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British children to get jabs against drug addiction
Independent
26.07.2004
By SOPHIE GOODCHILD and STEVE BLOOMFIELD

A radical scheme to vaccinate children against future drug addiction is being considered by British ministers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Under the plans, doctors would immunise children at risk of becoming smokers or drug users with an injection. The scheme could operate in a similar way to the current nationwide measles, mumps and rubella vaccination programme.
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.

The Department of Trade and Industry has set up a special project to investigate ways of using new scientific breakthroughs to combat drug and nicotine addiction.

A national anti-drug immunisation scheme is one of the proposals being put forward by the Brain Science, Addiction and Drugs project, an expert committee of scientists appointed by the Government earlier this year.

Professor David Nutt, a leading government drugs adviser who sits on the committee, told the IoS that anti-drug vaccines for children are likely to be among the panel's recommendations when it reports next March.

Professor Nutt, head of psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol and a senior member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, said: "People could be vaccinated against drugs at birth as you are against measles. You could say cocaine is more dangerous than measles, for example. It is important that there is a debate on this issue.

This is a huge topic - addiction and smoking are major causes of premature death."

According to the Government's own figures, the cost of drug addiction - through related crime and health problems - to the economy is £12bn a year. There is a strong incentive for the Government to find new ways to halt spiralling addiction.

Last week, the IoS revealed that cocaine use had trebled in Britain with increasing numbers of users switching to highly addictive crack cocaine.

Scientists are already conducting trials for drugs that can be used by doctors to vaccinate against cocaine, heroin and nicotine addiction.

Xenova, the British biotechnology firm, has carried out trials on an anti-cocaine vaccine which showed that 58 per cent of patients remained cocaine-free after three months.

Meanwhile, experts at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, have developed a super-virus, harmless to humans, which produces proteins that can block or reduce the effects of cocaine.
The team at Scripps tested the virus on rats by injecting it into their noses twice a day for three days. On the fourth day, the rats were given a shot of cocaine. The researchers found that cocaine had more effect on the rats not injected with the virus than those that were.

Scientists hope the virus will help stop the cravings experienced by cocaine users for the drug by blocking the pleasure they normally associate with cocaine.

This anti-drug medication is expected to be available to users within the next two years in the form of a nasal spray.
Proposals to introduce a national anti-drug vaccination programme have been greeted with a cautious welcome by MPs and experts.

Ian Gibson, head of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, said the Government would have to carry out public consultation.

"There is no reason to think this would not be a starter or beneficial," said Dr Gibson, Labour MP for Norwich North.
"But ... proper consultation with the public needs to happen well in advance."

David Hinchliffe, chairman of the Commons Health Committee and Labour MP for Wakefield, said: "This could have a huge impact on society in terms of preventing damage to others and dealing with addicts. [But] the ethical perspective does need to be looked at closely."

The National Treatment Agency, which manages drug-addiction programmes, welcomed any new ways of treating addiction but said there was no "magic bullet".

Comment: see comment in drug news section

MAGIC MUSHROOM traders are facing a £lm tax bill after a Customs and Excise ruling that the hallucinogenic fungus is to be treated as a drug and not a food.

The move comes just weeks after Ministers ordered a clamp-down on the increasing number of shops and market stalls that sell the mushrooms. Guidance issued by Customs makes it dear that the magic mushroom must be subject to a 17.5 per cent VAT charge because it is eaten for its "stimulant" rather than "nutritional" effect.

In a letter written in re-sponse to an inquiry from a north London shop owner, the Customs' National Advice Service said: "Unfortunately the said mushroom does not qualify for zero-rating under... the VAT Act 1994 and is therefore standard rated for VAT purposes at 17.5 per cent."

Customs argued: "It is evident from various magic mushrooms websites that you do not use it based on the amount required in a recipe, you use amounts based on what sort of 'trip'you want."

