Canabis farms

[XTiffy]

My daughter manages a warehouse company on an Industrial estate. Several of the large units are empty. The one behind their unit was raided by Police on Friday to uncover a huge Canabis operation. My daughter was shown inside and she was amazed at the size and complexity of the operation on two floors all insulated and stirling board construction.. Two Albanian operators were arrested and told the Police this was the sixth time they had been caught they expected to be deported but would be straight back again by the next lorry. My daughter and her staff had heard drilling and assumed the unit was being prepped for a new tennant. Just how could such a huge operation have been carried out (at night?), without any outward signs, multi lorry loads. One of the smaller "rooms" had 80 100W bulbs on constantly. When the police opened up the unit, my daughter's unit filled up with the seet sickly smell of the canabis plants, no wonder the police were so jovial!
There has not been any local or national media coverage so far. The Police also said they had raided a similar one recently on a nearby Industrial Park. The Electrical comany are digging up the estate roads to try to find how they by-passed the meters etc.
If you work on such an industrial estate, there may well be one near you!

 

[artie]

According to Robert H. Schuller , the secret to success is to find a need and fill it.

The Bill do get in the way sometimes.

 

[Jacob]

Time the made it legal and stopped all this criminality and waste of police time.

 

[Cobbs]

Time the made it legal and stopped all this criminality and waste of police time.

Can't argue with that! There's nothing wrong with wacky baccy.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

None of us really know what our neighbours are up to unless they choose to tell you. How the police may have become aware of the buildings illegal use:

• the warehouse was simply occupied, no rental agreement, owner on inspection found something to alert them
• excessive electricity consumption identified by the energy company - cannabis needs ~80F to flourish
• intelligence - the product ultimately needs to be sold - traced back to source

Leaving aside the question of whether it should be legalised, the real issue is that it is clearly worth the risk and expense of repeating the "crime" regularly as apprehension leads to no more than a few days questioning and cell accommodation, paid for flight home, and the hassle of a return trip.

 

[Bingy man]

Assuming all done correctly in the ideal growing conditions then each plant could yield 3 + pounds of weed or 48 ounces . Let’s say a large scale production of 1000 mature plants so 1000x 48 - 48,000 ounces at £10 per gram ,,,28 grams per ounce oh damm I hate maths but that’s why they take the risks . The babysitters are there to take care of the crop and produce the goods without alerting the surrounding units . They are most likely paying off a huge debt for their journey to the uk . I smoked it for 30 years but gave it up a couple of years ago . I’ve had more health issues since I gave up tbh . What I don’t agree with is the theft of electricity or as in this case the damage done to homes and buildings in the process of producing cannabis . There was a factory unit near me raided and there must of been 40 officers present - can’t help thinking of all those assaults and robberies etc not to mention the boy racers terrorising ghe local streets and roads .

 

[Cobbs]

Trying to enforce a clearly unworkable and pointless crime leads toa lot of resources being diverted from where it would do more good. Unfortunately, the only people to profit from from the illegality are the criminals. Take away the lure of big profits and they would pack up and go home (wherever that may be.)

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Pack up and go home? No, they'd find something else criminal.

 

[Bingy man]

I think what’s needed is a JOINT operation between the police and the courts . ( sorry but I could not resist that one )

 

[Cobbs]

Pack up and go home? No, they'd find something else criminal.

Maybe, but the old bill would have a little more time and money to chase them in their new enterprise.

 

[selectortone]

Legalise it and take it out of the control of criminals.

 

[Cobbs]

I think there's an awful lot of hypocrisy when it comes to drug laws, even allowing for the fact that most people have dabbled at some point in their past. Why is it that alcohol for instance, is perfectly legal when I would guess the vast majority of us have personal experience of losing friends or family members to its abuse, while cannabis, which is responsible for vanishingly few deaths, is still proscribed? Obviously, the government is happy to profit from alcohol taxes, as well as those from tobacco, vapes and caffeine.
Speaking for myself, I think it's long past time when ALL drugs should be legalised, with the money saved on enforcement going towards quality control, licensing and education. Probably a contentious viewpoint, I admit, but better to save lives and take the money away from the criminal networks. Let's not forget that the Mafia in the US only grew to serious proportions when prohibition provided lucrative returns for bootlegging and rum running.

 

[selectortone]

Why is it that alcohol for instance, is perfectly legal when I would guess the vast majority of us have personal experience of losing friends or family members to its abuse, while cannabis, which is responsible for vanishingly few deaths, is still proscribed?

Because politicians of all parties believe it will lose them votes.

 

[Cobbs]

Because politicians of all parties believe it will lose them votes.

True, but I don't it would.

 

[selectortone]

True, but I don't it would.

I don't either, but it's the perceived view - the older you are the more likely you are to vote and that demographic is the least likely to favour legalisation of cannabis.

I agree 100% that alcohol causes many, many more social problems than wacky-baccy. And the vast majority of those problems are to do with its lack of regulation. Back in the 60s when I dabbled a bit, like most of us, very few people got psychoses that left them permanantly mentally scarred. Now you have these ultra-strong strains of skunk that have been developed to get people hooked.

Legalise it, regulate it, tax it, take it out of the control of criminals.

 

[SammyQ]

Can't argue with that! There's nothing wrong with wacky baccy.

Time the made it legal and stopped all this criminality and waste of police time.

