
Fail!
If drugs were legalised and you could get them via prescription (thus generating revenue for the govt), we could save millions of quid in man-hours and expensive copper choppers. Maybe then they can tackle real crimes.
Yorkshire cops have apologised after swooping on a suspected Bradford cannabis "hothouse", only to find a couple of pampered guinea pigs languishing by an electric heater. Six officers in three vehicles descended on Pam Hardcastle's house after a police chopper's dope-busting camera picked up a suspicious infrared hotspot. …
By prescription? that would get them £7 a pop (or free if your on benefits).
To generate an answer to the national debt - package up spliffs in packs of 10 or 20, and sell them from machines in pubs and clubs (and re-instate smoking in licensed drinking establishments). Tax them in the same way ciggies are and hey presto a major influx of revenue.
isnt working. stop trying to criminalise people for smoking something less harmful than alcohol and tobacco (yes, some people have a brain meltdown but plenty of studies can prove that those people would likely have underlying problems anyway). nice use of our tax money plod
also anyone with half a brain on a scan would tell you that an electric heater boots out far more heat than a HPS light. did they think they had found some 3000w grow lamp that would light a garage? arent these guys even slightly educated in what they are trying to catch?
maybe if you spent more time investigating burglaries (took them a month to come to swipe for fingerprints when it happened to me) they might get the public more on side.
You must live in a dodgy area; all the bad drivers (read: weaving/swerving/retarded) are using phones, reading or fiddling with other gadgets or controls.
You occasionally see the odd one weaving down the road without obvious cause and it turns out to be an elderly person.
"This fallacy that it's less harmful than tobacco is pathetic" - medically, it is. It doesn't have nicotine, and much less quantity of tar and carcinogenics when burnt. Most regular and intelligent folks vapourise it to get the caniboids out without the by-products.
have got in a fight on a friday night after drinking too much.
Not too many stoners fight..... they struggle to switch the TV over after a big camberwell carrot.
Make it legal Nick like the electorate asked you too on your 'big society' website. Oh yes that's right Lib Dems= empty promises
Mobile phones should be a controlled substance, presumably
I have no idea when an erratic driver is stoned (do you have some kind of portable gas chromatograph or sensitive spectral analyer or something?) but I can damn well see when the feckers are on the phone.
We are all dying to know how you know these drivers are stoned not sleepy/drunk/moronic
Jared Loughner smoked a lot of dope. I'm not sure the amount of deaths indirectly attributed to marijuana use can be assumed to be exactly zero. I also have personal experience from riding with stoned drivers that it makes them worse drivers while simultaneously convincing them that they are driving really well -- but then I suspect alcohol does that as well.
It is claimed that the stronger skunk varieties of cannabis are liable to cause 'Brain Meltdown' and that these varieties are becomeing more and more common. Yet clinical levels of schizophrenia and psychosis have remained steady. You do the math. As an aside canabis is harmful to your well-being. there needs to be a new word for the weeded uber lazy.
This daft woman needs to be fined for wasting energy, and generating excessive pollution (at the power station) who on earth puts an electric heater on full power in an uninsulated garage? an anti frosting heater ok, but to be pumping out that much heat (see IR image) is lunacy.
You need to be fined for making such idiotic suggestions.
Also, Skunk (resin) as sold on the street, is mainly made up of all types of crap, and brain rotting chemicals you wouldn't believe, if it is legalised and produced properly under controled conditions then.
A), it wouldn't be produced at such high strengths
B), it wouldn't contain all the shit that gets put in currently
C), The illegal drug trade falls on its face
D), Jobs created
If the colouring is standard (brighter for more intensive) the heat is coming from a small shed next to what looks like a standard bolted panel-kit garage. So she is not wasting that much energy after all. However, this also means that the Yorkshire cops have made all that fuss because of a 2mx2m shed where one can grow at most a handful of plants.