The letter, based on guidance from the Customs and Excise unit of expertise, added: "In these recipes, the foodstuffs are used as a vehicle for consuming the drug as opposed to... an essential ingredient. Accordingly the amount recommended to be used in recipes dictates how much you 'trip' as opposed to : any ordinary reason."
There are estimated to be btween 200 and 300 shops selling i magic mushrooms and many other businesses trading online.

The bulk of the produce is im-ported from the Netherlands. It has been_suggested that the Treasury could be in for a £lm mushroom tax windfall.

Mushroom traders argue that the Government is guilty of hypocrisy by making it a criminal offence to sell prepared mushrooms while at the same time making money from taxing the sale of fresh mushrooms after shops were raided.
Chris Territt, from the Psyche Deli in north London, said: "Customs and Excise have reviewed the situation for us and, in their opinion, the mushrooms, which are mostly imported under their supervision, are not only legal but VATable. Consequentfythe Government is taking 17.5 percent of every mushroom transaction. If the Government thinks we're breaking the law, how can it be taking our money?"

Another mushroom trader said she was having to pay backdated VAT. Sylvia Chandler, of the Federation of Shamanic Entheogens Retailers and Wholesalers, said: "It's ridiculous that the Government thinks the mushroom is a drug and not a food. The chemical in the mushroom belongs to the same series of serotonin chemicals that naturally occur in the human body."

Customs argues that the average person would "consider" the magic mushroom to be a drug. A spokeswoman said the VAT advice applied only to "fresh" mushrooms and that once they were "prepared" for sale, by freezmg, drying or mak-ing tea, the mushrooms were classified as a class A drug.

Comment:
The Governnment seems to be adopting several confused approached to mushroom sales. According to some traders, the Home Office has argued that "prepared" includes packaging and so it is illegal to sell packaged fresh mushrooms - but not loose ones. Which mushrooms the Home Office is prepared to collect tax off is a different story...

Controlled Drugs System Needs Overhaul, Says Shipman Inquiry

15.7.04By Will Batchelor and Jane Kirby, PA News

The woman heading the inquiry into serial killer GP Harold Shipman today called for an overhaul of the “fragmented” system of regulating controlled drugs. Dame Janet Smith recommended in particular the creation of a national Controlled Drugs Inspectorate, not only to prevent a repeat of Shipman’s atrocities but to crackdown on the known problem of prescription drug abuse by medics.

Dame Janet made the recommendation in the inquiry’s fourth of five reports, which revealed how Shipman was able to order vast amounts of diamorphine – pharmaceutical heroin – with ease. He used the drug to murder at least 215 people in Hyde, Greater Manchester, and Todmorden, West Yorkshire, between 1975 and 1998. The GP was jailed for life for 15 counts of murder in 2000 and was found hanged in his cell at Wakefield Prison in January.

The report found that between 1992 and 1998 alone, during which time he killed at least 143 people, the GP obtained 24,000mg of diamorphine illicitly. He either prescribed the drug to patients who were not in any pain and collected it himself, or over-prescribed it to those who needed it and kept a large portion back. To one patient alone he prescribed 12,000mg – enough to kill 360 people not used to opiates.

He would also “helpfully” volunteer to remove surplus drugs after a patient’s death, falsely promising to destroy them. Dame Janet said it would have been difficult to identify Shipman’s activities under the current system. However, she did criticise pharmacist Ghislaine Brant, who managed the chemist shop where Shipman would personally collect the prescriptions, for failing to spot an unusual period of activity between February and August 1993. During that time, Shipman issued 14 prescriptions for single 30mg ampoules of diamorphine – an unusual amount as it would be too much for a heart attack victim and too little for a cancer sufferer. However, such a dose would be fatal for “morphine-naive” patients.

Dame Janet said Mrs Brant had “lost her professional objectivity” when dealing with the trusted GP and had “plainly not applied her mind” when considering whether the dosage was appropriate for the patient. Speaking after the report was published, she agreed Mrs Brant had been deliberately “groomed” by Shipman. She said: “Very much so. He befriended her when he first moved into the surgery next door to where she was already working. “To use a colloquial expression, he almost chatted her up. On occasions he flattered her and he would ask her advice about things. “He developed a relationship quite deliberately, whereby she held him in high regard, but also came to regard him as a friend.”

