Big Tobacco Dutch Cannabis Experiment: Marlboro Buys In

The Big Tobacco Dutch cannabis experiment is a corporate crossover that almost nobody asked for: Marlboro's parent company is now a part-owner of the largest grower in the Dutch wietexperiment. An investigation by NU.nl, Investico and De Groene Amsterdammer has confirmed that Altria — the American tobacco giant behind Philip Morris USA — has quietly become a stakeholder in CanAdelaar, the Hellevoetsluis grower producing roughly 20,000 kg of cannabis per year for every participating coffeeshop in the trial.

This is not a neutral business story. After 25 years selling cannabis seeds, vaporisers and harm-reduction literature from our Amsterdam counter, we've watched the industry we love get circled by suits since the early 2010s. The circling has stopped. They've landed. And the Dutch government will evaluate the experiment next year — which means the window to push back is now.

From Our Counter: We've been here since 1999. The independent Dutch cannabis scene was built by growers, breeders, coffeeshop owners and stubborn idealists. None of them needed Marlboro's accountants to make it work. Customers who come in to buy seeds or get a grinder are not looking for a Virginia boardroom in the supply chain.

How Big Tobacco walked into the Dutch wietexperiment

Big Tobacco entered the Dutch cannabis experiment through a Canadian back door. Altria bought nearly half of Canadian cannabis firm Cronos in 2019. Cronos announced in December that it would buy CanAdelaar for EUR 57.5 million. CanAdelaar is the biggest grower in the closed coffeeshop-chain trial running across ten Dutch municipalities for about five years.

AZARIUS · How Big Tobacco walked into the Dutch wietexperiment

Follow the board seats and the story tells itself: four of Cronos's seven board members work or worked at Altria. So when CanAdelaar tells journalists it operates independently and that "Cronos is not a tobacco company", and Cronos insists Altria has no control over daily operations, you can decide for yourself how much daylight there really is between Marlboro money and the cannabis flowing into participating coffeeshops.

Philip Morris International, for its part, says it is shifting to smoke-free alternatives. Altria did not respond to the journalists' questions. That silence is its own kind of answer.

The supply chain at a glance

Why Big Tobacco wants cannabis — and why that should worry you

Cannabis has been on Big Tobacco's diversification list since the 1970s, according to researcher Rachel Barry at the University of Bath, who has documented the industry's half-century view of cannabis as a lucrative pivot. This is not opportunism after Dutch policy shifted — it is a strategy that has been waiting for a door to open. The EMCDDA has tracked similar industry interest across European cannabis policy shifts for years.

AZARIUS · Why Big Tobacco wants cannabis — and why that should worry you

The door, unfortunately, is the wietexperiment. A government-sanctioned supply chain feeding every coffeeshop in ten municipalities is exactly the kind of foothold that justifies a EUR 57.5 million cheque from a corporate parent.

And the worry is not just "cannabis instead of cigarettes". Marc Willemsen of the Trimbos Institute spelled it out: the industry could push people to both smoke weed AND vape — double the impact, double the profit. That is the model. Sell you the flower, sell you the vape, sell you the disposable, sell you the replacement cartridge. The independent Amsterdam scene built itself around one honest transaction with one customer. The Marlboro model needs you back next week to order the refill, and the week after.

The playbook we've seen before

• Funded pseudoscience: Big Tobacco previously bankrolled misleading campaigns and front groups. Researcher Benoit Gomis (Toronto/Bath) says the same lobby playbook is now being used to spread positive cannabis messaging.
• Captured research: Aspeya, a subsidiary of Philip Morris International, paid nine of eleven authors behind at least four cannabis studies on THC and CBD. Kevin Jenniskens of Cochrane Netherlands found significant spin, cherrypicking and unclear funder roles in that body of work.
• Influencer-led vape marketing: Tom Bart of Jellinek notes Big Tobacco used influencers, social media and subsidiaries to sell vapes around existing rules. There is no reason to expect different behaviour with cannabis.

The loopholes (geitenpaadjes) the rules cannot close

The Dutch wietexperiment has strict rules on paper: no advertising, no sales to minors. All seven addiction and tobacco experts consulted by the journalists fear loopholes regardless. The Dutch even have a word for it — geitenpaadjes, the little goat paths around the fence.

AZARIUS · The loopholes (geitenpaadjes) the rules cannot close

This is the part that makes us most uneasy at the counter. The rules were written for a domestic, mid-sized cannabis sector. They were not stress-tested against a multinational with decades of experience routing marketing through subsidiaries, sponsoring "lifestyle" content, and quietly funding the research that policymakers later cite. Philip Morris International saying it is "shifting to smoke-free alternatives" is not reassurance — it is a roadmap. Smoke-free means vapes. Vapes mean repeat customers, age-ambiguous flavours, and a marketing surface area that didn't exist when the wietexperiment was designed.

From Our Counter: Customers ask us all the time why we still bother stocking lesser-known seed banks and small-batch grinders. Because the moment everything on the shelf comes from three multinationals, the culture is over. We've watched it happen to beer. We've watched it happen to vapes. We are not interested in watching it happen to cannabis. Honest limitation: we don't know yet how the evaluation will land, and we won't pretend otherwise.

The Dutch government evaluates the experiment next year. That evaluation needs to look at who actually owns the supply, not just whether the supply works. Otherwise the trial that was meant to formalise a community-rooted Dutch model — the same culture you can still feel walking into the independent coffeeshops of Amsterdam — will instead have handed it to a Virginia-headquartered cigarette company. Compared to the Beckley Foundation's long-standing argument for evidence-led, community-rooted cannabis policy, the current trajectory looks like the opposite.

Last updated: April 2026