South West

Inside Out sent an undercover reporter into a shop in Plymouth where he was offered everything needed to start a mini skunk factory, including advice on which were the most popular growing systems and how to get the best from the illegally grown plants.

The intensively grown strains are much stronger than previous generations of Cannabis and research has shown that smokers of the new breed are 18 times more likely to experience mental health problems than smokers of other forms of the drug.

Starlite Systems: plants and advice to growers

The Law

At the moment it is legal to buy the skunk seeds and equipment separately needed to create a small indoor skunk factory, for around £150, and there are several places in the South West where people can do that.

If shops are simply selling the equipment, they are working within the law, unless they actively encourage their customers to grow cannabis, like one salesman from Starlite Systems on Albert Road in Plymouth.

He told our undercover reporter: “Out of a 250 Watt light, you can probably produce about 125-150 to maybe even 200 grams of dried product, so if you’re consuming it, that’s not a bad little bag of whatever… do you know what I mean?”

Programme presenter Sam Smith asked the shops owner Martin Rolfe about his business activity but he declined to comment.

But it does not stop there. As well as shops, there are also a number of on-line businesses based in the South West that sell skunk cannabis seeds to potential growers who could be locked up for 14 years if caught.

Often, they get around the law by claiming that the seeds, which can cost up to £45 for five, are for souvenir purposes or to feed your pets.

The risks of homegrown

According to official statistics there are more than 50,000 regular cannabis users in the South West, half the region’s young people have tried it at least once.

Until recently, it was thought to be relatively harmless, but it seems that opinion is changing because of a dramatic shift in smoking patterns.

Until about ten years ago cannabis resin was the form of the drug used by most of Britain’s dope smokers.

Martin Rolfe

Today it accounts for less than 20% because most of the cannabis smoked in Britain now is a homegrown herbal variety, known as skunk, which is five to 10 times stronger than the variety smoked by people 30 or 40 years ago.

Because the new strains are grown differently, it is feared that more and more young people are at risk of developing mental illness because they are smoking the more potent skunk form of the drug.

Tragic consequences

One mother who saw first hand what Skunk Cannabis can do is Sue, who blames the drug for her sons’ psychosis.

“He jumped out of a first storey window. He had left a very garbled message about how he loved everybody and it was almost like a suicide note.

“He was smoking skunk from the time he woke up in the morning right the way through the day until the time he went to bed.”

Just last week, Police in Devon and Cornwall raided a terraced house in Plymouth and found almost 400 cannabis plants growing in four different rooms.