Mrs Brant still works at the same pharmacy, which is now run by Co-operative Healthcare. She was unavailable for comment today, but the company defended her in a statement. It read: “Mrs Ghislaine Brant is a conscientious and experienced pharmacist. “The prescriptions written by Dr Shipman were all correctly dispensed and Mrs Brant and her colleagues believed that the medication was to be used by him for the good of his patients.”

Dame Janet also criticised the inexperience and poor training of Detective Constable Patrick Kelly, the police Chemist Inspection Officer (CIO), who carried out a routine check on the pharmacy records in July 1993. She wrote: “At the time DC Kelly was very inexperienced. He had been appointed as a CIO only three months before. His training had been inadequate. “Even so, by the time he examined this CDR (Controlled Drugs Register), DC Kelly had seen at least 150 CDRs and, in my judgment, he should have recognised the consecutive entries in this one were very unusual.”

Dame Janet suggested it would be extremely difficult to prevent a repeat of Shipman’s atrocities, but her recommendations would make it far less likely. Her primary recommendation was a nationally-co-ordinated, but regionally-based, Controlled Drugs Inspectorate similar to that already in place in Northern Ireland. Made up of pharmacists, doctors and some investigators with law enforcement experience, the inspectorate’s duties would include responsibility for the supervised destruction of surplus controlled drugs following a patient’s death. Other recommendations include making it a criminal offence for doctors to prescribe drugs for themselves, as Shipman himself did when addicted to pethidine in the 1970s. Dame Janet also recommended that a special prescription form be introduced to enable closer, computerised monitoring of individual doctors.

In general terms, she recommended that GPs and pharmacists should be subject to closer scrutiny and keep better records of the drugs they dispense, but demanded such controls would not overshadow patient care. She said: “Plainly, it is important to prevent the abuse of controlled drugs, but measures taken to achieve that end should not adversely affect the provision of health care.”

The Government welcomed the report and accepted its conclusions.

Home Office Minister Caroline Flint said: “Dame Janet’s report acknowledges that no system for the regulation of controlled drugs can offer complete security against abuse from minds as devious as Shipman’s, while allowing for their legitimate use by health professionals to ease suffering. “But her report also makes clear much more could be done to deter and detect improper use. “We accept this conclusion. In acting on her report we are determined to ensure that all reasonable measures are taken to provide the robust safeguards which are needed and which the public can rightly expect.”

Relatives of Shipman’s victims also welcomed the report. Heather de Rome, whose 54-year-old mother Eileen Robinson was killed in 1995, said: “Shipman supposedly had these drugs in his house and I could never understand how he could get so much of it from the pharmacists and chemists. “If there were tighter controls it would have been more difficult for him to do it.” Alfred Isherwood, whose mother-in-law Irene Turner, was killed aged 67 in 1996, said: “To have access to that amount of diamorphine and to be able to store so much of it is obviously a shortfall by someone.”

ACC Dave Whatton, of Greater Manchester Police, said the force had admitted during the inquiry that mistakes were made. He said: “The report highlights the work of a Chemist Inspection Officer in 1993 and that insufficient training was available for that role. “In the past 11 years, significant improvements have been made. As a result of our own development, since 1999 GMP has, together with a number of other forces, fully trained our Chemist Inspection Officers on a nationally-accredited course.”

Comment: This story will warrant very careful following. Any changes to how CDs are prescribed and controlled is liable to have a collateral impact on drugs and housing services. This could mean, with luck, that the legislation that we have been critiquing in "On Storage" and elsewhere will finally be revised.

Fall in Ecstasy Seizures

By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent, PA News

15.7.04

Seizures of ecstasy fell dramatically in 2002, new Home Office figures showed today.

Police and Customs officers also intercepted 31% fewer kilos of heroin in the year than in the previous 12 months, amounting to a fall of 1.2 tonnes. The number of seizures of Class A drugs fell for the first time since 1992 from 38,060 in 2001 to 33,550 the following year.

