[420 Girl]

From a handful of plants in a garden shed, to major commercial operations spanning several rooms, police continue to crack down on people growing cannabis at home.

And as a raid on a house in Hessle at the weekend showed, it is not just small-time harvests that are being grown.

In the past year, the Mail has regularly been invited on drug busts across East Yorkshire.

Not only do they provide interesting stories, but they also help the police spread the message that if people are growing cannabis, they will be caught.

Often the raids are a result of a tip-off from the local community, who notice suspicious comings and goings and strange smells.

So why do so many people risk a prison sentence by turning their homes into cannabis factories?

Although some may be growing the plants for personal use, in the hope they can cut out dealers and suppliers, many others see the large profits which can be gained for a relatively small outgoing.

The raid in Hessle showed the more high-end set-up, with separate rooms for propagation, growing and drying. But other people merely choose a warm room, cover it in silver foil and buy packets of seeds over the Internet.

Hydroponics kits, which give heat, light and water to increase growing power, are now readily available.

Although designed to cultivate exotic plants, the more criminally minded can easily use hydroponics kits to create the ideal environment for cannabis. The Mail may be seeing more and more homegrown cannabis factories but is the demand worth the risk?

The British Crime Survey recently found that the percentage of 16 to 24-year-olds using cannabis has declined from 28 per cent a decade ago to 21 per cent this year, with its decline accelerating after the decision to downgrade the drug to Class C in January 2004. The overall proportion of users aged 16 to 59 has fallen from 10.8 per cent to 8.2 per cent. In 2005, a survey found some police forces were reporting a six-fold increase in the amount of cannabis seized which had been grown in people's homes. In that year in the UK, the total amount of cannabis seized, including home grown, had doubled to 950,000 kilos.

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