As far as the clinical levels of schizophrenia and psychosis - they will show effects from cannabis if a statistically significant part of the population overindulges in it to the point where it can be triggered. At the moment that is simply not the case.
...show heat loss. Notice the chimneys and windows on the buildings surrounding, they are darker, showing heat escaping. Also, the article said it was a "garage" not a shed.
My question: Why not simply look in the window? Don't most garages have a window or two? It would be "in plain sight" and if the police couldn't see the pets, they would see that there was no cannabis production. I'm guessing they coppers didn't even try, and just decided to inconvenience everyone by calling the homeowner home from work to grandstand a "raid".
"Marijuana smoking, like tobacco smoking,
may be associated with increased risk
of lung cancer. Marijuana smoke contains
cannabinoid compounds in addition to
many of the same components as tobacco
smoke. For instance, benzopyrene, a carcinogenic
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon,
is found in both tobacco and marijuana
smoke and has been implicated in mutations
related to lung cancer.4-7 Furthermore, experimental
studies support an association
between marijuana smoke exposure and
lung cancer, with lung cancer cell lines demonstrating
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-
induced malignant cell proliferation8,9 and
a murine model suggesting that THC promotes
tumor growth by inhibiting antitumor
immunity by a cannibinoid-2 receptor
mediated pathway.10 Although the
preponderance of in vitro data supports a
biologically plausible association, limited research
exists that suggests anticarcinogenic
cannabinoid effects.11-13 Given these
contrasting data, we chose to systematically
evaluate the association between smoking
marijuana and lung cancer."
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/166/13/1359.pdf
The study concludes that more study is required. But given how difficult it has been to convince people that smoking is bad for their health, I expect the results will eventually be the same: smoking kills whether it is tobacco or weed, and weed actually has more carcinogens.
Marijuana is worse for you per weight of substance smoked. In evaluating the health risks, it is generally assumed that pot smokers consume only a small fraction of the amount of burning weeds that tobacco smokers consume. If a pot smoker tried to keep up with a fag smoker on a puff-for-puff basis, they'd soon bear a striking resemblance to Ozzy Osborne.
they do not exist.
stop reading the daily fail for your world insights.
also skunk is a strain of cannabis. there are plenty of strains that are weaker than old school resin. FLO is a nice example. i guarantee that 99.9% of smokers have never smoked actual skunk, since hardly anyone grows that strain.
'Victimless crime feels the full strength of the law'
Meanwhile thieves and scum stealing everything from everybody isn't worth investigating as it's so common.
So how many other less news worthy crimes were ignored so they could go in mob handed.
So the question is will she lose her job on the bases of soft evidence.
You'd prefer that they kicked the door in? Sounds oddly considerate. Perhaps they thought they'd been given a bum steer and exercised uncharacteristic caution. Or they failed to get a warrant, in which case she could have told them to "go forth and procreate" anyway.
because the whole legalise it argument is crap - the idea that if drugs are legalised the mob will shrug their shoulders and walk away supposes there is no criminal involvement in cigarettes or alcohol or fuel or any of the other legal areas of life. It's just nonsense
There is a part of capitalism that is not that discussed, and that is price equilibrium vs Taxes.
Whenever taxes reach a certain point there is an incentive in doing without them.
Like @ 10% tax the risk is so much higher than the gain.
@ 20%tax you can already guess that you can both sell your wares 20%less that your counterparts, but if you play 'nice' you just sell at street price and keep the taxes for you, and as you are not selling at less than street price you are almost golden as no one sees anything (except from the tax dude.)
Now can you remind me of the level of tax on cigarettes ?
You want to kill grey market on ciggies or alcohol ? make them affordable in the legal market. QED.
Surely even the dumbest criminal has by now worked out that the police are using IR cameras to find their farms, so they need to use only premises with roof insulation to the highest standard. Presumably also high-efficiency (LED?) lighting so that their farm doesn't overheat.
So the good news should be that illegal dope-growing is reducing its CO2 emissions and rising fast in the "green" stakes!
