Singer George Michael was charged on Thursday with possessing marijuana and driving under the influence of drink or drugs following a car crash early last month, London police said. Full story………
For those who live in the West London area will know that at one point Southall was the hub of the Heroin trade but it now seems that with the boom of marijuana around the world especially the USA giving it so much exposure it is inevitable that the demand will increase.
On Hammond Road in Southall the police busted a house that was growing about 40 marijuana plants and also three garages in the back fully equiped with hydroponic systems also growing more marijuana plants.
Only one man was arrested but is on bail and now the real question is, just how big is the demand for marijuana? It use to be the Cocaine was the preferred drug of choice especially amongst the middle class but what we are gradually seeing is the marketing of marijuana through the legalization and buzz of the herb leading to more people in for example the UK wanting to buy it. When there is demand there has to be supply and in the UK where it is illegal to grow and posses cannabis, organised gangs will fill the void in production and distribution.
While we hear of so much joy about how the US has had its first Cannabis cafe recently open, in the UK the story is very different. While the UK does not have dense jungles, wild forrests like those in say California that government is not in an emergency to legalize it for profit (tax).
In the UK most supply is still distributed via illegal drug dens and now the latest a Cannabis cafe dubbed the “hole in the wall cafe” in West Sussex which got recently raided.
This raid resulted in three drug barons being arrested, Lee Rusell, Paul Bradley and Michael Alday. However out of the three Russell was found not guilty while the other two were convicted of conspiracy to supply marijuana, at Kingston Crown Court.
The media does try and find out just about anything celebs do these days and now they are attacking Daniel Radcliffe the Harry Potter star Hogwarts that he has been getting high on cannabis…. well so what!
Although Daniel has flately denied this and said that he was only smoking a cigerette at a friends party, the point is that the media should not be snooping in on him in the first place and what one does in his own privacy should stay as that, private.
Hwoever he is a celeb and through the recent cannabis news the UK still deems the herb as being bad and that gives the media plenty to write about…….
Well actually this news came out a few weeks ago in the UK but is still an important point to be raised on how cannabis is viewed by different countries and governments.
David Nutt a top drugs scientist for the UK government openly said that his children have tried Cannabis and that it was less harmful than alcohol and tobacco, and that it has been wrongly upgraded to class B from C. So you must be thinking great! Now just like in America how they have Obama in favour of legalizing marijuana the same will happen in the UK…. well no! He was sacked by the home secretary Alan Johnson which also resulted in another two collegues voluntarily leaving as a sign of denial of free speach and for Nutt acting like a true scientist.
It sure does not look like the UK will be legalizing cannabis anytime soon and this brings back home that the legalization movement in the US is based on totally different conditions than simple legalization. The UK and many other countries do not have crime levels associated with marijuana or problems with cartels like the US so therefore have greater resources to tackle the issue whereas the US has not legalized it for medical use in order to free up resources to go after the big organised crime groups.
For those of you who were in your prime back in the days of the Beatles then you will have heavily been influenced by the marijuana scene. Just imagine getting high and listening to psychedelic rock that high will obviously be a twisted one and many must have enjoyed these trippy highs.
More to the point with the Beatles also having connectton to India and the hippy scene they naturally had a connection with marijuana and even it is thought that one of their songs, Norwegian Wood (This Bird has Flown), actually refers to marijuana indirectly.
Marijuana was actually introduced to the band by Bob Dylan and then on July the 24th 1967 the Beatles signed a petition in the Times to legalize it – isn’t that just great?
Not sure what would happen if someone of the same status as the Beatles did that today in the UK, however the good news for the US is that Obama seems to be the man for the MJ movement at the moment.
Have you ever seen the film Blow? When George Jung comes out of prison and then because he has no money wants to do one more hit on distributing cocaine/heroin to earn so money but gets caught and back in prison.
Its only when you follow the marijuana industry that you get to know who is who especially the big guys. Well Curtis Warren is a big time UK gangster and millionaire who has been sentenced for a £1 million plot to smuggle Cannabis into the UK only just coming out of jail in the Netherlands.
Curtis Warren (AKA Cocky) was once reported to be worth anything between £80 million – £460 million and had even made it onto the UK rich list as a property developer which he obviously was only able to do through drug money.
Why was he serving jail time in Holland? Well he had been convicted in £100 million drug plot to only have his sentence extended because he killed an inmate. Whilst in prison he then masterminded his latest marijuana plot to use Hollands marijuana brokers to import 180Kg of marijuana to Jersey Islands but was being watched by police who had collected enough information to follow his trail when he was released to catch him again and now he is behind bars again.
Curtis Warren from Liverpool UK made many millions from drugs and even became famous that T-Shorts were sold with his printed on them. His sentencing obviously means that a small blow has been given to the UK import of cannabis as he clearly was one of the known drug traffickers to bring it into the UK.
There is quite ofton lots of news on how people are growing their marijuana for distribution from small 2/3 bedroom houses especially in the Hounslow area but now as the people get bigger so do there grow ops.
Okay, lets take a small growers op as an example who got caught this week in Portsmouth. Police raided a house in Portsmouth finding almost 316 plants from this small terraced house which equates to £70,000 worth of pot when sold on the streets.
No lets take another group of growers who not only had enough money to rent out a £2.4million countryside mansion but enough man power to grow them 2,000 plants giving them a turnover of about £500,000 street value within 3 months.
If you want to be a bit more cleaver on the enterprise side of things, then why grow it when you can import it as did the three pensioners from London did. The imported the cannabis in frozen chickens from the Netherlands and when police arrested them they estimated that they are already done £60million pounds of business.
So as you can see the profits to be made from marijuana can be huge and no wonder California is possibly looking to bank from it too.
You probably seen these legal high buds on internet sites and in head shops but probably thought that they were a gimmick, well thats what I thought any way. With cannabis being banned in many countries especially in the UK, the legal high product just looked like a joke and something to just get people to smoke for a laugh.
Sky news has reported that infact its not the legal high bud that has already been banned in some European countries but infact an artificial substance is sprayed onto the bud, sythetic cannabinoids, which mimick the effects of Cannabis.
If these legal highs are going to be banned in the UK, I am sure that there will be a small rush to try them out. Anyone tried this stuff?
In the past UK news I can remember reading many stories of who regular guys have decided setting up a business selling pot, but Christopher Woodings who is only 27 seems to have topped the lot!
Christopher setup an antiques business, AIO Antiques and through his warehouse premises sold almost £20m worth of fresh Cannabis imported direct from Thailand. This has to go down in my books as being one of the biggest Marijuana Brokers so far, read the full story here.
Do you know of a Marijuana dealer that beats this guys turnover?
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