Ministers revealed that the authorities confiscated 72% fewer doses of the dance culture drug ecstasy – 2.3 million in 2002 compared with a peak of eight million the previous year.

There were also 21% fewer incidents of ecstasy seizure across the UK – 8,300 compared with 10,460 the previous year.

Statistics revealed that overall numbers of drug seizures rose 5% in 2001 and by a further 5% in 2002 to 137,340 – three quarters of which were of cannabis.

Quantities of cocaine and crack captured rose 26% and 5% respectively over 2001 and 2002.

But cannabis seizures fell 8% by quantity, of amphetamines by 18% and LSD by 53%.

The report stressed that trends in the number of ecstasy doses seized were “greatly influenced by small numbers of large seizures”. There were 70 incidents involving the capture of more than 10,000 doses in one go during 2001, but only 40 such large incidents the following year.

Home Office minister Caroline Flint said: “I am pleased that the figures published today demonstrate robust enforcement action against illegal drug use, with a 5% increase in the number of drug seizures from 2001 to 2002.

“The figures cover the period before the Government published its updated drug strategy, which has heralded a renewed attack on the Class A drugs which cause so much harm to individuals and to our communities.”

Other figures in today’s report included:

The total weight of heroin impounded fell from 3,930 kilos in 2001 to 2,730 kilos in 2002

Cocaine seizures by weight peaked at 3,950 kilos in 2000, followed by a dip to 2,840 kilos in 2001 and then a rise to 3,580 kilos in 2002

The number of cocaine seizures was 7,000 in 2001 and 6,640 the following year

Crack seizures rose from 870 in 1992 to 4,260 in 2002

2001 saw 86 tonnes of cannabis confiscated, followed by 79 tonnes in 2002

Purity of heroin seized by police peaked at 49% in 2002 followed by a decrease to 40% in 2002, and comparisons with Customs seizures suggest the drug was generally not “cut” with bulking agents after importation

Cocaine purity differed significantly between Customs and police samples – 71% compared with about 60% – suggesting that bulking agents had generally been added to cocaine before it reached British streets

The number of known drug offenders fell to 102,600 in 2001 before rising again to 113,050 in 2002

The minister added: “The Government, working with the police and other law enforcement agencies, is driving forward a concerted campaign to tackle drugs at all levels.

“We are working to disrupt the international organised crime gangs who traffic drugs to our shores, pursuing and prosecuting the dealers, treating drug abusers and drug misusing offenders, and educating young people about the dangers of drugs. “We are investing record amounts – £1.3 billion this year alone – to tackle the scourge of class A drugs – and there will be no let up in this fight.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “Too much should not be read into a single year’s figures. “The number of seizures of Class A drugs had been on the increase over the preceding 10 years. “We launched the updated drugs strategy at the end of 2002 which very clearly stated that we were refocusing on Class A drugs – but we don’t yet have figures for 2003. “Lower amounts seized may indicated that demand has declined, as a result of treatment programmes, for example.”

Comment: Of course it is being linked to reduced decline, not inefficiency or cuts at police and customs end...spin, spin and more spin.

By Ben Leapman, Evening Standard Home Affairs Correspondent
12 July 2004
Police are still catching more than 400 cannabis users a week in London despite a move to relax the law, new figures show today.

The Metropolitan Police data, released to the Evening Standard, dispels the public impression that officers would turn a blind eye once the drug was downgraded to class C.

In the first three months after the law changed in January, police recorded 5,643 offences a week in London, down only nine per cent from the same period a year earlier.

Adults caught in possession are now issued with a formal warning and have the drug confiscated, saving thousands of hours of police time.

But community leaders in Brixton said there had been little improvement in relations between the police and local people because officers were carrying out as many drugs searches as ever. Shane Collins, organiser of Lambeth's annual cannabis festival, said: "If they don't like the look of someone, they'll give drugs as the reason for the search."

Supporters of the law reform claimed it would allow police to spend more time fighting hard drugs.

