Even though there were less Cannabis grow-rooms discovered over the last year. The energy company announced today that the amount of ‘stolen’ electricity was up with 7 Million Kilowatt-hours compared to the year 2013.
The 4.700 grow-rooms, of which about 198 in Amsterdam that were raided by the police in 2014 had stolen up to 147 Million Kilowatt-hours of electricity. The energy company said.
Regardless of the fact that there have been less raids, the amount of energy stolen has gone up. Which possibly indicates that the production and sales are going up and Cannabis industry is still ‘growing’. Yearly illegal grow-room owners steal almost 1 billion Kwh of electricity. According to the energy company about as much as all house holds of the city of Den Hague would use, in one year.
The value of the stolen electricity comes close to 200 Million Euro. Of which about 70 Million euro’s is Nett loss of the energy company. They of course make the average consumer and other companies pay for this loss. This means every house-hold contributes 3 euro’s to our national product and the development of good Marijuana. The government is thought to lose-out on 130 million Euro’s in missed (energy)taxes.
Having that said. It has also been known that about 80 percent of all Marijuana grown in the Netherlands is actually exported. Guestimated at some 206 to 539 tons per year.
In the United states the Cannabis industry is the fastest growing industry at this very moment. A cannabis industry investment and research firm in Oakland California called The ArcView Group, found that the U.S. market for legal Cannabis grew 74%, to $2.7 billion in the year 2014, up from $1.5 billion in the year 2013. Perhaps it’s about time to rethink the Cannabis strategy Den Hague?
The report projects that by 2019, all of the ‘State-legal’ Cannabis markets combined will have a potential overall market worth of about $11 billion annually.
