Nederwiet
Nederwiet is a common Dutch name for a "skunk" variation of marijuana bred in the Netherlands for its high potency with THC levels approaching 30% in some varieties. The name is derived from the Dutch words for The Netherlands, Nederland, and for weed, wiet.
History
In the early 1980s, Nederwiet was a poor man's weed with a very low THC concentration (8%). In the 1990s, students of the Dutch University of Agriculture in Wageningen did research and increased the concentration of THC to around 25 percent. This result was afterwards adopted by the market with a current average tendency of around 20%.
In the early 21st century, Nederwiet became internationally known for its potency. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, cannabis from the Netherlands was almost twice as strong as in the rest of the European Union, where the drug's potency had remained stable.
By 2008, according to figures of the Dutch law enforcements authorities, Dutch cannabis growers earned around 2 billion euros yearly from exporting at least 80 percent of their illegal harvests. The growing began at small scale in the 1970s, after "idealistic young people with green thumbs" set the trend by starting to grow cannabis on houseboats. The active ingredient THC in the cultivated plants raised from an average of 4 to 9% to around 18% and sometimes even 30%. In the production of cannabis the criminal and non-criminal worlds became intertwined.
