Another casualty in the War on Drugs, this time Dutch. 
Dutch police in cannabis mix-up
everynametaken Send a noteboard - 04/09/2009 06:33:11 AM
Dutch police in cannabis mix-up
everynametaken Send a noteboard - 04/09/2009 06:33:11 AM
A triumph for Dutch police quickly turned out to be an embarrassing mistake after they destroyed what they thought was a field of cannabis plants.
Police on Wednesday announced they had discovered a plantation of some 47,000 illicit cannabis plants with a street value of 4.4m euros ($6.3m; £3.8m).
They had destroyed much of the crop when they were told the plants belonged to a respected school of agriculture.
They were a type of hemp, being grown as a fibre for use in textiles.
Hemp is related to cannabis, but contains only trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive substance found in marijuana.
They were being grown in the field near Lelystad, Flevoland province under licence by researchers from Wageningen University who were studying the hemp variety as a potential sustainable source of textiles.
"The street value from a drug point of view is less than zero," the university's Simon Vink told AP news agency.
Under Dutch law, cannabis is a controlled substance, and its large-scale production is illegal.
However a policy of tolerance is applied to individual users.
Poor hemp plants!
I'm pretty surprised that the police didn't actually find out who owned th eproperty before destroying everything; the destruction could have been avoided if they had.
Police on Wednesday announced they had discovered a plantation of some 47,000 illicit cannabis plants with a street value of 4.4m euros ($6.3m; £3.8m).
They had destroyed much of the crop when they were told the plants belonged to a respected school of agriculture.
They were a type of hemp, being grown as a fibre for use in textiles.
Hemp is related to cannabis, but contains only trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive substance found in marijuana.
They were being grown in the field near Lelystad, Flevoland province under licence by researchers from Wageningen University who were studying the hemp variety as a potential sustainable source of textiles.
"The street value from a drug point of view is less than zero," the university's Simon Vink told AP news agency.
Under Dutch law, cannabis is a controlled substance, and its large-scale production is illegal.
However a policy of tolerance is applied to individual users.
Poor hemp plants!
I'm pretty surprised that the police didn't actually find out who owned th eproperty before destroying everything; the destruction could have been avoided if they had.
But wine was the great assassin of both tradition and propriety...
-Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
-Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
Another casualty in the War on Drugs, this time Dutch. Dutch police in cannabis mix-up
- 04/09/2009 06:33:11 AM
562 Views
Dutch police in cannabis mix-up
- 04/09/2009 06:33:11 AM
562 Views
Indeed, how can you give a mandatory five year sentence per plant if you don't know whose they are?
- 04/09/2009 07:28:26 AM
367 Views