That a roof-mounted heat-exchange system would be one way of doing it - run a load of pipes with water in all over the top of the 'garage' (or the premises in question) to soak up the ambient heat and then run the 'hot' pipe through a freezer, or in front of an air-con unit or into a ground-sink or whatever else comes to hand - free hot showers for the residents comes to mind.
Anyway - at least the terrorists haven't won yet!
hmm
ttfn
I'm not sure of the exact spectrum that chlorophyll absorbs to power the growth of plants, but remember that the green we see is what is not absorbed. And green plants do reflect a lot of red light. Maybe there could be a more efficient source of the right colours of light than a simple hot-filament bulb, but it is going to be something special.
Can I just step in to try and dispel this myth that LED's are somehow blessed with super high efficiency . They are in lumens / watt terms comparable to tungsten halogen, which while considerably more efficient than conventional incandescent bulbs, are still far less efficient than LPMV and sodium lamps.
You can get LED grow lights BTW, but I never understood why growers didn't opt for fluorescents. You can get 4' luminaries from wickes for about £10, and you could have 3 of them in your little grow tent for about 100w of consumption. You want more light? Add more strips. If you want to be fussy about the spectrum then the aquarium set has plenty of fluorescent bulbs with a variety of special purpose spectra, including plant growth.
But I'm guessing most pot growers arn't electricians.
The method most commonly used for spotting cannabis farms is to ask the electricity/gas suppliers for addresses which are using far higher amounts of energy than might be expected for a property that size. Growing cannabis is extremely energy intensive and generally it is electricity that is used for heating, the hydroponics and lights etc. Obviously, there are other reasons why a house might use very large amounts of electricity (such as servers!! - IT angle), this ploy at least reduces the targets considerably. It means someone can turn up on foot with a thermal camera and confirm the prescence of a lot of heat, generally over a sizeable area, say the roof. Then, investigations proceed if found.
This is quite efficient and certainly a hell of a lot better than flying a helicopter with thermal imaging gear around an area looking for anything 'hot'. It also provides a secondary piece of supporting evidence, the electricity (usually) use.
Shows nobody knows how to waste taxpayer money like the police. Absolute bunch of planks.
now the Plod will be comming round my house because
i dont own a low power TV we have 3 computer of which 1 is on all the time another is on 2/3 of the time and the last one is sparodic but at least once a day.
my wife is at home all day using electricity. cooking music cleaning etc ect Were 4 people living in a 2 person apartment therefore using more leccy than normal.
so i then expect a visit every 4 months shall. Or should they not bother comming again after the first visit ?????
Or tapping the street lights.
Can't remember if El Reg ran that story but to summarise. Some growers decided to tap the elecricity from a lamp post. It was reported that the lighting in that street was much dimmer than in surrounded streets. When the electricity company investigated they found the cannabis farm.
Municipalities surrounding Vancouver are sending in Safety Inspectors to review excessive use of electricity in homes. Usually with police officers sitting outside in their police cars. if they "notice" any evidence of illegal activity they can then go outside and report this information to the police, who immediately bust the homeowner. If there is no Pot found, then the town charges the homeowner for the inspection. Upto $5200 'cost recovery' for a 1/4 hour of work.
Indications of illegal cultivation include spilled soil or fertilizer, empty rooms (it was preped to be painted for a soon-to-arrive baby) and other items.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/war-on-grow-ops-in-bc-has-unexpected-casualties/article1866458/
Also, if I were a pot grower, I would keep guinea pigs in a shed, heat them excessively and after the cops came and vetted the place, switch to growing pot.
So how is this thermal imaging gear going to get to look at the roof of a building if it isn't on a helicopter, tall ladders? Since it's already installed on the helicopter to catch burglars & car thieves and find missing people, it sounds like a good use of taxpayers' money to do some targeted flyovers when the aircraft isn't otherwise engaged; the alternative would be purchasing a load of lower-spec equipment, training a load of people to use it, and those people still not being able to get in a good position to make best use of it because they are not airborne.
