Warlord
05-11-2013, 06:20 PM
An interesting expose on the UK underworld and the weed trade but worth pointing out them that it wouldn't exist if it was a legal market.
It's a typically biased article for a conservative publication but contains some colorful characters... enjoy:
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Cyril lives in a five-bedroom detached home hidden along an 800-yard drive in the middle of the Kent countryside. A grandfather and a businessman, he revels in the life of a country squire. But Cyril is one of the single most dangerous criminals I came across in my journey through the secret underworld of cannabis or hash. An outwardly respectable, middle-class businessman, he is clearly more than capable of having someone killed.
Cyril is a hash ‘financier’, called upon to help fund major gangland deals. ‘My role is to cough up £50k on a Monday and by Friday get £120k back, no questions asked,’ he says. ‘That’s a sweet deal.’
Cyril takes me in his gleaming black Bentley Turbo to a nearby lock-up garage, which he opens with an electronic remote control. The door slides up slowly to reveal three chairs, a table and a line of tools. He takes a hacksaw and runs his fingertip slowly along it.
‘See that?’ he says, picking something from between the tiny teeth. ‘That’s blood.’ He laughs. ‘Violence, or the threat of violence, is part of my business. If the other team isn’t scared of me, then I’m going to have a problem on my hands.’
He picks up a claw hammer and smashes it down on a wooden worktop, leaving a dent the size of a 50p piece. ‘That’s what it does to people’s faces. Leaves them with a lasting reminder of who you are.’
Without a trace of irony, Cyril adds: ‘I don’t want you making out I am some sort of psycho who gets people topped if they upset me. This is the trade I work in. I am a businessman and hash is a lucrative way for me to earn a living. End of story.’
The illicit trade in cannabis stretches from some of the poorest countries on Earth to middle-class homes in the UK. It is now believed to be the biggest source of income for organised crime around the world.
Attracted by staggering profits, an underworld network of gangsters, drug barons, crooked police and even terrorists have made cannabis their contraband of choice. And they have no qualms about using sex, intimidation, bribery and murder to achieve their aims.
Cocaine, heroin, LSD and amphetamines all bring devastating consequences but it is no exaggeration to say that cannabis, and in particular hash, its concentrated resin, is the most deadly of them all. It brings a level of violence, illness and addiction that to most people would seem barely credible.
The cannabis industry dwarfs the trade in heroin and cocaine. According to the Serious Organised Crime Agency, around 270 tons of cannabis are consumed every year in Britain, of which 80 per cent is grown here. In comparison, Soca calculates that 23 tons of heroin and 30 tons of cocaine are imported annually, with street values of £2 billion and £3 billion respectively.
Some estimates are higher still. According to the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit, there are up to 2.7 million cannabis users consuming 1,000 tons worth £5.9 billion. This compares with a million users of cocaine and 300,000 of heroin.
The global cannabis trade is reckoned by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to be worth a staggering £200 billion a year.
I have spent a quarter of a century talking to and investigating figures in the underworld here and abroad and my contacts are unrivalled. The more I have come to know about the hash business the more I have come to realise that the risks are just as deadly as for any Class A drugs.
I’ve been told of hitmen paid to kill rival criminals who dared to encroach into another gang’s territory. I’ve travelled from the lawless Rif mountains in Morocco to darkened warehouses in Spain protected by heavily armed gangsters, feeling just as queasy as if I had been in the company of Colombian cocaine dealers or Turkish heroin smugglers.
Cannabis is far from ‘safe’ despite its reputation. Users are six times more likely to suffer from serious mental illness than non-users.
It is also carcinogenic. The British Lung Foundation says smoking three joints a day causes similar damage to smoking 20 cigarettes a day. That would suggest that up to 30,000 people a year contract cannabis-related cancer.
Yet such is the demand for the drug that an entirely new industry has cropped up to meet it. Between 2004 and 2007, police detected around 800 illegal cannabis ‘farms’ each year. This rose to 7,000 by 2009-10. Most produce high-strength herbal ‘skunk’, but now laboratories have sprung up to make premium-grade hashish.
With average prices of £21 per quarter ounce, there is an ever- growing commercial and personal market for cannabis grown here in Britain. That’s where The Consultant comes in. He specialises in organising every aspect of a ‘home-grow operation’ – from the renting of a suitable house to organising the heating, lighting and the right crop to grow. His clients include people wanting to smoke their own to those who see it as a way to make a living. And his services do not come cheap: for setting up a growing room, there is a flat fee of £3,000.