But the figures show arrests for class A drugs up only five per cent year on year.

The Standard uncovered widespread public confusion in the run-up to the change in the law, with many wrongly thinking the drug was being legalised or decriminalised rather than staying banned.

Under-18s caught in possession of cannabis are still routinely arrested under the new reforms, as are adults caught with the drug near schools or smoking it in public view.

The Government last week launched a fresh effort to warn teenagers of the dangers of smoking cannabis. Ministers endorsed a leaflet from drugs charity Mentor UK aimed at schools and youth clubs. It points out the mental health problems caused by cannabis, which include anxiety, paranoia and schizophrenia.

British Gas forms inquiry team as £100m stolen power helps the drug spread across Britain

Mark Townsend
Sunday July 4, 2004
The Observer

Nurturing a withered cannabis plant back to life once seemed almost compulsory for a generation of students. Now the size of the crop has changed. Startling new evidence reveals how vast plantations of marijuana are being cultivated throughout Britain among respectable suburban properties and the smartest family homes.
Yet it is not the police that the army of illegal growers should fear: the gasman is now leading the crusade against cultivators of home-grown dope. Growing has become so widespread that energy companies calculate that up to £100 million of electricity is being stolen to grow the drug.

British Gas, which is now a major supplier of electricity, will announce today that it has formed a special team to tackle the hash barons after detecting an upsurge in the use of sophisticated, power-draining hydroponic equipment to produce marijuana indoors without soil by pumping nutrients directly into the roots of the plants.

Although the notion of growing cannabis indoors has been celebrated in several films, only now has the scale of it started to emerge. The gangster movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels captured the trend by depicting hippies cultivating a potent strain of marijuana in their London flat. Then came Saving Grace, starring Brenda Blethyn as a widow cultivating a commercial cannabis plantation in her Cornish greenhouse in an attempt to pay off her debts.

Blethyn's character was described then as eccentric. Now new figures show that police have raided more than 1,840 properties since 2001 where cannabis plants were being grown. In total, 71,491 kilograms (157,600lb) of the herb was confiscated, enough to roll more than eight billion joints and a fivefold increase in the amount seized towards the end of the Nineties.

British Gas officials recently found cannabis farms in Derby, east London, Bristol, Manchester and Kent. Elaborate growing systems were uncovered in buildings ranging from once-abandoned warehouses to prim suburban properties.

Tens of thousands of small-scale cannabis farms are sprawled across the UK. Police believe there are hundreds in London alone.

Driving such demand is the eclipse of traditional Moroccan hash resin by home-grown skunk as one of Britain's most popular drugs for both criminals and recreational users. In addition, many believe the drug's recent reclassification means dealers feel they are less likely to be targeted by police.

The City of London force found four homes last month that had been converted into drug farms and could deliver about 10 kilos of cannabis every five months. Every available inch was used to produce top-quality skunk. The vast amount of equipment required to grow the plant had been plugged direct into the national grid.

Harry Metcalfe, general manager of the British Gas investigating unit, said: 'It is a serious problem, but we have to remind people that you don't have to be a drug baron to be caught.'

Suspicions were raised earlier this year when a couple at Sidcup in Kent were convicted after gas inspectors found a large cannabis-growing operation, using stolen electricity, at their home.

Mark Wiltshire, spokesman for the energy regulator Ofgem, said: 'We are concerned about this problem and we have started to review thefts. There are safety risks.'

Millions of homeowners were paying more for their power as the hash barons increase their trade. An estimated £340m of electricity every year is stolen, and some experts believe a third could be used to grow cannabis.

The proportion of growers using hydroponic cultivation systems had more than trebled between 1994 and 2000 - from 6 per cent to 19 per cent - while the use of high-powered lighting more than doubled to 41 per cent.

Over recent years the number of high-profile cannabis farm cases has increased. Last year a cannabis greenhouse was found on an industrial estate in north London with space for 1,000 plants, powered by stolen electricity. Lottery winner Reginald Tomlinson was jailed after using his prize money to set up a cannabis factory. Despite his windfall, he had siphoned off £1,300 of electricity to power his drug farm.

