Drug gangs switch from cocaine to cannabis...
DRUG gangs switched from cocaine supply to mass producing cannabis during the Covid lockdowns as demand for marijuana soared while people were stuck indoors.
Cocaine use across the country declined as bars and clubs were shut. But there was a spike in demand for potent skunk cannabis as recreational drug users chose to get high at home instead.
Detectives saw a number of crime groups previously involved in the supply of class A cocaine turn their attention to cultivating cannabis. Huge industrial-scale set-ups were discovered – several, ironically, in empty nightclubs.
DS Lara Pinder, of Thames Valley Police CID, said intelligence showed crime gangs were forced to make the change as the pandemic worsened and demand for drugs changed.
In the case of one network, operating across the South East, officers saw the change during an active two-year investigation that began before the pandemic.
DS Pinder said: “There is a current investigation into a crime group, that used car washes and other businesses to wash the money.
“What was interesting was through the Covid pandemic they changed their style of committing crime.
“In the early days it looked like they were very focused on cocaine supply. But with the lockdown, party-social drugs were less sought, with people not going out, so they totally changed their tack to cannabis cultivation.”
Police forces across the country made several discoveries of huge cannabis farms during the lockdowns in former business premises, including several redundant nightclubs, schools, pharmacies, shops and even empty banks.
The offences involved large-scale electricity theft, to run sophisticated “hydroponics” systems, creating fire risks due to illegal operations connected to bypass metres.
In October 2020, National Crime Agency (NCA) officers discovered more than £1million of cannabis plants on three floors of the former Big Bamboo nightclub in Coventry in one its biggest hauls.
Three men found living at the site were jailed in June.
In January, West Yorkshire Police found nearly 2,000 plants in a former Wakefield nightclub and later said early 2021 had been one of the busiest periods for cannabis farm raids.the same month the Met Police arrested five people after a dawn raid at a 32,000 sq ft warehouse uncovered a cannabis crop worth £1million at a makeshift factory in Charlton, southeast London.
And in April, Thames Valley Police found 3,000 plants with a street value of £1.5million in a 10,000 sq ft old Travis Perkins depot at Milton Keynes.
Some crime gangs have continued to invest heavily in cannabis production, as it involves no cross-border smuggling and the maximum sentence for cultivation of 14 years is considerably less than the maximum life sentence that conspiracy to import class A drugs can attract.
But they risk violent robberies from rival gangs and having valuable crops stolen or seized by police who are making discoveries weekly.
Vietnamese crime gangs set up the first industrial-scale cannabis grows 20 years ago.
More recently, Albanian networks that started out supplying cocaine have taken over the cannabis production market.
Both have trafficked illegal immigrants from their native countries to live on site and tend to crops.
‘In lockdown party drugs are
less sought’