The Consultant takes me to a large semi-detached house in Lewisham, South-East London. In the loft, ultraviolet lights buzz gently. Dozens of seeding cannabis plants, each at least 3ft tall, make the space feel more like a jungle, and the smell is all-consuming.
The Consultant tells me that he grew up surrounded by ‘duckers and divers’. For some years in the early 1980s, he was a ‘grass’ dealer in Chelsea, selling the leaf, rather than the hash resin form of cannabis. Through his dealing, he claims he got to know pop stars and even members of the Royal Family.
He fell into growing when his supply dried up. ‘I couldn’t see anything wrong with it,’ he says. ‘Surely it’s better to do it this way than line the pockets of cold-blooded gangsters who charge a fortune to smuggle the stuff.’
He’s part of a burgeoning phenomenon. A total of 750,000 cannabis plants were recovered by the police in 2009-10, with the largest concentrations being found in West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.
Energy companies calculate that up to £100 million worth of electricity is being stolen to fuel the sophisticated lighting systems needed to encourage the drug to grow. British Gas – now a major supplier of electricity – has formed a special team to tackle the problem.
At the retail end of the supply trade, Micky cuts up a ‘9 bar’ – the slang term for a nine-ounce block of hash – in an East End lock-up. He smokes a large joint as he works, carefully cutting down the large block into smaller chunks which he weighs on a set of digital scales and then wraps in cellophane.
Micky always sticks to the speed limit as he drives his respectable Audi estate through the London streets. He doesn’t want to get pulled over by police.
‘Stay put,’ he says, opening the lid of the armrest between us and removing a tightly wrapped ounce brick of hash. ‘Won’t be long.’
I watch as he climbs the steps to a large, period terrace house. Through the property’s big bay window, I notice a group of people sitting at a table – obviously the host is holding a dinner party. I see a man leading Micky in. He places the hash on the table before leaving.
‘I hate it when a customer tries to show me off like that,’ he says back in the car. ‘When you drop cocaine off with a punter, they try to keep it hush-hush. Hash users think it’s as normal as having a cup of tea.’
Micky, a 29-year-old East Londoner, comes from a long line of villains – his father was a chauffeur for the Kray twins.
He operates out of a swish apartment close to Canary Wharf, and his customers range from lawyers to film stars to builders. ‘That’s the thing about hash – it crosses the class divide,’ he says.
Indeed, many people I know shrug their shoulders at the mere mention of hash as if it is barely worth anyone’s attention. Their attitude sums up perfectly the way this illicit industry has been allowed to balloon into a multi-billion-dollar network. But even at the civilised end of the market, where well-heeled British clients buy their hash from amiable dealers, you are never more than a step away from vicious gangs. Tom is a former public schoolboy from Berkshire who nurtures a loyal set of customers who only ever buy hash from him. ‘I’m a professional hash dealer,’ he says. ‘I have made a decent living for more than 30 years because I am trusted. I also believe my hash is healthy. There is nothing chemical in the hash I sell.’
Tom claims to have numerous celebrity clients and says he is often flown across continents with hash for tycoons. ‘My business relies solely on word of mouth,’ he says. ‘The rich and sometimes famous people I supply put a good word in to their chums. I’ve got at least ten customers I’ve supplied throughout the 30 years I’ve been in this business. I reckon that’s unique.’
Two weeks before we met, Tom flew to Tibet to inspect a £10,000 shipment of finest Himalayan hash before it was smuggled into Europe, paid for by a client who belongs to one of the world’s most famous banking families.
‘My customers don’t want to know about the other side of this business,’ Tom says. ‘I think they imagine I only ever deal with nice, smiley- smiley farmers who give me a hug and slab of hash and then we’re on our way.
‘Of course that is utter b******s. I have to deal with some really horrible characters, the ones who shift the hash to the UK.
‘The only problem with supplying a range of hash is that I have to deal with a different set of gangsters for each brand: North London Turks who smuggle the best hash from Afghanistan; West London Sikhs bringing it in from Nepal; and a gang of French mafia importing from Morocco.’
Tom predicts an uncertain future for the UK underworld. ‘Soon it’s going to be crawling with so many bloody foreigners that the police are going to lose control and it will be like living back in Victorian times with crooks and pimps on every street corner trying to make a quid. A lot of these people from abroad are much more desperate for cash than the Brits.