Jo Revill, health editor
Sunday July 4, 2004
The Observer

Thousands of middle-aged professionals who experimented with drugs during their student days will be warned in a major government health campaign this autumn that they may be infected with hepatitis C.
It is thought that up to 400,000 British people may be carrying the potentially fatal virus without knowing it, because there is such a long delay between infection and symptoms appearing.

Ministers have decided to go ahead with a national public awareness campaign in September, warning that anyone who has ever injected drugs, particularly sharing a needle, used straws to sniff cocaine or had a blood transfusion before 1991, is at risk and should consider having a blood test. However, they are worried about causing mass panic and want to adopt a 'softly-softly' approach by focusing on the treatment available for the disease, rather than its potential consequences.

The co-ordinators are hoping to find a celebrity who has been infected with the virus to spearhead the campaign, but so far those approached have declined publicity, such is the embarrassment associated with the condition. The general public view about hepatitis C is that only hardened drug addicts are at risk, but increasingly doctors are seeing patients who have been infected after just one or two injections.

The virus is passed on through blood-to-blood contact, and those at risk also include people who had a blood transfusion before blood screening was brought in 13 years ago. Sexual transmission, tattooing and piercing are the other possible methods of transmission.

At present only 2,000 people a year are treated for hepatitis C on the NHS, but estimates of the numbers infected in the UK vary from around 0.4 per cent of the population, some 240,000, to 1 per cent, some 600,000.

It is potentially fatal, but effective new antiviral drugs can cure between 50 to 80 per cent of sufferers who have a chronic form of the disease. Of those who carry hepatitis C, about 80 per cent go on to develop a chronic infection in the liver, and about one-fifth of these will develop serious liver disease.

However, many people do not know they are carriers until they have serious symptoms such as severe liver pain. Many of those at risk will be people who experimented with drugs in their youth. Charles Gore, chief executive of the Hepatitis C Trust, said: 'How do you reach the man on the street, who might have had a blood transfusion 20 years ago, or who might have injected drugs in his youth. and warn him that he could be wandering around with this virus?'

People can have the disease for 20 years or more before they develop symptoms, which means those who experimented at college might not realise the risks.

'Typically, it might be someone who didn't know how to inject drugs into the vein and who borrowed a syringe from someone who was more experienced. The virus can then be passed directly into the bloodstream.'

Gore added: 'Between 1975 and 1985, in particular, there was a huge experimentation with drugs. It was before the Aids crisis, no one was aware of the dangers of blood-borne viruses, and many more were injecting than was commonly supposed.'

Gore, who backs the government's efforts, says that Britain is far behind other European countries in identifying patients. 'It is hard to get people to admit that they might be at risk. It involves them owning up to their past.'

The chair of the Department of Health's advisory group on hepatitis, Professor Howard Thomas, re-iterated the warning that patients don't have to be drug addicts to be at risk. 'Many of those infected will be people in influential positions who dabbled with drugs years ago while at college,' he told the Health Service Journal last week. While admitting there is more to be done in making GPs aware of the disease, he said that they have now taken the first steps in setting up a national system of clinical centres for hepatology, or liver disease.

The first signs of the disease are not easy to spot. They commonly include fatigue and aching joints, which are fairly usual for people in their middle age. Patients also experience differing degrees of pain. Some have a mild form of the virus and are in acute pain, others have serious liver damage before they realise anything is wrong.

Ministers, highly aware of how the HIV campaign in the Eighties scared a generation of people, want to take a more 'softly-softly' approach. They started last week by sending out an action plan to all GPs and health professionals.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health would say little about the campaign, other than to state that an outside consultancy firm had been brought in to work on strategy. 'We will have a public awareness campaign, but in order not to get people panicked, you have to do it in stages, so the first stage is to make the professionals aware of the potential problems.'

· For more information, call the Hepatitis C Trust's helpline on 0870 200 1200.

