Transcript Worldwide Weed, Need and Greed: cannabis cultivation in

World Wide Weed, Need and Greed:
cannabis cultivation in the UK and beyond
Gary Potter
LSBU
[email protected]
“Look, I know my habit causes problems in Colombia, but
you try finding a Fair Trade drug dealer”
Preparing the ground:
Existing models of UK drug markets
• The Pyramid model: the stereotypical view of drug markets
– Organisation (organised crime?); Violence; Adulteration; ‘Pushing’
– Primarily about the money
• ‘Layers’ of the market (Pearson and Hobbs, 2001)
– Importation; Wholesale; the ‘Middle Market’; retail level
distribution
• ‘Bifurcation’
– Of organisational structures in drugs markets
– Of ‘attitudes, ‘motives’ or ‘drivers’
• Changes over time (e.g. Adler, 1985; Dorn et al. 1992)
– From ‘Hippie’ ideologies to violence, greed and organised crime
A growing industry:
Trends in domestic cultivation
• The demand for cannabis
• Traditional supply routes
• Recent trends towards domestic cultivation
– Legal cultivation
• Industrial hemp
• Medical marijuana
– Illegal cultivation
• Now accounts for as much as 60% (or more) of the
cannabis consumed in the UK (source: IDMU)
Sowing the seeds:
How cannabis is grown in the UK
• Outdoor cultivation
– Gardeners
– Guerrilla growers
– Farmers
• Greenhouses
– Security vs. control
• Indoor cultivation
– No, low and high-tech
approaches
– Climate control to
maximise drug production
Outdoor growing
Indoor growing
Fertile ground:
Who grows cannabis, and why?
• Requirements to become a cannabis grower
– Space; Materials (including seeds or cuttings);
Knowledge
• Who grows cannabis?
– Demographic profiles
– Personal traits: interests and ideologies
• Cannabis growing as an ideological position
– Cannabis as a cultural symbol since 1960s
– Jack Herer’s “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”
Roots:
Ideological cannabis growers
• Not-for-profit cannabis growers
• All about the ‘weed’…
– Activism
– Affiliation with wider ‘cannabis culture’
– Personal use and social supply
• Avoiding the black market
• Ensuring quality, strength and purity
• Elements of ‘need’
– Medical marijuana cultivation
• ‘Accidental’ cannabis cultivation
• Summary of non-financial drivers
The budding business:
Commercial cannabis cultivation
• Small scale for-profit growers (‘Weed’, ‘Need’, and the
emergence of ‘Greed’)
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One off opportunists and the slippery slope
Growing as a business: the self-employed grower
Partnerships and growing friends
The limits to individual grow-ops
• Mid-range growing (‘Weed’, ‘Need’ and ‘Greed’)
– Co-operatives
– Franchises
– Key individuals
• ‘Corporate’ cannabis cultivation: the traditional pyramid
model? (‘Greed’ dominates over ‘Weed’)
Bearing fruit: discussion points
• The need to recognise domestic production
– Import substitution
• The interplay of financial and non-financial
‘drivers’
– Drift and the ‘slippery slope’
• Networks and key individuals – linking demand
and supply
• Bifurcation
– Methods; ideologies; organisation
• Conditions leading to the ‘Green avalanche’
• Future trends for cannabis and other drugs
World Wide Weed:
Some Observations on International Developments
• Import substitution in a range of industrialised
nations
– Outdoor vs Indoor
• Typologies of growers
– Weed, Need and Greed motivations
– Amateur and professional
– Small and large scale
• Impact on traditional producer nations and
global trafficking
• Resistance to policing and eradication efforts