Sensi Seeds exists because of a legal detail. In the early eighties Ben Dronkers worked out that Dutch prohibition covered the cannabis plant but not its seeds, so selling seeds was not illegal and, he reasoned, neither was producing them. A lawyer confirmed it, and in 1985 the Sensi Seed Club, also known as the Sensi Connoisseurs' Club, opened for business.
A shop followed in Amsterdam in 1986, selling cultivation equipment and books alongside the seeds. The decisive moment came in 1991, when Dronkers took over a competitor called The Seed Bank and merged the two gene libraries. That combined collection is the Sensi Seed Bank as it exists today, and the company says it now holds over a thousand strains, many of them never released commercially.
The genetics that came out of it are the reason half of this index exists. Sensi lists Skunk #1, Hindu Kush, Afghani #1, Northern Lights, Shiva Shanti, Jamaican Pearl, Big Bud and Jack Herer among the strains it created, and Jack Herer was later selected by Bedrocan for Dutch pharmaceutical cannabis production. The company counts 13 Best Seedbank or Best Seed Company awards.
The business grew well past seeds. Dronkers opened the world's first cannabis museum in 1985, started the hemp company HempFlax in 1993 to revive Dutch hemp farming, obtained an exemption from the Opiumwet in 1998, and expanded into Barcelona with a museum in 2012, a flagship store in 2019 and a social club in 2024. A separate US operation launched in 2023. Head office is still on the Oudezijds Achterburgwal in Amsterdam.
