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UK: Electricity men grass on drug farms
Gerard Seenan The Guardian
Saturday 11 Jun 2005 Investigators from an energy company looking into electricity theft have led the police to almost 50 cannabis-growing farms in British homes so far this year. British Gas revealed yesterday that its energy investigators had helped the police to seize UKP8.5m worth of cannabis plants in the first five months of the year, after they monitored homes where they suspected that the electricity meter was being by-passed. In an unusual spin-off from their inquiries, the teams from British Gas are now being issued with guidelines to help them seek out houses that are being used as cannabis farms. They then pass their information on to police forces across the country. British Gas revealed that criminals are drawing attention to their cannabis growing operations by stealing large quantities of electricity to power the lights that help to grow their plants on an industrial scale. So far this year the company has uncovered 47 such locations. It estimates that to power even a small cannabis growing operation in a home would require at least UKP3,000 worth of electricity a year, 10 times the average domestic bill. The domestic cannabis farms uncovered range from operations involving a hundred or so plants to those with 600 or more. In some cases every room in the house, except the bathroom and a small area of the kitchen, is turned over to cannabis production. An investigator for the company said there were signs which alerted him to cannabis production before the door to a house was even opened. "The house will look run down and the curtains in every room are almost always closed," said the investigator. "They black the windows out, not just because they don't want people to see what they are doing, but to keep the temperature up." He said domestic cannabis farms were being uncovered everywhere, from suburban housing estates and city flats to rural locations. "I would say we are coming across more and more of them in premises," he added. Smell is another big giveaway. "You can often smell it outside the house. They ventilate the excess hot air through 12 inch covings and, on a blustery day, the strong smell disappears into the stratosphere. But on a still day the smell lingers and there is a strong odour of cannabis outside. "It's nothing though to what it's like inside, where the smell would knock you out," he added. "It can also be extremely dangerous, in some cases you find things like nails rammed into meter boxes and virtually the whole house is live."
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