Jail term for large, sophisticated cannabiscultivating operation

IN a large industrial warehouse near Dunedin’s waterfront, about a kilometre stroll from the central police station, Lawrence Andrew Cobb lived.

In the eyes of the State, the 57yearold was a sickness beneficiary but in the industrial unit he busily went about his work — capable of netting him a sixfigure yield every four months.

Cobb converted two preexisting rooms into ‘‘highly sophisticated’’ cannabis grow rooms: one for plants in a vegetative state, the other for when they flowered.

When police raided the premises on March 24 last year they also found a third chamber under construction.

Officers seized 325 plants and found bags containing plant material and empty soil bags indicative of a previous harvest.

Cobb pleaded guilty to cultivating cannabis — his fourth such offence since 2005 — and was jailed for two years and eight months when he appeared in the Dunedin District Court yesterday.

Based on a ‘‘conservative’’ estimate of yield from the crop, Crown prosecutor Richard Smith said, sold at $350 an ounce, the defendant could have made as much as $171,150 with every 16week cycle.

Cobb told police the class C drug he was growing was for personal use.

‘‘I don’t think anyone here in this room would accept that was correct,’’ Judge Kevin Phillips said.

He said Cobb took the risk knowing the potential consequences.

Counsel Cate Andersen stressed her client’s ‘‘chronic pain’’ issues, which she said would make a term of imprisonment difficult for him.

Judge Phillips questioned the extent of Cobb’s discomfort.

‘‘You were still capable of setting up what could have been a very nice superannuation scheme,’’ he said.

The judge underscored the lengths Cobb went to in cultivating the cannabis and keeping it secret.

The defendant covered external and internal windows with black polythene and controlled the lighting with ‘‘high density discharging bulbs’’ hung from the ceiling.

To control the amount of light to which the crop was exposed he had the system rigged up to time switches.

Cobb also installed oscillating fans to circulate air and fed the plants using a ‘‘pressure water spray unit’’.

So no suspicious aroma would spread outside the warehouse, the defendant set up a carbon filter with ducting connected to an extraction fan to filter the air, court documents revealed.

In 2008, Cobb was sentenced to community detention for cultivating cannabis. Two months later, police found him tending to another 112 plants.

He was jailed for 18 months for that.

Judge Phillips was not optimistic about him changing his ways.

The judge made an order for destruction of all equipment and material related to the grow.

❛ You were still capable of setting up what could have been a very nice superannuation scheme Judge Kevin Phillips