Cannabis is the ATM of organised crime.,LIVERPOOL crime families have turned their attentions to growing and dealing their own cannabis on a mass scale.

LIVERPOOL crime families have turned their attentions to growing and dealing their own cannabis on a mass scale.

Where cannabis farms in Merseyside were once principally the business of Far Eastern gangs, now local gangsters have muscled them out as they look to clean up the huge profits which can be made for themselves.

Described by one police drug expert as “the ATM for organised crime”, many see cannabis as a harmless drug, still associating it with “summers of love” and hippies at Woodstock.

But the cannabis on the streets of Liverpool today is a world away from the joints rolled as Jimi Hendrix jammed on stage.


Said to be the most prevalent illegal drug in the UK the strength of it, the way it is produced and the profits which can be made have turned it into big business for crooks in recent years. As revealed in the ECHO on Saturday, a spate of shootings across north Liverpool last week is thought to be down to rival dealers protecting their own turf or trying to move in on someone else’s.

Industrial-scale cannabis farms are now being turned up by police in Merseyside at the rate of around two a week.

Farms were found under railway arches, in abandoned offices, disused clubs, empty cinemas, a chip shop, barns and garages.

Crime syndicates who rule housing estates have seen what money can be made and recruited families – often those living on the breadline – to set up small-scale cannabis farms in their homes.

They take all the risk of the police coming crashing through their front door while the gangsters at the top take all the rewards.

Detective Inspector Bill Stupples is Merseyside Police’s expert on the ever-changing drugs scene.

He said: “Cannabis is the ATM of organised crime.

“It provides the ready cash which goes towards the bigger, riskier stuff like Class A drugs and firearms.

“We are finding more and more bedrooms with 20 to 50 plants in and the people we catch are claiming they are heavy smokers and it is for personal use – which can be difficult to disprove.

“Now that amount of plant can generate a fair amount of cash – 25 plants could make you £40,000 a year on conservative estimates.

“A cannabis smoker could have 10 spliffs a day for the rest of his life from just five plants if he kept them properly with four or five yields a year, so there is a big difference there.”

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