Which, when you think about it, makes utterly no sense. They have to buy it from quasi-gangsters on the gray/black market. That puts regular shop owners in a perilous situation. Although I'm not that dramatic to realize that wholesale pot dealers in The Netherlands are probably more like regular businessmen rather than violent criminals. But still.
Vice recently did an episode on one of the top seed producers in the Netherlands (which obviously requires cultivating it) and they seemed very professional. They were organizing month long expeditions to remote areas of the Congo in search of genetically isolated strains and lobbying governments for decriminalization as well as running bio labs.
Wherever there is a black market there is much more crime, especially of the violent variety. Looking at crime in the Netherlands, I would venture to guess that its very much like California's market pre-legalization where most growers operated as legitimate, albeit heavily under-regulated, businesses that could still turn to local police in case of robbery, threats, etc. but still have to worry about flying under the radar (like when the DEA raided a bunch of collectives in California because they were too close to schools)
