Police Crackdown on cannabis hothouses

[Takeshi]

Courier Mail (Brisbane)

Sunday 1 August 2004

 

A series of drug raids in southeast Queensland has uncovered sophisticated hydroponic cannabis "hot-houses" using thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

 

Officer in charge of Queensland's drug investigative group Detective Inspector Brian Wilkins said an entire Gold Coast house was converted into a hydroponic operation.

 

Some growers were spending up to $25,000 on equipment.

 

Several southeast Queensland crime networks are believed to have established a virtual cottage industry of small-scale hydroponic cannabis producers in a series of homes, according to a recent report for the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre.

 

Det-Insp Wilkins said the hydroponic hothouses were becoming more elaborate with growers using industrial fans, air-conditioning, extractors, expensive lighting systems, water pumps, and high quality fertilisers.

 

Hydroponic growers could produce significant quantities of cannabis within six to eight weeks with some plants yielding more than 10kg of cannabis each, Det-Insp Wilkins said.

 

On July 15 Queensland police seized more than 400 cannabis plants from an upstairs section of a screen-printing factory at Andrews on the Gold Coast, charging a man, 65.

 

Over the following few days a series of raids across Queensland resulted in police seizing hydroponic equipment from a property at Julatten, west of Port Douglas, and in the Brisbane suburbs of Mt Gravatt and Chappel Hill, as well as hydroponic cannabis plants growing in the Bundaberg and Rosedale areas.

 

In March, three women were charged after police found 35kg of hydroponic cannabis hidden in two homes in a Southport street,

 

Police said drug growers were renting private homes and converting them to cannabis hothouses. They were operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 

The telltale signs of a [hothouse] included humming noises from extractor fans and water pups, smells and fertilisers, hoses through windows, blacked-out windows and lights running non-stop.

[Takeshi]

As expansion said .. a 10kg (~22 pounds) plant !!

 

Can someone point me to the seedbank where I can find some of those seeds ::

 

Just love the way the media is abused in Aus.

 

Tak

[Insanemal]

man im almost positive they count total plant weight.. not just bud... hell sometimes i see them weighing the bastards in there pots..just cus it all adds to the weight they can charge you with..

[novice grower]

Wow,a 22 pound plant,like Takeshi said,WHERE can i get one of those from ?????

 

The people in the media bag out pot,but how many of them use speed and coke ????

 

Hypocrites !!!!!

 

Well i have had my say !

 

Cheers.

[Luke Skywalker]

Bastards. As always telling a skewed "truth"....

 

FIGHT THE POWER!

[Pure]

grrrr this stuff kind of stuff shits me

 

 

you show me a grower who can pull 10kg from a plant in eight weeks and I'll give them a fucking medal ha ha ha

Edited August 11, 2004 by Pure

[risingsun]

I dont think they were saying the 10kg plants took only eight weeks to grow. if they are that is insane.

You would need to grow one plant at least 3 metres high with a 5 metre diameter (just a guess) to get anything near that kind of yield and that would take around 4-6 months of veg (or longer), the size of the pot would have to be very very big (at least 400 litres: 15 litre pot equal 100 grams) and fuck would it smell.

Love to see it done though

[Nath]

10kg plants

chics with 60lbs of bud?

WHAT

 

Its a load of shit, do they weigh the plants with the pots nowdays? I bet they do.. thats just sad. Especially because I grow in 30cm pots, and when Will they start to weigh and count the reservoirs and lighting towards plant weight?

[igough]

grrrr this stuff kind of stuff shits me

  you show me a grower who can pull 10kg from a plant in eight weeks and I'll give them a fucking medal ha ha ha 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

u r not wrong what a load of shit which is what they must have been feeding the plants to

[Pickle]

I can't remember where i saw this but recently on TV i saw a couple of US cops discussing a raid on a coke dealer, they were talking about one of the people in the house throwing the coke in a bucket of water trying to get rid of it, and having a chuckle because the water would show up positive for coke and they could count the water too. They were saying for every litre of water they could count it as a kilo of coke and charge the guy as a mr big.

 

It realy pisses me off that they try to make it out to be some huge complicated operation. Oh wow, there was a pump and ventilation. They don't ever mention without these things you can't grow very well at all and that it's not that hard to read a bit and make a grow room that they call 'high tech'. If that's high tech maybe all the DYI home builders should go into business as master builders or maybe all the dumb shit cops who think it's high tech should go back to school and learn how to stop dribbling shit.