Cannabis

 

Director                               Arjen Sinninge Damsté

Cinematography                 Reinier van Brummelen & Hans Bouma

Producer                             Robert Oey

Executive producer             Jorinde Sorée

Production Compoany        Topkapi Nonfiction

Editors                                 Haukje Heuff, Chris van Oers

 

 

The series ‘Cannabis’ takes a look at the history of Dutch soft drugs policy from the 1970s onwards. Against the background of half a century of tolerance policy, the rise and fall of cannabis king Johan van Laarhoven (sentenced to 103 years in prison in Thailand) is told. While Van Laarhoven languishes in a cell, it is revealed that not Thailand but the Netherlands is behind his arrest. The seed for the hunt for Van Laarhoven was already sown in the late 1970s and the myth of the Netherlands as an exemplary constitutional state is being debunked.