: although cannabis is produced in practically every country in the world, its cultivation is largely localized and, more often than not, feeds local markets.” (UNODC, 2013, p. xi)

Research into cannabis cultivation in the developed world to date has largely consisted of nationally focused work generating typologies of cannabis growers (e.g. Nguyen and Bouchard, 2010, Potter and Dann, 2005, Weisheit, 1991), or national studies focusing on specific aspects of cultivation in individual countries (e.g. Bouchard, 2007, Bouchard et al., 2009, Decorte, 2010, Douglas and Sullivan, 2013, Hakkarainen et al., 2011a, Hakkarainen et al., 2011b, Hammersvik et al., 2012, Malm, 2006, Plecas et al., 2005, Potter, 2010a, Weisheit, 1992). While there is some work that discusses cultivation in neighbouring states (Hakkarainen, Frank, et al., 2011a on Finland and Denmark; Jansen, 2002 on Switzerland and the Netherlands), and a compendium that draws on studies from a dozen different countries and regions around the world (Decorte, Potter, & Bouchard, 2011), there has been an absence of any significant internationally comparative research. However, such a global phenomenon would clearly benefit from some coordinated international research, a point also recognised by the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in a recent report calling specifically for further “research on the different methods of cannabis cultivation and the role of cannabis seeds therein” (INCB, 2013, para. 69).

Internationally comparative approaches to research provide many benefits, particularly around providing insights into how national legal and cultural variations impact on both patterns of (specific types of) crime and on assessing policy responses to (specific) crime(s) (e.g. Heidensohn, 2008). Indeed, Hardie-Bick, Sheptycki, & Wardak (2005; 1) assert that “[a]ny criminology worthy of the name should contain a comparative dimension. The contents of cultural meanings that are loaded into the subject of criminology are too variable for it to be otherwise. It is fair to say that most of the important points made by leading scholars of criminology are comparative in nature”. In the example of cannabis cultivation, we can begin to see how patterns of cultivation, both common and similar in terms of global trends, may or may not differ between different countries and regions. The research reported here aims to explore both similarities and differences in small-scale cannabis cultivation in eleven different countries. The potential to inform future policy responses is obvious.

This paper reports on the preliminary general findings of the (semi-) standardised International Cannabis Cultivation Questionnaire (ICCQ); (Decorte et al., 2012) developed by the Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium (GCCRC) and conducted in eleven countries to date. We begin with a brief overview of our methodology before outlining some interesting general findings. Although we accept that sampling and other methodological issues necessitate some caution in generalising from these findings (see Barratt et al., in this issue, Barratt and Lenton, in this issue), we believe we can make a number of interesting and valid comparisons between the national and international patterns of domestic cannabis cultivation in our data set of respondents from this limited number of developed nations, at least for those that we might loosely think of as ‘small-scale cannabis growers’. In particular, we provide some comparative commentary on who grows cannabis, reasons for growing, methods of growing, market involvement (‘dealing’), and contact with the police and other criminal activities of growers. As well as presenting some findings that are of interest in their own right, a key aim of this paper is also to provide some background for a series of papers (some in this edition, others under preparation) that will explore particular aspects of national and international patterns of cannabis cultivation in greater depth.

Section snippets

Methods

Our methodology has been described in some detail elsewhere (Barratt et al., 2012, Barratt et al., in this issue), so a brief overview will suffice for current purposes. Following on from successful online surveys into cannabis cultivation in Belgium (Decorte, 2010) and Denmark and Finland (Hakkarainen, Frank, et al., 2011a), the GCCRC sought to develop a standardised online survey to allow for the collection of meaningfully comparative data in all participating countries: the ICCQ (Decorte et

Selecting eligible samples

Not all respondents to our surveys have been included in the data presented here. Three rules were used to determine eligible samples for analysis in this paper:

  • 1.

    Respondents answered 3 eligibility questions at the beginning of the questionnaire. These were: (a) aged 18 years or over, (b) resided in the country of the survey, (c) reported that they had grown cannabis at least once. Respondents who did not meet these criteria were not presented with the remaining questionnaire.

  • 2.

    Q3 of the ICCQ asked

Analysis

Results are presented for a selection of comparable core ICCQ items for the eleven countries included. For this paper, we have concentrated primarily on descriptive statistics to give a general overview of our findings with emphasis on both key commonalities and notable differences across different countries. Categorical or ordinal responses are presented as percentages of valid cases (rounded to the nearest whole number). Medians and interquartile ranges (IQRs) are presented for continuous

Demographics characteristics

There is some broad commonality across our samples, which suggests this cross-national comparison can give some useful insights into differences and similarities in growing experiences across the different country samples, even if questions remain as to how representative each sample is of its parent (national) population of cannabis growers. Gender ratios (Table 2) are similar across the surveys with male respondents outnumbering female respondents by a ratio of just over 9:1. Ages (Table 2)

Discussion

We must remind the reader of some important caveats to our results. We cannot claim that our samples are representative of broader populations of cannabis growers in any of the participating countries. At the very least, we expect a bias towards smaller-scale cannabis growers who are less involved in drug markets and/or other types of crime: those with greater criminal involvement would probably be less likely to respond to our survey as they are likely to have greater concerns about possible

Conclusions

This paper reports some initial findings from work that is very much on-going. In particular, we intend future papers that develop analyses of the relationship between variables in the ICCQ and political and cultural contexts of different countries, and multivariate analyses to tease out the relationships between growers’ methods, motives and market participation. In particular we wish to explore the differences between ‘small’ and ‘large’ scale, or ‘commercial’ and ‘non-commercial’

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the thousands of cannabis cultivators who completed our questionnaire. Our research would not be possible without your efforts. Thank you to all the people and organisations who supported and promoted our research, including but not limited to: A-clinic Foundation, Bluelight.org, Cannabis Consumer organisation “WeSmoke”, Cannabis Festival 420 Smoke Out, cannabismyter.dk, Chris Bovey, Deutscher Hanfverband, drugsforum.nl, eve-rave.ch, Finnish Cannabis Association,

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