Skunk Cannabis: From plant to pot.

In a country which has a proud tradition of "innocent until proven guilty", that simply isn't good enough.

Case Study 1
I recently received a charge sheet and a full set of evidence photographs from a self-employed man, an ex Royal Navy electrician, who has "put off" his retirement so as to make his life, and that of his long-suffering wife as comfortable as possible.

He was busted for growing 400+ "Skunk" plants, and gave a defence of "growing for his spouse", a 64 year old woman who has sufferered with Multiple Sclorosis since 1967.

Doctors Note
I have an official letter on headed surgery notepaper from her doctor to back this up, and the note also goes to say, "She also experiences pain as a symptom of her Multiple Sclorosis. To relieve this her husband has been growing cannabis in the garage to supply her with cannabis which she ingests to relieve her symptoms. Undoubtedly it seems this has been a successful course of treatment and her symptoms have been relieved."

Those of us well versed with growing cannabis might assume his wife was quite a heavy smoker, needing 400 plants, but the number of plants involved actually tells only half the story.

On digging deeper into the case it turns out the gentleman in question, himself of pensionable age, had been by his own admission, guilty of what other judiciary's from around the globe would have termed "Social Supply" or "Medical Supply".

The cannabis grower had for over a decade, been heavily involved with his local "MS" society, and had supplied patients who were also suffering with the condition, bags of weed, as and when their condition required it.

When asked who these people were, the man in question perhaps unsurprisingly, decided against answering, preferring instead to protect the identities of a group of sick people, who would doubtless have felt the wrath of the local constabulary, had the grower in question decided to talk.

In actual fact, what was needed is for the people who were supplied by the grower, to agree an undertaking that, in the worst case scenario, if the grower gets busted, they should all carry the can together, and reap the headlines which would surely follow the court case, but no such agreement exists.

During the collection of evidence and the ensuing charges which were brought against the man, the police slapped a confiscation order on the man for (wait for it) £315,900 in what police called "unidentified funds", as well as over £1000 which was in a vehicle parked outside the property used to grow the cannabis.

By this time all of his accounts had been seized by the police, leaving him with no opportunity to identify and validate the sum of money. A situation which continues today.

All things being equal the Exchequer stands to make a pretty penny out of this case, even though the police have no evidence of supply. Its simply supposed.

Case Study 2
Compare this if you will, with the case of another cannabis grower tried recently, and convicted, of growing 400+ cannabis plants.

A Vietnamese man brought to England as a witness in a people trafficking trial ended up working in a cannabis factory and when police raided 3 Acregate Lane, Ribbleton, Preston, last October they discovered 400 plants in the basement and bedroom.

According to police the haul would have produced deals for the strongest skunk type of cannabis worth £12,000 on the streets.

Lap Tran, 36, had been brought to the UK, on a ticket paid for by the Crown Prosecution Service, as a witness in a people trafficking trial. After the trial ended, Tran stayed on in the UK and although his status is still not certain, "he is probably an illegal immigrant", the court heard.

Tran pleaded guilty to conspiracy to produce cannabis and was jailed for two years. The judge told Tran he had previous convictions in this country for possession of drugs, handling and theft. Which is no small rap sheet in the short time he had been in the country.

Judge Christopher Cornwall also said he was recommending to the Home Secretary that Tran is deported back to Vietnam at the end of his sentence, which makes perfect sense as it was the Home Office who paid for him to be here in the first place.

Regardless of the prison sentence (the first grower in question is already preparing for a long stretch of jail time), how can it be that in the first case, the police find it within their powers to confiscate well over a quarter of million pounds in hard cash, freeze bank-accounts, block credit-cards and force a couple of pensioners to live on social security, (his van was confiscated - tools and all, as well as his fuel-cards, meaning he was unable to fulfill jobs he was contracted to complete). Money which was earned as a bona-fide electrician.

And yet in the second case, the Crown values the 400 plant crop at around £12,000 and seized no assets?

The case of the Vietnamese grower was as they say, open and shut.

Yet the charge sheet for the first grower, goes on to list a selection of the plants - 4 in all, which were bagged, tagged and kept as evidence. 2 of which were apparently grown from cutting, and two of which were grown, according to police evidence, from seed?

Surely the very ethos of this case surrounds the amount of money the grower "could have made", if the room full of immature plants had run to a successful harvest?

Yet the evidence which the police provided has shown clearly, that the ability for 50% of the plants to produce the valuable "seedless sensimilia", is in doubt as the plants were not yet old enough to have shown sex and as its only the female flowering head which produces the valuable class C commodity, this should mean 50% of the evidence is inadmissable?

The ambiguity surrounding this case stems from the police having a distinct lack of experts, officers who are trained in dealing with cannabis convictions.

Only today in Swansea, news reports told of what police are calling "the 46th" cannabis factory to be found in a year. Surely those sorts of numbers demand some form of specialist to deal with the cases? Or every single case which is tried using guesswork and supposition, is fundementally flawed.

Cannabis - A timeline.
Until a cannabis plant is around 5-7 weeks old, it has no sex and to complicate things further there are plenty of environmental variables which can have a bearing on the outcome of the sex of a seed.

Its said that if a grow room temperature is maintained at 17c the chances of "more females" is better, than if the room is kept at a steady 19c and once the males are identified by the grower, they are thrown away, as they serve absolutely no purpose. Male pollen is avoided at all cost in cannabis "cash-cropping".

