POLICE have recovered cannabis worth £2.6m from illegal factories in the area around Sheffield city centre in the past year – and there is now concern the gangs cultivating the plants could switch to producing a highly dangerous but more profitable drug instead.
The scale of cannabis prod-uction in this country is illustrated by the results of police raids in an area that covers only communities dir-ectly around the city centre.
Investigators accept there will be other factories they have not yet discover
ed, and even more in the wider area of the city suburbs and around South Yorkshire.
With a catalogue of successful operations against cannabis factories in Sheffield, senior officers have been able to establish that many are operated by criminal gangs from outside this area.
Some Vietnamese criminals are orchestrating the production, using immigrants brought in specifically for the task.
The cannabis plants are grown under artificial light with equipment normally used for legitimate agricultural production. Evidence has emerged elsewhere in the country that criminal gangs operating similar factories have been trying to switch them over to making meth amphetamine, a manufactured drug which is produced using readily available chemicals.
However, the laboratory process of producing the drug is highly volatile and dangerous with a high risk of fire and explosion and the drug produced has devastating effects on those who use it.
It has ravaged many American communities to a greater extent than crack cocaine did in the early 1990s, with fewer than 10 per cent of users ever being rehabilitated.
Those who become addicted rapidly lose weight, their teeth fall out and eventually they die.
Chief Supt Paul Broadbent, district commander for the city centre, said there was no evidence yet that anyone had tried to start meth amphetamine production in Sheffield but the force was alert to the
dangers, with officers ready to respond.
"It is something we are very alive to," he said. "We are actively working on intelligence to make sure meth amphetamine doesn't arrive in the city."
Police intelligence suggests it is not available in Sheffield at present, but there have been two attempts to establish factories around Stoney Middleton in the Peak District.
Sheffield is one of the major urban centres surrounding that location where the drug might have been expected to be in demand.
Police tactics to tackle the use of meth amphetamine in Sheffield would be to conduct their own enforcement work to control the supply of the substances, but also to work with other organisations including the NHS and local crime and disorder partnerships to minimise the spread of the problem and get help as quickly and effectively as possible for those needing it.
"If it is identified we will be working closely together to help the victims, the users, and to identify the suppliers and robustly investigate the leads we get," he said.
Meth amphetamine has recently been upgraded to a class A drug under the law and Humberside Chief Constable Tim Hollis, the Association of Chief Police Officers' spokesman on drugs, has said protective equipment for police who may be called in to raid suspected meth laboratories is being reviewed because of the risks.
In America laboratories set up in flats have exploded, putting innocent neighbours at risk.
Late last year the first UK conviction for conspiracy to produce the drug resulted in an Isle of Wight man being jailed for 10 years. He plotted to produce enough to make a £1m profit.
