Two cannabis farms have been found in rented houses in my area recently. I know there are at least three more around that haven’t been discovered, because someone close to me was paid in ‘Columbian flake’ to re- wire the house for the drug farmers.
Typically, the timeline from finding a suitable unfurnished property to harvesting the produce is short. An estate agency will be approached by a couple, and a short- term permit will be negotiated. The agency will be in charge of the property, and will be contractually obliged to inspect it for damage during the tenant’s stay. It’s relatively uncommon that an inspection will be performed until the end of the residency, especially if a three- month rental is taken.
The next step is conspicuous, but again, usually easy. The equipment for harvesting the plants will be moved in. Fans, lights, tubs, fertiliser, electrical cabling and pipes for an indoor irrigation system will be set up. The paraphernalia of scales and pressing equipment can be brought later, when the harvest is ready to be sold. If everything is boxed up, there’s little risk of a neighbour challenging the new tenants.
The police will tell you that there are strong Vietnamese or Chinese links, but my contact has only ever dealt with local English people. They’ll tell you that every available space in the property will be used to cultivate the drug, but I’ve been told that in the houses he’s re- wired, they only used the upstairs area. They have a couple of people move into the ground floor, to protect the plants and decrease suspicion.
One piece of advice that the local police offered residents in ‘spotting cannabis farms’ was to be vigilant of properties recently rented, but with tenants that only visit at strange times in the day and night. Permanently covered windows were also marked out as suspicious. The truth is that properties are very carefully chosen to protect an investment of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Snoopy neighbours are probably considered.
With such an enormous risk, only the laziest or greediest dealers are walking out of houses with bin- bags full of fresh cannabis slung over their arm. The cannabis is dried and pressed into blocks on site, and then transported in smaller, less conspicuous bags.
As for the massive electrical cost to artificially recreate tropical climate with lights, fans and irrigation systems, that’s where my friend arrives. It is possible to disconnect the electrical wires from the energy provider’s meter, and bypass it with a small box, so as not to pay any electricity. The provider will ask for a reading at the beginning of the tenure, which will be given, and will then bill the residents after future readings.
There will be no change in the electricity meter dial. If a meter reading is asked for, the tenants tell them they’re too busy, or just getting in the bath (the bath’s probably full of soil at this point). No- one checks, and the weed is left to mature. No need to import it if it can be grown on a rainy day in Wythenshawe for free.
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