‘The cities will soon be overflowing with them and that’s when the real problems will begin.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2323073/Britains-marijuana-mafia-Two-million-users--6bn-worth-trade-30-000-deaths-A-leading-author-meets-men-women-feeding-UKs-terrifying-addiction.html#ixzz2T26YEofu
It's a typically biased article for a conservative publication but contains some colorful characters... enjoy:
-
Cyril lives in a five-bedroom detached home hidden along an 800-yard drive in the middle of the Kent countryside. A grandfather and a businessman, he revels in the life of a country squire. But Cyril is one of the single most dangerous criminals I came across in my journey through the secret underworld of cannabis or hash. An outwardly respectable, middle-class businessman, he is clearly more than capable of having someone killed.
Cyril is a hash ‘financier’, called upon to help fund major gangland deals. ‘My role is to cough up £50k on a Monday and by Friday get £120k back, no questions asked,’ he says. ‘That’s a sweet deal.’
Cyril takes me in his gleaming black Bentley Turbo to a nearby lock-up garage, which he opens with an electronic remote control. The door slides up slowly to reveal three chairs, a table and a line of tools. He takes a hacksaw and runs his fingertip slowly along it.
‘See that?’ he says, picking something from between the tiny teeth. ‘That’s blood.’ He laughs. ‘Violence, or the threat of violence, is part of my business. If the other team isn’t scared of me, then I’m going to have a problem on my hands.’
He picks up a claw hammer and smashes it down on a wooden worktop, leaving a dent the size of a 50p piece. ‘That’s what it does to people’s faces. Leaves them with a lasting reminder of who you are.’
Without a trace of irony, Cyril adds: ‘I don’t want you making out I am some sort of psycho who gets people topped if they upset me. This is the trade I work in. I am a businessman and hash is a lucrative way for me to earn a living. End of story.’
The illicit trade in cannabis stretches from some of the poorest countries on Earth to middle-class homes in the UK. It is now believed to be the biggest source of income for organised crime around the world.
Attracted by staggering profits, an underworld network of gangsters, drug barons, crooked police and even terrorists have made cannabis their contraband of choice. And they have no qualms about using sex, intimidation, bribery and murder to achieve their aims.
Cocaine, heroin, LSD and amphetamines all bring devastating consequences but it is no exaggeration to say that cannabis, and in particular hash, its concentrated resin, is the most deadly of them all. It brings a level of violence, illness and addiction that to most people would seem barely credible.
The cannabis industry dwarfs the trade in heroin and cocaine. According to the Serious Organised Crime Agency, around 270 tons of cannabis are consumed every year in Britain, of which 80 per cent is grown here. In comparison, Soca calculates that 23 tons of heroin and 30 tons of cocaine are imported annually, with street values of £2 billion and £3 billion respectively.
Some estimates are higher still. According to the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit, there are up to 2.7 million cannabis users consuming 1,000 tons worth £5.9 billion. This compares with a million users of cocaine and 300,000 of heroin.
The global cannabis trade is reckoned by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to be worth a staggering £200 billion a year.
I have spent a quarter of a century talking to and investigating figures in the underworld here and abroad and my contacts are unrivalled. The more I have come to know about the hash business the more I have come to realise that the risks are just as deadly as for any Class A drugs.
I’ve been told of hitmen paid to kill rival criminals who dared to encroach into another gang’s territory. I’ve travelled from the lawless Rif mountains in Morocco to darkened warehouses in Spain protected by heavily armed gangsters, feeling just as queasy as if I had been in the company of Colombian cocaine dealers or Turkish heroin smugglers.
Cannabis is far from ‘safe’ despite its reputation. Users are six times more likely to suffer from serious mental illness than non-users.
It is also carcinogenic. The British Lung Foundation says smoking three joints a day causes similar damage to smoking 20 cigarettes a day. That would suggest that up to 30,000 people a year contract cannabis-related cancer.
Yet such is the demand for the drug that an entirely new industry has cropped up to meet it. Between 2004 and 2007, police detected around 800 illegal cannabis ‘farms’ each year. This rose to 7,000 by 2009-10. Most produce high-strength herbal ‘skunk’, but now laboratories have sprung up to make premium-grade hashish.
With average prices of £21 per quarter ounce, there is an ever- growing commercial and personal market for cannabis grown here in Britain. That’s where The Consultant comes in. He specialises in organising every aspect of a ‘home-grow operation’ – from the renting of a suitable house to organising the heating, lighting and the right crop to grow. His clients include people wanting to smoke their own to those who see it as a way to make a living. And his services do not come cheap: for setting up a growing room, there is a flat fee of £3,000.