The females that are left are the actual commodity, and will grow on to create the flowering heads. By the very laws of nature we all live by, 50% of the seedlings will be male and 50% female.

The plants are currently living under 18 hours of light, and once the grower decides to instigate the flowering cycle (after sex has shown), the photo-period is changed from 18 hours light/6 hours dark, to 12 hours of each. There is no need for heat, and no such things as "hydroponic ultra-violet lights".

The changed photo-period, which emulates the onset of late summer in nature, is the time when the receding amount of daylight hours creates hormones within the plant, which force it to flower anyway, even if no male pollen is present. It does this in the name of procreation, for the longeivity of the species. Its a clever thing nature.

Cannabis is an annual. That is it lives its entire life-cycle, from seed to weed, in a single growing season and around 8 weeks from the change of photo-period, the grower can harvest his cannabis.

How much cannabis that will be is anyones guess, but the police believe it worth over £300,000 in the case of the first grower, and only £12,000 for roughly the same amount of plants in the second case? Not what you would call consistent with fair justice?

390kg?
There was a case recently down on the South Coast of England, in which police confiscated some 390kg of "the class C drug" and to be honest the first thing I thought was "that must be a warehouse-full". But no. It was seized from some private addresses in Bournemouth.

We normally only hear tell of weights seized in the hundreds of kilo's in Morrocco, or Afghanistan, so this case looked like it involved a massive cannabis ring. Yet after the initial story was released, the case never saw the light of day again, which seemed strange for such a big bust?

The Plant
Contrary to popular belief, the leaves, stems and twigs of the common or garden cannabis plant, let alone the pot full of compost which the plants actually grow in, have absolutely no worth as a drug. Yet the police will only ever report the total weights including roots, compost etc.

So while 390kg's of cannabis sounds a large amount, (enormous even), the truth is more like an amount which is a lot lower.

The news report which was run on the BBC news service, went on to report the plants were incinerated within three days of being seized so even if someone wanted to question the evidence, they couldn't.

So here's the math's;
390kg of cannabis is truly a massive haul, but for every cannabis plant which is ready to harvest - that is, carrying fully mature female flowers, around 80% of the plant, (the leaves etc) is waste matter. So we're down to about 70 odd kilo's. Still a huge amount of cannabis but a lot less than 390kg's.

With the plants chopped, trimmed then manicured, the "naked" flower heads dry out entirely.

Wet cannabis is bad cannabis and most people will not want to buy it so after they have dried thoroughly, they lose another 75% of the gross weight of the flowers in moisture content. Which brings us down to around 19 kilo's of actual cannabis which although still a good sized harvest, could mean the difference between a two year prison sentence, and life?

The Pot
Contrary to popular belief, the cannabis plant material, the green stuff the plant is made of, has no worth as a drug and as such no value and neither do the flowers.

THC, the active ingredient in cannabis is not within the genetic make-up of the plant itself so smoking cannabis leaves/material, will give you no more than a head-ache. Trust me on this one!!

THC is a substance which appears as if "sprinkled over" the plant like sugar, which comes with age and maturity, and this is the ethos of hashish which is simply the harvesting, and pressing, of the THC glands, (see picture above).

We've heard a lot of news recently, which quotes facts and figures pertaining to the "percentage" of THC in a plant, as if this were some grim vote of guilt designed to ensure the conviction of the hapless grower, when in actual fact, if a grower is growing for profit, he or she will look at many other "criteria" when it comes to buying seeds, over the THC content, as its not really that important in commercial cultivation.

Yield per metre squared? Now thats important as yield = harvest. Flowering period? That too, is important when working out electricity costs. But the percentage of THC is a marketing tool devised by the seed vendors themselves. Its an advisory amount which has no proven scientific value.

Yet the courts continue to quote figures for the "possible" THC content of a plant, and win convictions on the strength of this evidence? But without detailed (and expensive) genetic analysis, this number is just a guess. A shot in the dark.

Ever since the 70's the THC content used to market cannabis has remained stable at between 8% and 12% for off the peg varieties. Some of the varieties within the tropical "sativa" sub-species of cannabis, will run to 18% or even 22%, but these are specialist plants, and not for the feint-hearted.

But they're not "new" by any stretch of the imagination.

Its the difference between growing tomatoes and orchids.

Coming as they do originally from the "high light" regions close to the equater, they require higher light levels, for longer photo-periods, which all costs more in terms of time and money.

An off the peg cannabis strain will finish flowering in between 6 and 9 weeks, but the tropical sativa's can take 16 weeks and can grow to 8 feet tall, (for the same final weight, or less), essentially halving the productivity of the grow room, so in truth, the likleyhood of seeing these higher percentage variety's on the street, is absolutely minimal, as organised crime is all about making fast money.

Rough Justice
Yet the police, and the press, fail to differentiate between the two, calling any and every variety of herbal cannabis, high THC "Skunk" just for the sake of courts.

If the UK government plan on continuing their illogical and irrational war against cannabis, while doctors from across the globe contradict everything they've built their case for public health around, its time some rules were put in place, to ensure fair and just trials and if that ends up costing the country millions in detection costs and man-hours, then I guess thats just the cost of justice.