Besides, if I ever get the plod at my door I'd rather it be on the basis of a thermal image and not the triennial screw-up at Eon. I'd probably let them look and allay any suspicion, how very avant garde.
>>
West Yorkshire Police Inspector Darren Brown offered: "I would like to apologise for the distress this may have caused. However, I would point out that these tactics are essential in tackling drugs across the district."
<<
Ah yes.. the infamous Hamster crew.
>>
Hardcastle concluded: "My neighbours told me police were everywhere. Everybody was asking what I had done wrong. It is embarrassing."
<<
If I were a lawyer, I'd help her sue the bastards. Nothing spells "look at me next time something goes all f***ed up, your kid falls over, or you lose something valuable" more than a police hit squad on your lawn
Guinea Pigs can take -15C, maybe less. Just can't take SUDDEN changes in temperature. So no wonder they suspicious.
We had them living outdoors for about 12 years. They live "wild" all the way from Tropical Amazonian swamps to snow line of Andes in Peru. Very versitile. But bringing them into Central Heating from Cold Outdoors can kill them. Even though they can cope with 30C summer.
People keeping pets should research them better. Could avoid visits from "pigs" :-)
Lawn around our bird table regulary spawns Opium Poppy (common flower bed plant) and Hemp from the bird seed. Cannabis is kind of hemp. It's grown also outdoors as a clothing fibre. I don't think much used for rope anymore.
Industrial Hemp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp
"common garden poppy" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_poppy
I'm sure there are interesting mushrooms in the nearby woods. The "lawyer's wig" that grows in our own garden is lovely fried. (Autumn Fruit)
We have "fake castor oil" plant (Fatsia japonica) not this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_oil_plant which makes Ricin, but we do get Spurge growing as a weed.
Not just South Americans, but Italians eat Guinea Pigs. I don't think it's for any "mind bending". Supposed to be a bit like rabbit.
Mage, you need to update your info, I've also had guinea pigs for over 12 years and all indoors - information changes as people learn more about them. Central heating does not kill guinea pigs, damp, cold weather does. Outdoor g-pigs even if thy do 'tolerate' -15°C live on average 4-5 years compared to indoor pigs of at least 7-8 years. Helping with a rescue, I've seen enough examples of frostbite and severely underweight pigs due to 'tolerating' the British cold weather.
Guinea pigs are no longer found 'in the wild' as the domestic variety has been bred and inbred for so long that you will not find the colour and breed varieties running wild, even in Peru or any of the South American countries. They breed them domestically indoors or at least under shade and are not meant to live a long time over there so weather is not really relevant, they are a food source.
and during it's validation tests pictures would be taken of anomalies, and other data of interest. For example, different forestry diseases emit different 'signatures' as do trees of different species.
Ground crews were sent out all over to correlate the data for when the satellite went into full service.
One anomaly had them stymied - a hot spot way out in the prairies. Out went the crew and they confidentially determined that it was an illegal still making hooch the old fashioned way.
All was well until some scientist wrote up their experiences with this wondrous new satellite along with all of it's capabilities. He also mentioned. light heartedly, the discovery of the still.
Some time later the RCMP caught up with this item and dispatched a cop armed with a search warrant.
This was the first satellite bust of an illegal alcohol still occurred
That they can just fly a helicopter over someone's house, notice that it's a bit warm and that's enough for a big police raid?
Lets keep in mind that in this case it was pets, so there's no other evidence here that points to anything illegal happening other than.....a warm garage!
I really would love to see the grounds on which this was authorised!
The reason they needed her home was a hotspot in a garage isnt reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed and they need entry by consent.
There was no need to bring her home, her explanation, without any evidence to the contrary would be enough to stop plod in its tracks.
She should be asking the plod to write to all her neighbours and her employer explaining there mistake and re iterating that she isnt the next Pablo Escobar.
