Purpose: Unlike other plant‐based drugs, cannabis is increasingly grown within the country of consumption, requires minimal processing before consumption, and can be easily grown almost anywhere using indoor or outdoor cultivation techniques. Developments in agronomic technologies have led to global growth in domestic cultivation, both by cannabis users for self‐ and social‐supply, and by more commercially‐oriented...

Drug dealing among drug users has been associated with elevated risk-taking and negative health outcomes. However, little is known about the cessation of drug dealing among this population. We assessed time to cessation of drug dealing using Cox regression. We also used generalized estimating equation (GEE) analysis and chi-square analysis to examine factors associated with...

** both authors had equal contributions, order of authors picked randomly In this paper, we take advantage of aerial police detection data and compare them to an analysis of airborne hyperspectral imagery to estimate the size of outdoor cannabis production in a high density cultivation area located in British Columbia, Canada. The results suggest that...

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A well-known finding of research on illegal markets is that drug-dealing organisations operate in risky and uncertain market and intra-organisational conditions that considerably limit their size and their survival time. Yet, little is known about the organisations or individual dealers who are more successful than others at avoiding arrest and incarceration, especially in regard to...

This study applies the concept of restrictive deterrence to a sample of drug market offenders. In particular, we assess the influence of behavioral changes post-arrest on time to rearrest. The sample consists of arrest data on all drug offences in South Australia from the start of 2000 to the end of 2007 (n = 26819)....

The current study examines the patterns of youth participation in cannabis cultivation by developing a typology among a sample of young offenders (n=175) in a rural region of Quebec, Canada known for its extensive outdoor cultivation industry. A hierarchical cluster analysis approach is used to group participants on various dimensions: motivation, substance use, delinquency and...

The purpose of this report is to re-examine the scientific and grey literature on current methods of estimating the size of illegal markets, with an emphasis on the meth/MDMA markets. The first part of this paper reviews the current data available from various surveys on the prevalence of Amphetamine-Type Stimulants (ATS) and MDMA use in...

North America features some of the world's highest consumption levels for controlled psychoactive prescription drugs (PPDs; e.g. prescription opioids, benzodiazepines, stimulants), with non-medical use and related harms (e.g. morbidity, mortality) rising in key populations in recent years. While the determinants, characteristics and impacts of these 'use' problems are increasingly well documented, little is known about...

Cet article dresse un portrait empirique des impacts sociaux vécus par les résidents de deux municipalités régionales de comté (MRC) du Québec aux prises avec le problème de la culture illicite de cannabis dans les champs environnants. L’enquête de terrain, réalisée en 2006, comportait deux volets. Le premier consistait en une démarche qualitative visant à...

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The aim of the current study is to assess whether criminal networks can help young offenders avoid contacts with the criminal justice system. We examine the association between criminal network and cost avoidance specifically for the crime of cannabis cultivation in a rural region in Quebec, Canada. A self‐report delinquency survey, administered to the region's...

Hydroponics is one the fastest rising sectors in the horticultural industry. It is, however, a contestedone. The problem with the industry is that the products sold by hydroponics entrepreneurs are not onlybeing used to grow tomatoes or cucumbers, but also potentially illegal produce, such as cannabis. In this paper, we explore the extent to which...

The emergence of cannabis cultivation in industrialised countries may offer adolescents, especially those living in regions suitable for outdoor cultivation, new opportunities to participate in the drug trade. The current study examines the prevalence and the nature of youth involvement in cannabis cultivation in an important agricultural region of Quebec, Canada. A self-report delinquency survey...

Among the many difficulties with estimating the size of the cannabis industry is that suitable methodologies for estimating large-scale outdoor illegal drug production in developing countries cannot be used to estimate indoor production in industrialized countries. This article proposes a new approach that overcomes some of these difficulties. The case study is a mature cannabis...

Link to full text on Bulletin on Narcotic Drugs

Originally developed in biology, capture-recapture methodologies have increasingly been integrated into the study of human populations to provide estimates of the size of “hidden populations.” This paper explores the validity of one capture-recapture model—Zelterman’s (1988) truncated Poisson estimator—used to estimate the size of the marijuana cultivation industry in Quebec, Canada. The capture–recapture analysis draws on...

This paper argues that the concept of resilience is a fruitful way of understanding the impact of repressive policies on illegal drug markets. For the purpose of this article, resilience is defined as the ability of market participants to preserve the existing levels of exchanges between buyers and sellers, despite external pressure aimed at disrupting...

Capture-recapture methodologies have been used to estimate the size of the hidden population of active offenders on the basis of the observed properties of the truncated distribution of arrested offenders. We use this approach to estimate the odds of arrest of marijuana, cocaine, crack, and heroin dealers and users in one Canadian province (Quebec). Findings...