UK sells drugs to Amsterdam

 The Sun newspaper joins raid on cannabis factory that supplied Amsterdam

WITH the blinds tightly drawn day and night, there was something decidedly odd about the drab Edwardian home in Manchester's commuter belt.

Whoever lived at No 444 seemed to keep strange hours - and a radio blared out night and day.

But it was the pungent, aromatic smell coming from the property that made the neighbours in the quiet suburban terrace increasingly suspicious.

One described the strange stench coming from behind No 444's privet hedge as "overpowering".

And when police - accompanied by The Sun - smashed through the door this week, the misgivings of locals proved well-founded.

Officers were greeted with a sight more fitting to the Rif mountains of Morocco than the old mill town of Droylsden.

Sprouting in profusion in two upstairs bedrooms was a four-feet-high forest of plants with leaves resembling splayed fingers.

The house was a cannabis factory, one of THOUSANDS across the UK

They are so common that it is feared British dope dealers are even smuggling the drug to EU countries including Holland and its notorious cannabis coffee shops.

For years Holland had a reputation for producing much of the strongest cannabis strains but British growers' increasing sophistication means they now farm potent varieties of their own for export.

Sentencing a Leeds cannabis farmer in December last year, Judge Kerry Macgill said: "What these courts find is that there is a cottage industry. We are also getting to the stage where we are exporting it to the places where we were importing it from."

One Brit said on an internet forum: "If you've been to a Dutch space café it looks like you could have been munching space cakes with THC (the chemical compound in cannabis) from an industrial unit just off the M1, or maybe a cash-strapped office worker from the burbs."

From inner-city council houses to trendy loft apartments and affluent town houses, UK cannabis cultivation is booming.

Some - known as "guerrilla growers" - even secretly plant cannabis on other people's land.

In 1997 only 11 per cent of cannabis sold on UK streets was grown here. A decade later the figure had passed 60 per cent and now it is believed to be closer to 80 per cent.

Much of the trade is run by Vietnamese and Chinese gangs. Some place immigrants, called "ghosts", in houses as plant-sitters. But British gangsters are increasingly muscling in on the huge profits involved.

A farm of 30 to 40 plants can make £5,000 every eight weeks - the time it takes for a new cannabis plant to flower.

Normally growers use multiple rooms so a second crop, propagated with cuttings from a "mother plant", can be grown while a first is harvested. Many concentrate on "connoisseur" brands such as White Widow, Blueberry or AK-47.

Nearly 7,000 cannabis factories, containing 750,000 plants, with an estimated yield valued at £85million, were discovered by police in 2009-10, double the figure two years earlier.

Former police officer Allen Morgan, 43, an expert witness in court cases involving cannabis farms, said last night: "It's an incredibly profitable business.

"It's potentially more profitable than cocaine dealing. There's no real outlay once you've bought the equipment. Growers usually bypass the electricity meters."

Allen said spin-off industries had sprouted up around the farms. He added: "Multi-skilled traders have grown up around the business. There are specialist gardeners, lighting and electricity experts. There is a market in growing equipment and seeds."

Since the economic downturn there has been an increase in the use of disused warehouses for production.

And recession-hit professionals have been tempted by the cash profits from drug dealers to rent rooms for growing the plants.

Landlords also unwittingly rent out properties to the gangs. In 2010 the four-bedroom home of one of Britain's most senior cops was turned into a factory for potent "skunk" cannabis. Rod Jarman, a deputy assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, had rented out the £400,000 house in Abridge, Essex, through an online letting agent.

Criminals had run up a £20,000 electricity bill for the powerful lighting used to grow the plants.

Much of Britain's cannabis crop is exported. In the past three years 100kg of it has been seized by Customs at British ports or airports - a figure experts say is a fraction of the trade. There were 220 seizures of "outbound" cannabis at British ports between 2008 and 2011.

The Droylsden farm contained 116 "high-grade" female plants worth around £60,000. No one was home when cops burst in.

Luckily, the premises weren't booby-trapped. Police say gangs are taking extreme measures to ward off rivals. On one occasion, a garden gate at a house had been wired to the mains. Anyone touching the handle could have been severely injured or killed

Once inside the Droylsden home officers heard a radio playing Barry Manilow's Copacabana. One of the Tactical Aid Unit officers revealed: "They often leave a radio on to make out to the neighbours that there's someone in."

Crooks had tried to mask the odour with air fresheners and by placing duct tape on windows.

They had bypassed the electricity meter so as not to draw attention to the lights for the plants. One resident, retired James Redmond, 66, said: "The guy next door told us he could smell the dope through the walls. It was overpowering."

In the past week alone, police based in Ashton-under-Lyne station have raided four cannabis farms seizing drugs with a street value of up to £500,000.

Police have uncovered 5,120 cannabis factories across the North West in three years. They contained more than 345,000 plants with an estimated value of £140million.

Cops use helicopters with thermal imaging cameras to detect the "glow" from the heat lamps.

Cannabis is Britain's most commonly used illegal drug. One in six people aged 16 to 24 had tried it in 2010/11 and an estimated two million people smoke it.

One inner-city dope dealer in Salford bragged that he used kids as young as 14 to tend to plants at dope farms. The 28-year-old said: "It was like a gang initiation for the kids. They were s*** scared. I'd use people who owed drug money."

Anyone running a farm can get up to 14 years in jail. The penalty for possession varies from an £80 fine to five years' imprisonment.

Detective Superintendent John Lyons, from Titan, the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit, said: "Cannabis is not the harmless drug it is often perceived as.

"An increasing number of people growing cannabis are funding dangerous, organised criminal gangs."

http://www.thesun.co.uk 23/3/2012