There is reasonable suspicion and according to other news sources they didn't need consent as they had obtained a search warrant. And it's not worrying that they saw a warm shed and investigated, that was what they up there to do.
>There was no need to bring her home, her explanation, without any evidence to the contrary would be enough to stop plod in its tracks.
Let me see, what would she say when asked "Are you growing cannabis in your shed"
1.) Yes officer, do you want some,special rate for bent coppers. (wink, wink)
2.) No, I'm keeping my guinea pigs warm
Now amongst excuses number 2 ranks in with those that must be true because you couldn't make it up. However, I still think even with a better excuse they would have had a peek just to make sure.
I don't know how society should handle drugs in general. But I can't help feeling that the world would be a better place if someone wishing to grow a bit of weed for their own use was just left to get on with it.
I don't use it myself, more of a homebrew guy myself, which I see as a good analogy. We need an honest discussion of the risks and then let people decide for themselves.
I don't sign up to the idea that legalising drugs across the board is automatically the best idea, but the risks with "ordinary" cannabis seem to be well within the realms of personal choice. Trying to ban people from growing a particular species of plant is just bound to be a money pit.
Two stories I often see in the local rag which really annoy me. The council gloating about how thye have dragged someone through the courts and fined them £1000 for dropping a single cigarette butt, and the police gloating about how they have found yet another small time weed factory. They have better things to spend time and money on.
Is nothing to do with risks/health (it is far healthier than cigarettes and booze). It's because it cannot be taxed properly; moreover its easy to convert from plant to smoke, unlike nicotine and tar which are added to the cigarette to make it addictive.
Is weed dangerous? Yes, it could be. But no more (actually far less) than a single cigarette or pint of beer. When it DOES become dangerous is when a) it's run by organized crime and b) it is mixed with unhealthy ingredients to make it go further. If it weren't illegal it would not be so profitable, and if it were not so profitable there would be less organized crime all over it.
Here's a thought. With the amount of people smoking weed illegally anyway, why doesn't the gov simply add in a new tax for the plant and products? It would still be much cheaper than fighting an imaginary war that is already being lost..
Getting that £1000 probably cost the taxpayer around £15000 after salaries, court costs, holding costs, etc.. way to go.
What they do here in Ireland is even funnier. The plod fiddle with the traffic lights on intersections that are known to be crowded, then snap up anyone going on the emergency lane to get to the empty lanes going where nobody wants to go... instead of sorting the problem they're out there lining their pockets.
Cynical? Isn't it funny how when they're NOT lining their pockets, even 2km of backlog takes under 20 mins to clear; while when they ARE lining their pockets even 500m takes over 45 minutes to clear? Hardly a coincidence is it...?
..despite the best efforts of approved contractors to improve it.
I'd considered putting a couple of servers up there on the basis that overheating would not be a problem. As this would also give me a relatively high electricity usage, should I therefore expect a visit from the plod?
It might make a change, they never normally come when we want them to.
So now when crims want to go unnoticed they:
A) Buy heated guinea pig cage and insert in shed.
B) Wait for plod chopper to fly by and get visited by Flying Squad.
C) Get embarrassing story published, pictures of cute pets and bewildered mother; chuckles all around.
D) After the cops leave, insert grow op lamps.
PS. Can we get rid of the Bill Gates icons and replace with a pair of cuffs. :)
Hello, I'm Dr. Pigthumb
Have you ever had the problem of running out of Guinea pigs?
and just can't find some - anywhere?
Well try my Dr. Pigthumb grow tips
I'll show you how to grow inside and out
From cavy to clone and the best homegrown
And if you're afraid of those pesky pork choppers in the sky -No worries we'll fix them too
With one of our Dr. Pigthumb 'Sizzlean' screens
To block the nosy pig's vision
Don't believe me? Just ask one of my many satisfied clients here Jed Sanders, How well it works....
