Arrests as police find super-strength drug
DRAMATIC RAID FOR ‘SHATTER’ CANNABIS
Police used cutting equipment to storm a house during a raid on drug suspects Reporter BATTERING down the door of a house in a quiet Gateshead estate, police swooped on two properties in an early morning drugs raid.
Police stormed the houses in Ryton as part of an operation targeting a new form of super-strength cannabis dubbed “shatter cannabis”.
Drug experts have warned the substance is up to 10 times stronger than normal cannabis and can cause long-lasting psychiatric problems.
Armed officers, sniffer dogs and search teams were involved in the raid at a property on Whernside Walk at around 9am yesterday.
Neighbours watched on in shock as police used a Stihl saw to cut open a metal gate before using a battering ram to smash down the front door.
Officers also smashed a ground floor window before gaining access and searching the property.
They found bags and buckets filled with cannabis inside as well as a hoard of equipment used to make the drug.
A 25-year-old man and a 21-yearold woman were both arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of a Class B drug.
Police said the “cannabis shatter factory” is one of the first to have been uncovered in the North East.
A short distance away on Croft Close, police carried out a simultaneous raid at another house but no drugs were recovered. Shatter, also known as butane hash oil (BHO), is made by using large amounts of highly flammable butane gas. That helps strip THC – the active ingredient in cannabis – out of the plant and leaves a glass-like extract that hardens to give the appearance of cooled caramel or honeycomb. It is then broken up into small shards for users to smoke it as they would a cannabis plant. Inspector Cheryl Warcup, of the Gateshead West neighbourhood policing team, said: “We are aware that this ‘shatter’ form of cannabis is commonly produced in the US but it is not very widely used at all in this country. It is stronger than your normal cannabis but the real Insp Cheryl Warcup