Although selling cannabis has been tolerated in the Netherlands for decades, growing cannabis is still illegal. Soon, this might change. This is because the government is experimenting with growing legal weed.

Currently, cannabis procurement is done through ‘the back door’. What is sold legally is purchased illegally. The end of 2019 marked the start of a four-year experiment in which state-controlled cultivated weed is traded legally. This should lead to less crime, and better quality cannabis with fewer harmful substances.

After a rigorous selection process, ten growers will be selected to supply this government cannabis. Bromet follows the seasoned grower John – who wanted to run his nursery as legally and transparently as possible, but still lost everything after a court case – and the businessmen from plan C who want to start growing weed for the first time. In addition, Bromet interviews coffee shop owners, politicians involved and both supporters and opponents.

Dutch TV channel KRO NCRV airs the first part of the documentary series Legal Weed. Two organisations that want to participate in the Dutch cannabis experiment are followed as they prepare. The member of parliament who introduced the law to enable the experiment explains why the experiment is important and a coffee shop owner gives his opinion about the experiment to legalise cannabis for recreational use of cannabis.

For this documentary production Featurez gave advice, did the research, set up, planning, did some driving, accompanied the filming and did the audio recording.

Both episodes of this documentary series are published on the Featurez video page.