ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the challenges to the eradication of cannabis cultivation around the world. Cannabis cultivation is prohibited under international law. International drug crop eradication efforts have met with limited success regardless of which narcotic plant is targeted. With the spread of cannabis cultivation to other countries, including many industrialized nations, many of the conditions associated with narcotic crop cultivation in the developing world do not apply. In the United Kingdom (UK) many cannabis growers are motivated by financial reasons, but cannabis cultivation is not particularly connected to poverty, or an absence of alternative economic activity, or rural underdevelopment. Cannabis growers take active steps to avoid detection, seeing law-enforcement activity as one risk among many that threaten the successful cultivation of cannabis. The criminal law and criminal justice system do not deter them from growing; instead they encourage the grower to think about how best to tailor their cultivation in response to the legal context.
