Inside the cannabis factory where gang boss boasts of selling drugs to primary school children (and he blames Miley Cyrus for its growing popularity)  

Drugs boss says he has three cannabis factories and employs 30 people

A drugs baron running a £1million a year cannabis empire boasted yesterday of peddling drugs to primary school children.

Hiding behind a gas mask, the criminal showed a TV crew inside one of his three cannabis farms, which produce more than 1,000 plants a year.

Speaking anonymously, the masked man in his twenties boasted that he pocketed £250,000 every three months from his illegal crop.

He took Sky News on a tour of a secret cannabis bunker in south London accessed through a hidden hatch in the floor of a shipping container.

The gangster also showed them around another house with boarded-up windows where the floor was littered with plants in plastic bags lying beside fertiliser and other equipment bought from garden

In an echo of the hit TV series Breaking Bad - in which a high school chemistry teacher manufactures crystal meth in a hidden laboratory - the footage shows one of the dealer's 30 staff tending to the plants, a bandana over his face, wearing a T-shirt and shorts in the heat generated by the powerful hydroponic lamps overhead.

The drugs baron, who could face up to 14 years in jail if caught, showed reporters how the cannabis is packed into £250 bags and sold 24 hours a day to customers.

He was later filmed in a cramped bedroom in a third property claiming the drugs trade in Britain is ‘the biggest it has ever been' despite continued police efforts to stamp it out.

Shamelessly, he bragged that dealers connected to his organisation are peddling his drugs to children in London as young as ten.

He said of his customers: ‘You've got doctors, police, solicitors, teachers, bus drivers - everyone does it. Young kids, school kids, even primary school kids.'

He shrugged off any responsibility for children getting hooked on the drug, instead blaming pop stars such as Miley Cyrus for glamorising cannabis after the singer recently appeared to light up a joint at the European MTV awards in Amsterdam.

He said: ‘I blame it on the TV, the media, rap, YouTube, like Miley Cyrus on TV it is a common thing - they see it as the cool thing to do.

‘Instead of binge-drinking they'll go and have a smoke.'

He bragged that his gang export the Class B drug to the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, and called for it to be legalised ‘so we don't have to hide what we are doing'.

Officers carried out 17 raids an hour across Britain last year, swooping on more than 100,000 growers, ranging from small suppliers who have converted their lofts and garages to huge marijuana factories.

Metropolitan Police Commander Steve Rodhouse yesterday said he was concerned by the claims that primary schoolchildren were being plied with the drug.

‘We are not hearing that is a common picture,' he added. ‘Where we do hear about it, we tackle it.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk 16/01/2014