You two gentlemen are SO uninformed. Jacob, I suspect you are up to your incendiary tricks again. Slap your own wrists; save me the trouble.

I first worked with analyses of cannabis back in 1979 and I regularly had to revise and update my knowledge of the variants ("skunk" et al) as the years went by, for the execution of my daily job. I've also seen the effects close up and achingly personal in some of the individuals for whom I have had a caring responsibility. My son is a first line responder; his experiences would "bring curls to the head of a bald man".

Cobbs, there is everything wrong with waccy baccy. Just ask any of the paranoid individuals who were long term users - if their long term memory is still intact enough for them to recall pre-hash times. Go comfort some of the R.T.C. victims who were crashed into by a drug driver. Or, the (usually pensionable-age) victims of high-street muggings that are carried out to finance the habit. Go swop places with a 'rent boy' for 24 hours.

Jacob, de-criminalising would simply put a false 'sheen' on, and 'legitimise' the callous, greedy, criminality who presently import and HUGELY profit from, the cannabis trade. (The Albanians and Vietnamese patsies that act as caretakers and gardeners are just exploited stooges). The shadowy boyos in Beamers, Jags and Mercs with 6-or-7-figure houses whoop with joy when such ignorant opinions are espoused by the chattering classes. "Get the rozzers off their backs", they just continue to make oodles of cash, but this time, Gov.Com is calling it "legit"??? Yippee!!

Publishing sweeping casual generalisms for the sake of hearing ones digital 'voice' are irritating at the best of times, but when its use continues to prop up a convenient urban myth - one actively pushed and provided for by the ungodly - the practice becomes a more serious and utterly unacceptable "accessory to criminality" Shame on you both.

 

[SammyQ]

Speaking for myself, I think it's long past time when ALL drugs should be legalised, with the money saved on enforcement going towards quality control, licensing and education. Probably a contentious viewpoint, I admit, but better to save lives and take the money away from the criminal networks.

Cobbs, its time you volunteered as a porter in A.&E. on a Saturday night 'graveyard shift in a big conurbation. You'd then see the damage drugs cause. Legalising all that trauma and heartbreak?? Come back to me after your first dozen shifts and tell me how you feel 'now'.

"Quality control" what planet are you on man?? The unscrupulous want only to push their chosen hallucinogen and in as large a quntity as they can get away with. Diluting/cutting is - to them - an unquestionable, inviolable technique to make their product go further. I've seen stuff cut with rat poison and "Ajax"; remember it? Cleaning the toilet with it? Can't wait to see its effect when injected? The facile thought that "legalising it, with quality control" is an achievable objective ironically makes me wonder what you've been smoking.

 

[Sachakins]

Interesting stand point, if you can't beat them join them.
OK, so if you can't stop it, then legalise it approach, let's extrapolate that.

Speeding, remove all limits, instant release of police time and money.
Assault, split it into two, verbal and physical resulting in actual contact harm. Only physical is a crime, 75% of crimes removed.

So, just because something is difficult to police, you just change the rules.
Get serious, the solution is better resourced policing, joined up judicial system.
It's not the police that dole out lenient sentences, it's the judiciary.
The police do best the can, only to see some judge believe a defense lawyer and his sob story about poor childhood upbringing, missed social services support and they had their teddy taken away.

The police are just as frustrated as the public with these out of touch judges.

Rant over.

 

[worn thumbs]

A few years ago I was working on the adjacent road of an industrial estate in the sort of circumstances that were described in the first post.The police went in and found a huge amount of wooden construction had taken place and thousands of plants were flourishing.They did get a couple of the people who were tending the crop but nobody actually got the bill for all the electricity.Which means we all paid a bit of it.The people at the top of the tree had done enough to be un-traceable.
As for the effects,it seems to vary.Some are hardly affected and some suffer,I knew a bright chap who dabbled with it at art college and it must have been the powerful stuff because he was never the same again and hanged himself in his squat when in his late 40's.Another long time acquaintance is a gentle soul with a very patchy employment record and a huge Grateful Dead collection,I've never gone near the stuff.

 

[SammyQ]

The police do best the can, only to see some judge believe a defense lawyer and his sob story about poor childhood upbringing, missed social services support and they had their teddy taken away.

The police are just as frustrated as the public with these out of touch judges.

I rubbed shoulders with both policemen and the judiciary off-and-on for 37 years. The judiciary have increasingly been keen over that time to give rehabilitation a go instead of incarceration, otherwise the pathetic contemporary provision of prisons fills up quicker than we can keep up with. Fine if the funds are available to pay for support services to make that alternative feasible. Enter stage left, the "Austerity years" and the steady decline in real supply since. So, no, it's not a runner.
Secondly, the judges of this world are only as good as the statutary limitations imposed on them by politicians with vote-determining popularity as their prime driving force, not workable and effective deterrents. Having politicos with backbone to make the importers and distributors of drugs more arrestable and their punishment more of a deterrent would be a nice start.

Sashakins? "sob story about poor childhood upbringing, missed social services support and they had their teddy taken away." From my experience, I can say that this condescending comment, with its roots in real misery, but its concluding strap line in mock satire does not help. Poor upbringing can happen right across the financial spectrum. One of my worst ones had two parents driving matching Volvo estates. "Taking their teddy away" reads more like: 'taking their childhood away' in real life. If someone is conditioned by circumstances not to develop responsibility and judgement, as should be imparted by a rsponsible adult, one does not function within the expectations of "society" as we know it.