Dutch Cannabis Supply Pilot Delivers Lower Prices and a Fuller Shelf

AMSTERDAM – A report published by the Trimbos Institute, RAND Europe, and Breuer&Intraval compared ten municipalities where coffeeshops sell exclusively licensed-grown Сannabis against ten operating under the country’s traditional tolerance policy. The program launched April 7, 2025. The first follow-up covers data through the first quarter of 2026.

The sharpest early change showed up in product selection. Regulated coffeeshops expanded their average range from roughly eleven unique product names to more than thirty-four. Edibles went from being carried in about a third of participating shops at the program’s start to ninety-four percent at the first follow-up. Vape products [absent entirely when the experiment began] appeared in two-thirds of regulated shops. Concentrates more than quadrupled in availability.

Flower prices followed suit. The average per-gram retail price in regulated municipalities dropped from €12.06 to €10.08, while the comparison group’s average rose. Researchers put the price difference between the two groups at €3.35, a statistically significant gap. Hash ran the other way. Prices in regulated shops climbed from €11.68 to more than €21 per gram, against a modest rise in the comparison group. Coffeeshop operators said regulated hash had not yet met customer expectations. Some hash-focused buyers were reported to have traveled to non-participating municipalities rather than accept the higher price.

A wider menu and cheaper flower did not translate to more consumption. The study found no statistically significant change in use frequency, days per month, or amount consumed per typical session. Health indicators and risk markers for problematic use were also unchanged. Consumers in regulated municipalities did purchase more per transaction [the most common single-visit amount shifted from one gram to five], however, researchers confirmed that larger purchase sizes were not accompanied by higher use frequency.

The unregulated market has not stepped back. Consumers still buy outside the coffeeshop system, citing lower prices and bulk availability. The most notable black-market finding was an uptick in hash quantities purchased per transaction in regulated areas, likely tied to the higher price of regulated hash inside the closed chain.

On the supply side, the ten licensed growers feeding the experiment told researchers they are approaching overproduction, with substantial upfront costs in infrastructure, security, and quality controls spread across a customer base still confined to ten municipalities. Growers said expansion to more areas is necessary to bring supply and demand into balance. Researchers describe the findings as a first interim reading, not a verdict. Annual follow-up measurements are planned across the four-year monitoring period, with a comprehensive evaluation expected in 2027.

The Dutch pilot is delivering what good policy experiments are built to produce – early, measurable data. Lower flower prices and a dramatically wider product range inside the regulated chain are real gains. The hash pricing problem is equally real, but it reads as a supply-scale issue that expansion could fix, not a structural flaw in the model. What this report and near-term follow-ups cannot fully resolve is the illegal market question. Regulated supply must compete on price to displace black-market operators, and the current footprint is still too small to run that test at scale. The 2027 evaluation will be the one to watch.

Photo courtesy: trimbos.nl