Beyond ghosts,gangs and good sorts: Commercial cannabis cultivation and illicit enterprise in England’s disadvantaged inner cities

Introduction: Documenting the UK’s contemporary home-grown cannabis cultivation scene

Since the late 1980s the indoor cultivation of cannabis has become increasingly common in the UK (Decorte, 2010; Hough et al., 2003, Potter, 2008, 2009). However, to date there has been very little empirical work undertaken on these markets. As a result, the dominant cultural and criminological representation of this trade, we will claim, involves ghosts (migrant growers often from the Vietnamese community – see for example Silverstone, 2010; Silverstone and Savage, 2010); street ‘gangs’ (see for example Harding, 2014; Pitts, 2008) and what we have termed ‘good guys’ (essentially altruistic growers concerned about cannabis availability and quality and who involve themselves mostly in the supply of cannabis to friends and contacts – see for example Hough et al., 2003; Potter, 2010).

The established literature acknowledges that those supplying drugs in these markets possess quite diverse social characteristics. It also acknowledges that the motives of suppliers vary quite considerably (Potter, 2010). Yet the established literature, at least in the context of the UK, has not tended to engage extensively with entrepreneurial criminal individuals who have moved into these new markets in search of profit. Generally speaking, we hear a lot about essentially altruistic enthusiasts keen to bypass what they consider to be an overly restrictive legal system, but the profit-motivated cultivators tend to be noticeable only by their empirical absence (see Potter, 2010). Our data suggest cannabis markets in low-income areas tend to be dominated by professional criminals driven by the core principal of profit maximisation.

It is increasingly common to hear officials suggest that the lure of easy money and the burgeoning demand for super-strong home-grown cannabis have led to a rise in violence and ‘serious crime’ (e.g. see Brown and Peachy, 2012). Elsewhere, and in the context of economic downturn, some media sources claim that members of the ‘squeezed’ middle classes are becoming involved in cannabis cultivation as legitimate incomes have fallen (see BBC, 2011; ITV, 2013). Understandably enough, little attention has been paid to the involvement of organised crime groups in Britain’s cannabis markets. Academics find it immensely difficult to talk to such people (see Winlow et al., 2001). Altruistic cultivators, convinced of the therapeutic qualities of weed and keen to see its legalisation, tend to much easier to access. Potter (2010), for example, acknowledges that ‘commercial cannabis cultivators’ exist, but he then suggests that the home-grown domestic market is dominated by small scale growers who tend to be motivated by a genuine desire to ensure consumers have access to a high quality product at a reasonable price. Much of the academic literature follows a similar pattern (see for example Dorn et al., 1992). Most agree that professional and organised crime groups are present in the market, but little attention has been played to their role or the proportion of the trade they have been able to claim for themselves (Hammersvik, 2015; Hammersvik et al., 2012; Weisheit, 1990, 1991a, 1991b). As we have already said, the absence of professional and organised crime groups in the burgeoning literature on cannabis cultivation is likely to reflect the genuine difficulties of accessing this specific research community. However, their absence also appears to reflect the gradual evolution of post-crash professional and organised crime. ¹ It is now perfectly clear that a range of quite specific local dynamics shape the organisation of illicit markets across the country, and especially in those parts of the city populated by the post-industrial working class (see Hall et al., 2008; Hobbs, 2013; Winlow, 2001). Furthermore, we must acknowledge that new technologies, and the dissemination of new techniques in cultivation, have professionalised the business as we have moved towards what can now be called a ‘cannabis cultivation industry’ (see Bouchard and Nguyen, 2011).

