A police taskforce set up to tackle organised marijuana growing in the Netherlands claims the country has some 40,000 plantation owners, booking combined profit of €2bn a year.

The growers are not ‘harmless individuals growing at home but big criminal organisations,’ news agency ANP said. ‘They are not afraid of violence, corruption and murder,’ ANP quoted the police as saying.
Many plantations run on illegally-tapped electricity, prompting power network companies to consider issuing a ‘scratch and sniff’ card containing the smell of marijuana to households all over the country, De Pers reports.
Experiment
An experiment with the cards in Rotterdam and The Hague, launched in November 2010, is now likely to be extended to all areas where a lot of plantations are concentrated, the paper says.
As well as alerting householders to the smell, the card lists other suspicious signs, such as permanently-closed curtains, the paper said.
Though it remains technically illegal, the Netherlands turns a blind eye if people grow up to five plants for personal use.