They actually bother to fly around in a helicopter in this economic client looking for... cannabis??? Are they serious? Park your whirly bird and get busy with fighting crime that actually has a VICTIM. Guinea pigs... ridiculous! How much did it cost the taxpayers to have these yahoos busting these dangerous rodents anyway?Guinea Pigs
One way of doing it is to rent a normal house, paint it white, rip out all doors and non-loadbearing walls, grow weed for six months and then piss off, rent and bills unpaid.
The reason this is a tactic that can make money is, er, because it's illegal. If it were legal to grow your own then the growing of weed would be victimless. As it is, it belongs to organized criminals.
Remember folks, any party that supports prohibition is endorsing organized crime. Which criminal will you vote for?
>>
One way of doing it is to rent a normal house, paint it white, rip out all doors and non-loadbearing walls, grow weed for six months and then piss off, rent and bills unpaid.
<<
What... on earth... are you yabbing about? How is this related to .. well, anything really?? Someone reneging on a contract agreement is illegal. You sign a contract when you rent. You're responsible for not breaking it. You broke it, ergo you're a douche that owes the owner money. The fact that it was broken for weed growing is immaterial to the discussion.
>>
The reason this is a tactic that can make money is, er, because it's illegal. If it were legal to grow your own then the growing of weed would be victimless. As it is, it belongs to organized criminals.
Remember folks, any party that supports prohibition is endorsing organized crime. Which criminal will you vote for?
<<
Again with the confusion. We're talking about people being singled out for having a heat signature synonymous with a heat lamp. The point of the previous poster was that there was no victim to be found, no crackwhore that singled the house out... purely because a heat signature indicated a heat lamp.
While muggers, rapists, serial murderers and politicians walk freely around in society (ie ACTUAL VICTIMS); you and I are paying for Mr. Plod to fly around in expensive helicopters chasing heat lamps.
... Carbon Footprint ...
how the heck can a heater show up on a thermal imager from inside a house?
that has to be one hell of a thermal load.
This gets me worried about those folks running folding farms at home, are they next on the "hit list" ?
AC, because I don't want to get raided due to my experimental thermal neutron source..
So I now need to get guinea pigs to act as decoys for my growing operation?
(Seriously -- there must be a better use for taxpayer's money than this. They're obviously zeroing in on one heatlamp -- if it were plants then it would be one or two, hardly a major crime wave. Haven't the cops got anything better to do? Crime fighting, perhaps?)
I was once stopped and searched because some cops thought I was acting "suspicious".
What did I do that was "suspicious"? They said it was suspicious that I happened to be leaving a car park just as they were approaching in an unmarked car (despite the fact they weren't in sight until I was already pulling out of the car park).
They followed me till I got home and then searched me in the driveway of the apartments where I lived. They were so confident they were going to find something they must have requested the paddy wagon as soon as they started following me as it turned up just as they started searching me.
It was very embarrassing being patted down and having everything pulled out of my car by 5 coppers, in front of all my neighbors (who were all peering through their curtains)
Naturally they didn't find anything, but all I got was a mumbled apology as they left.
I understand that the plods have got a difficult job tackling drugs, but it seems a waste of time inventing excuses to search law abiding people minding their own business.
Black helicopter because it's a conspiracy I tells ya </joke>
Ridiculous waste of our money. Police helicopter, pile of policemen, time, effort, interrupting someone from work... all to bust a warm air heater. There are several things that are worrying:
a) There is a lot of real crime, to be honest cannabis really is neither here nor there, in many respects less harmful than many legal substances. Generally of little real worry. If there were a good supply then prices would fall and those making a lot of illegal money from it would see profits tumble and might even leave the scene. Much real crime is uninvestigated - burglaries and assaults included while the coppers wander around in the choppers like this
b) I'd love to know how many hours of police copper time and the hours of officers are spent on such random searches - the cost is I am certain enormous
c) I object to this sort of random spying - smacks of a stalinist police state
Perhaps the police should reacquiant themselves with what the public they are supposed to serve actually require from them