Small scale domestic cannabis cultivation: An anonymous Web survey among 659 cannabis cultivators in Belgium

摘要

The shift to (inter)regional production, trade, and domestic cultivation has become an irreversible international trend. Until now, the focus of most empirical work has been on large-scale, commercially-oriented and professionally-organized segments of the cannabis industry, often based on police data and on the perspective of law enforcement agencies. This article presents some significant findings from a large-scale study on a less visible and less studied segment of the market, i.e. small-scale cultivators, based on an anonymous web survey among 659 cannabis cultivators. The article discusses the patterns of cultivation, some technical aspects of growing operations, (dis)advantages of cannabis cultivation, and perceived quality and strength of homegrown cannabis. The author argues that small-scale or amateur home growers constitute a significant segment of the cannabis market, both in a quantitative and in a qualitative perspective, and points to important differences between this sample obtained online and those obtained through traditional methods in other studies.