Some academic research (for example Silverstone, 2010, 2011; Silverstone and Savage, 2010) suggests that new and highly mobile Vietnamese criminal groups have:

[c]hanged the nature of the cannabis market both in relation to the types of groups involved and the product available. Prior to their involvement, cannabis cultivation was implemented by indigenous British criminals and enthusiastic amateurs, and there was also a large amount of hashish imported. (Silverstone, 2010: 10)

It is clear that some Vietnamese groups are involved in domestic commercial cultivation in the UK. However, our research suggests that the profile of those involved is far more nuanced and complex. The brief account offered by Silverstone (2010) above is too simplistic and it tends to mischaracterise the evolution of cannabis cultivation. Silverstone (2010) has little to say about the involvement of ‘indigenous’ organised crime groups, and there is a clear sense that, in placing one specific ethnic group at the centre of a complex criminal marketplace, he has fallen victim to an ‘alien conspiracy theory’ (Antonopoulos, 2009; Woodiwis and Hobbs, 2009) of the kind often of proposed by senior police officers who have little idea of the organisation of markets on the ground (Hobbs, 2013).

In this article we draw on data generated by our extensive and long-running ethnographic investigation of criminal markets in disadvantaged locales in Central and Northern England (see Ancrum, 2011; Hall et al., 2008; Treadwell, 2012, 2014). We focus on a number of specific cannabis cultivators and we are particularly keen to investigate their various pathways into domestic and commercial cultivation. The withdrawal of previous stable forms of working class labour have transformed the neighbourhoods we studied. All of the men we spoke to came from what would once have been called ‘the working class’, yet their precise class location is now much more unclear (see Winlow, 2001). As we will see, these are profit-motivated criminals. Like legitimate corporate actors, they care about their customers and their product only to the extent that it relates to profitability and market share. Generally, these are people who stand apart from established organised crime groups. However, they are most certainly entrepreneurs keen to identify and exploit gaps in the market. They are involved in the cultivation and sale of cannabis to earn money and, generally speaking, they see their involvement in the trade as a means of accessing a better standard of living (see Hall et al., 2008; Winlow, 2001).

Our study was conducted in a period of considerable economic flux. Since the 2008 economic crash, the gap between rich and poor has grown wider with every passing year (Standing, 2011). This gap is now wider than it has ever been under the capitalist system (Piketty, 2014). Labour markets, lifestyles and biographical plans have grown increasingly precarious (Standing, 2011), and successive governments in Britain have responded to a significant structural deficit, accrued principally by the state’s rapid move into the market in order to shore-up the banking sector, by imposing public spending cuts that disproportionately affect those already most in need of public assistance (see Stevens, 2010). Traditional forms of working class work have all but disappeared, and areas dominated by the old industrial proletariat have become increasingly disconnected from mainstream consumer society (Hall et al., 2008; Winlow and Hall, 2013). Our research was carried out in areas that have been particularly badly affected by the series of economic reconfigurations associated with the evolution of western neoliberalism (see Harvey, 2011). In an environment of ever-diminishing legitimate economic opportunities, and in which illicit trading in the grey economy has become an everyday fact of life, the allure of significant profits draws criminal entrepreneurs towards the cannabis cultivation market. The people involved in the trade at all levels are organised crime’s ‘usual suspects’ (see Ruggiero, 1997; Hobbs, 1995, 2013).

Grounding our arguments on qualitative data gained with those involved in the commercial cultivation of cannabis, and drawing directly on their narratives, we intend to portray a rather different picture to that dominant in criminology at present. Our extensive engagement suggests that commercial cultivators in central and the north east of England are growing for supply and self-use. In general, we found little to suggest that they do not earn much money from their efforts or that their motivation is idealistic as much as just wanting to ‘help’ (see Sandberg, 2012), or that they are predominantly simply enthusiastic users who are concerned about quality of the product and stability of supply (Potter, 2010). Rather, while these might be background concerns, the prevailing imperative and ethic is nakedly economic and instrumental. Therefore, we would suggest that the burgeoning home-grown cannabis trade is very much the product of the contemporary moment and socio-economic, cultural, political and technological opportunities encountered in deprived inner city locales in austerity Britain and the changing nature of organised crime (see Hall et al., 2008; Hobbs, 2013).