Change should not be followed in Ireland - O'Malley
Tuesday, July 06

Junior Health Minister Tim O'Malley is warning against the dangers of any move to reclassify cannabis in Ireland. O'Malley claims the recent decision by the UK authorities to downgrade cannabis to a Class C drug should not be repeated here.

Minister O'Malley, who has responsibility for the Mental Health portfolio, claims that the abuse of cannabis in Ireland is having a detrimental effect on the mental health of users and could see a rise in serious mental health problems in the years ahead.

'According to recent findings of the National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD), cannabis is the most widely abused drug in this country, with prevalence rates at least twice as high as other illegal drugs. This widespread abuse raises serious concerns about the damage being done to users, especially to teenagers and young adults.'

'Cannabis has been associated with the increased risk of developing schizophrenia in otherwise healthy individuals. The increase of risk is directly associated with an increase in frequency of use.'

O'Malley claims that the reclassification of Cannabis in the UK sends out the wrong message to users that this is a 'safe' drug that can be used with impunity. 'This is certainly not the case and recent research is suggesting strong links between psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia and other mental illnesses and the abuse of cannabis.'

'Greater education, as opposed to reclassification, must continue to be the Government's response. Most young people remain unaware of the potential dangers to their mental health caused by using cannabis and think they can smoke this drug recreationally without any long-term consequences.'

'We must avoid any temptation to see cannabis as harmless or socially acceptable or we could face a serious increase in the number of mental health problems in this country in the years ahead.'

See Archive for earlier stories

See Archive for earlier stories

Suburban semi hid "industrial" cannabis factory
11.6.04
Evening Standard

THE three-bedroom suburban semi seemed like any other in the quiet residential street. Only the permanently-drawn blinds and the occasional visitor gave any sign of anything out of the ordinary
However, when detectives from the City of Lon-don police raided the home they discovered an industrial-sized drug factory producing thou-sands of pounds worth of the super-strength cannabis known as skunk.
Each room in the semi, including the hall, was packed with hundreds of 4ft plants. The find echoed scenes from the gangster movie Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, in which a group of hippies cultivated a potent strain of cannabis in their home.

In contrast to the film, police believe a highly organised crime gang was behind their find. In total, officers from the City's specialist Central Detective Unit uncovered four homes which had been converted, into drug farms, with a combined yield of about 10 kilos every five months. At least two of the houses had been paid for outright in cash, the proceeds of the drug sales. The gang sold each kilo of skunk for a wholesale price of £3,000. The plants were being grown under so-called hydroponic cultivation, a soil-less method that pumps nutrients directly into the roots of a plant and uses powerful sodium lights and elec-tronic timers originally intended for tomato-growing.

Professional crime gangs are believed to be turning to the manufacture of home-grown cannabis because of the relatively high profits and the belief they are less likely to be tar-geted by police because of the drug's recent declassification. Across London officers are raiding about one skunk farm a week. Accord-ing to the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit, home-grown skunk has overtaken Moroccan resin as the capital's favourite cannabis product.
Outdoor cultivation of the plant is also becoming much rarer as it is now more easily recognised by the public.
One police source said "we believe this is just the tip of the iceberg and dozens if not hundred s more houses are operating as cannabis farms across London.

City detectives came across the three-bedroom house in Romford while they were investigating a credit-card counterfeiting racket. Detective Chief Inspector Bob Wshart of the City CDU, said: "These were essentially normal family homes which had been completely converted into cannabis factories. In some houses every square foot had been used for the cultivation process. "This was a sophisticated and pro-fessional operation, there was a lot of electrical equipment. "In one case they had plugged directly into the national grid and the electricity board declared it unsafe. The cannabis was being distributed to communities across London."

The cost of setting up a large skunk farm can run into tens of thousands of pounds, involving an array of equipment to speed the development of the plants. All the equipment is automatic and the plants only. need to be tended by one person xai occasional visits. The hi-tech cultivation method means the plants grow at the staggering rate of one inch a day A total of six people were arrested in this week's raids on cannabis farms.