About Arjan Roskam

The King of Cannabis is Arjan, the owner and founder of the Green House Coffeeshops, Green House Seed Company, Strain Hunters and several other cannabis businesses. He is the only breeder in the world credited with winning over 38 high times cannabis cups. Arjan was crowned the King of Cannabis in the 1990’s. Previously in the 1980’s, Neville was considered to be The King of Cannabis. Neville brought some of the world’s greatest known strains of Cannabis to the people in those days. Neville also started the first cannabis seed bank collective in Amsterdam called the Super Sativa Seed Club. In 1991 Neville retired from the cannabis seed business and left Amsterdam due to personal circumstances, he is now rumored to own a fish farm, where he now enjoys his retirement.

Arjan’s vision for The King of Cannabis concept was to achieve cannabis normalization around the world, and to promote positive cannabis culture to the mainstream media. To achieve this he realized he had to offer something unique.

Most coffeeshops in those days were dark, stuffy, sold only imported Hash and Thai or Jamaican weed. In 1985 Arjan had started growing exotic strains gifted to him from friends and “strain hunted” from trips to places like Thailand, Nepal and other countries in South East Asia. The growers supplying the shops at that time were only interested in high yields and short flowering times, Arjan on the other hand started to experiment with his favorite haze strains. Since the hazes (cannabis sativa) took fairly long to flower and most growers were not interested in producing haze strains. Also the coffeeshops were not interested in selling those strains, as they were more expensive.

After many years of trying to convince other coffeeshops to sell his haze weed, Arjan later decided to start his own coffeeshop, The Green House, which he founded on the Tolstraat in 1992. In 1993, one year after opening his first coffeeshop in Amsterdam, Arjan introduced the Green House in the 6th High Times Cannabis Cup and he immediately won first prize for the overall cannabis cup. The year after that, in 1994, Arjan won almost every single cup there was to win at the high times cannabis cup. Arjan’s achievements didn’t go un-noticed and in 1995, High Times put him on the front cover of their magazine. This led to a great migration of smokers from all over the world to come visit the Green House to sample the worlds best cannabis created by Arjan. The first celebrities started showing up at the Green House and asked if they could pose on photographs with him, the King of Cannabis. Arjan then started hanging their pictures on the wall, and before he knew it, there was a celebrity at the Green House on a very regular basis. Today he counts more than 100 A-List celebrities that have visited the Green House.

The vision to normalize cannabis use and spread cannabis culture around world, could be realized by using the celebrities to spread Arjan’s message for cannabis legalization around the world. Arjan would ask celebreties like Woody Harrelson and many others to speak out against criminalizing cannabis when they returned back home. This vision of normalization has now become a reality, cannabis is becoming more and more accepted all around the world for recreational and medicinal use. In the United States alone, more than 19 states have now legalized cannabis for medicinal use and 2 states have recently legalized cannabis for recreational use. Additionally Uruguay has completely legalized cannabis, and the majority of the European countries have decriminalized cannabis for personal use. In countries like Spain, hundreds of legal cannabis social clubs have opened up all over the country. Amsterdam was once at the center of the fight for legalization, and is now one of the many places in world where cannabis use is becoming acceptable in society.

Since opening the first Green House Coffeeshop, Arjan has established an empire of cannabis businesses, with 4 cannabis coffeeshops, the worlds most successful cannabis seed bank, an award winning cannabis film/documentary company, an award winning nutrients company, a foundation and several other cannabis businesses. He is considered one of the most important figures in the cannabis industry.

Together with Franco, Arjan was the first grower in the world to educate people on youtube with his Green House Grow Videos, in which he showed the world how to grow his cannabis strains from clone to harvest. He later released the Strain Hunters Documentary series in which he tries to educate the world, how cannabis important cannabis is to the poorest farmers in developing countries. Arjan has also been featured on the National Geographic Series “Drugs Inc.” and the VICE.com episodes “Kings of Cannabis”.

The King of Cannabis continues to be at the forefront of the fight for cannabis legalization around the world!