Researching a burgeoning home-grown business

As committed ethnographers and criminological researchers we have spent many years immersed in locales where entrepreneurial criminality is commonplace, and have reflected on such a methodological orientation in previously published empirical work (Ancrum, 2011; Treadwell, 2012; Williams and Treadwell, 2008). Previously our work has centred on themes of masculinity, criminal transformation and illicit enterprise (Ancrum 2011; Hall et al., 2008; Treadwell, 2012, 2014). There is of course a significant and ever growing body of research on the practices of ethnographic researchers in the field of drug supply, and the inherently complex ethical issues that arise out of undertaking such complex research. The focus of this article could easily be restricted to yet another consideration of the various merits and values of ethnography, as well as the ethical complexities of this strategy, but these have been variously and well documented elsewhere previously (see Adler, 1985; Dunlap and Johnson, 1999; Sandberg and Copes, 2012). While we are aware that some researchers may omit discussions of ethics and ‘leave such information out because they believe this information is too sensitive to share’ (Sandberg and Copes, 2012: 178), we are not of that view and have suggested undertaking deeply immersed participant observation of the type that generates ‘thick description’ of the sort that follows, and we see little merit in again repeating that here. Suffice to say, our ongoing access has brought us into contact with numerous individuals in different geographical locations in the UK who are heavily invested in illegitimate, organised criminal activities which include, but are not limited to, the illicit trade in narcotics. ²

The data presented here are drawn largely from interviews with individuals organising cannabis growing operations who were accessed as part of a number of criminological projects involving the authors. In pooling together material gathered for, but not used, in previous research projects, we have attempted to present a contemporary picture of commercial cannabis cultivation in the UK. The individuals documented here varied in age, ethnicity and background. Most had some form of criminal record, although not all for serious offences. In terms of ethnicity, and in contrast with more recent work on cannabis markets in Northern Europe and Germany (Bucerius, 2014; Sandberg, 2013; Sandberg and Pederson, 2011), the majority of our interviewees gave their ethnicity as white, and their ages ranged between their mid-twenties to early fifties. Most have also been periodically involved in making the primary part of their income, either historically or in an ongoing manner, from illicit activities.

The growing operations our participants were complicit in were diverse, and ranged from those involved with a substantial number of small grow houses located in attics, garages, flats, apartments and lock ups to what could only be considered large scale, sophisticated enterprises worth tens of thousands of pounds. Several owned legitimate businesses alongside their criminal practices, or held down some form of regular employment (not least because it served as a useful cover for their illicit income). Partly to aid this concern and partly as a way of showing some legitimate income, one of our interviewees had established his own legitimate hydroponics business, ³ but others were much more inclined to be involved financially in more traditional forms of retail for the service economy. Others eschewed formal legitimate employment and made the vast majority of their income from cannabis cultivation and drug dealing. We interviewed participants often on repeated occasions, spending hours or days with them.

While it remains a fact that the majority of those involved in instrumental criminal activity are people drawn from working class backgrounds in urban areas (Hall et al., 2008), contemporary criminology seems strangely reticent to engage with such people and to encounter the lived realities and everyday activities of such active and often undetected offenders. Such approaches are not easy or available to all; the skillset and knowledge base as well as the contacts needed to do work of this sort are perhaps in short supply. As researchers, we simply possessed the ‘cultural competence’ (Bourdieu, 1998) and contacts to facilitate access and to be able to ask the right people the right questions and find out what was really going on. Yet in this, our form of ‘street-wise’ criminology, we have not aimed for ‘a more objective approach’ but rather, a ‘more brutally truthful one’ (Denfield, 1974: 1).

That time and proximity in the field has allowed us to penetrate the initial suggested motives and drivers of those involved, and discover how and why individuals became embroiled in the contemporary cultivation industry. The recurrent and frequently repeated motive we encountered was one of naked economic concern, where cannabis provided a highly lucrative and functional part of local micro economies, and one of the few entrepreneurial start-up home-grown business opportunities that was available.