The Consultant takes me to a large semi-detached house in Lewisham, South-East London. In the loft, ultraviolet lights buzz gently. Dozens of seeding cannabis plants, each at least 3ft tall, make the space feel more like a jungle, and the smell is all-consuming.
The Consultant tells me that he grew up surrounded by ‘duckers and divers’. For some years in the early 1980s, he was a ‘grass’ dealer in Chelsea, selling the leaf, rather than the hash resin form of cannabis. Through his dealing, he claims he got to know pop stars and even members of the Royal Family.
He fell into growing when his supply dried up. ‘I couldn’t see anything wrong with it,’ he says. ‘Surely it’s better to do it this way than line the pockets of cold-blooded gangsters who charge a fortune to smuggle the stuff.’
He’s part of a burgeoning phenomenon. A total of 750,000 cannabis plants were recovered by the police in 2009-10, with the largest concentrations being found in West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.
Energy companies calculate that up to £100 million worth of electricity is being stolen to fuel the sophisticated lighting systems needed to encourage the drug to grow. British Gas – now a major supplier of electricity – has formed a special team to tackle the problem.
At the retail end of the supply trade, Micky cuts up a ‘9 bar’ – the slang term for a nine-ounce block of hash – in an East End lock-up. He smokes a large joint as he works, carefully cutting down the large block into smaller chunks which he weighs on a set of digital scales and then wraps in cellophane.
Micky always sticks to the speed limit as he drives his respectable Audi estate through the London streets. He doesn’t want to get pulled over by police.
‘Stay put,’ he says, opening the lid of the armrest between us and removing a tightly wrapped ounce brick of hash. ‘Won’t be long.’
I watch as he climbs the steps to a large, period terrace house. Through the property’s big bay window, I notice a group of people sitting at a table – obviously the host is holding a dinner party. I see a man leading Micky in. He places the hash on the table before leaving.
‘I hate it when a customer tries to show me off like that,’ he says back in the car. ‘When you drop cocaine off with a punter, they try to keep it hush-hush. Hash users think it’s as normal as having a cup of tea.’
Micky, a 29-year-old East Londoner, comes from a long line of villains – his father was a chauffeur for the Kray twins.
He operates out of a swish apartment close to Canary Wharf, and his customers range from lawyers to film stars to builders. ‘That’s the thing about hash – it crosses the class divide,’ he says.
Indeed, many people I know shrug their shoulders at the mere mention of hash as if it is barely worth anyone’s attention. Their attitude sums up perfectly the way this illicit industry has been allowed to balloon into a multi-billion-dollar network. But even at the civilised end of the market, where well-heeled British clients buy their hash from amiable dealers, you are never more than a step away from vicious gangs. Tom is a former public schoolboy from Berkshire who nurtures a loyal set of customers who only ever buy hash from him. ‘I’m a professional hash dealer,’ he says. ‘I have made a decent living for more than 30 years because I am trusted. I also believe my hash is healthy. There is nothing chemical in the hash I sell.’
Tom claims to have numerous celebrity clients and says he is often flown across continents with hash for tycoons. ‘My business relies solely on word of mouth,’ he says. ‘The rich and sometimes famous people I supply put a good word in to their chums. I’ve got at least ten customers I’ve supplied throughout the 30 years I’ve been in this business. I reckon that’s unique.’
Two weeks before we met, Tom flew to Tibet to inspect a £10,000 shipment of finest Himalayan hash before it was smuggled into Europe, paid for by a client who belongs to one of the world’s most famous banking families.
‘My customers don’t want to know about the other side of this business,’ Tom says. ‘I think they imagine I only ever deal with nice, smiley- smiley farmers who give me a hug and slab of hash and then we’re on our way.
‘Of course that is utter b******s. I have to deal with some really horrible characters, the ones who shift the hash to the UK.
‘The only problem with supplying a range of hash is that I have to deal with a different set of gangsters for each brand: North London Turks who smuggle the best hash from Afghanistan; West London Sikhs bringing it in from Nepal; and a gang of French mafia importing from Morocco.’
Tom predicts an uncertain future for the UK underworld. ‘Soon it’s going to be crawling with so many bloody foreigners that the police are going to lose control and it will be like living back in Victorian times with crooks and pimps on every street corner trying to make a quid. A lot of these people from abroad are much more desperate for cash than the Brits.
‘The cities will soon be overflowing with them and that’s when the real problems will begin.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2323073/Britains-marijuana-mafia-Two-million-users--6bn-worth-trade-30-000-deaths-A-leading-author-meets-men-women-feeding-UKs-terrifying-addiction.html#ixzz2T26YEofu