Life is getting harder, money is short. What you going to do, let it get to you or do something about it? For me, my business [growing and distributing cannabis] is good. I hear that now just, with the bedroom tax, a lot of people with an extra room are going to want to get in on a bit of the action, but I am not bothered, I am there already. So long as everyone wants to get stoned and forget about how shit life is round here, I am sound, and so long as I am alright, well that is all that fucking matters. (Cory, cannabis cultivator, Midlands)

We are stood outside a bar in the city centre, where Fish takes another long toke (pull) of his spliff (cannabis cigarette) and looks up at me, hazy eyed: ‘It’s fucking good, my stuff man, you know it is’. He offers me the spliff but I shake my head, he smiles at me, but I say nothing, so he nods an acknowledgement and takes another toke. He is clearly quite ‘stoned’. He alternates a long swig from the bottle of beer in his one hand with a long pull on the spiff in his other. Stood in plain view on a busy street of bars, restaurants and theme pubs in the middle of the day, Fish clearly does not have a care in the world. Unlike his contemporaries and friends from the same area, he wears a newly bought expensive designer jacket, he still has several hundred pounds in cash on him and he plans to spend the rest of the day betting, shopping and ‘chilling’ as he pleases. His cannabis cultivation activities mean he works but a few hours each week. He smiles at me again:

you can tell my gear is fucking good mate, I reckon if you look at it, it’s probably why half of ******* ***** [he names his area] don’t want to get up to go work and are happy to sit on their arses watching fucking Jeremy Kyle, I reckon he [Kyle] owes a pretty good part of his fucking audience to me, he has cornered his market round here, and I have cornered mine.

Since the mid 1990s, home-grown cultivation of cannabis in grow houses has become increasingly prevalent in the UK (see Bone and Waldron, 1999; Potter, 2010). This has had a significant impact on the nature and character of Britain’s ‘home-grown’ cannabis market, as indoor cultivation techniques have superseded and replaced the more established traditions of importation of cannabis, a business associated traditionally with more established organised criminals (see Hobbs, 1995, 2013).

Prior to the 1990s, cannabis domestically available in the UK generally tended to originate from Africa and the West Indies, from South-East Asia and more generally the Asian subcontinent, but was imported through Europe. Much came in solid resin form and was moved over the English Channel via passenger ferries from ports in the Netherlands, Spain and France (Dorn et al., 1992). During the 1980s, the first shifts in cannabis production in the UK could be observed that appeared to be a direct consequence of developments in the Netherlands (Hough et al., 2003). One was the development of strains of cannabis that were bred to produce high levels of THC ⁴ and higher proportions of mature female flowering heads. Such strains were specifically designed to be suited to indoor cultivation to supply the market in coffee shops post Dutch statutory decriminalisation in 1976. The history of Dutch decriminalisation is well documented elsewhere (e.g. see MacCoun and Reuter, 1997, 2001), however it is worth briefly revisiting here. Put simply, the Dutch authorities began to tolerate so-called ‘house dealers’ in youth centres during the 1970s as a means of breaking the connections between crime and cannabis use. Experiments with this approach were formalised in the statutory decriminalisation in 1976, and in official guidelines for Investigation and Prosecution which came into force in 1979. By the end of the 1970s the house dealer had become a formidable competitor of the street dealer, and by the 1980s hashish and marijuana were sold predominantly in café-like establishments which have become known as coffee shops. During the 1980s, coffee shops in the Netherlands began to capture a bigger and bigger share of the Dutch retail cannabis market, and were also to become favoured destinations for British travellers. One of the first such strains of cannabis cultivated to supply the new legitimate markets was ‘skunk’, so called owing to the strong, pungent odour it produced. The term ‘skunk’ is now used in the argot of the UK as a general term for home-grown cannabis per se (Potter and Chatwin, 2012), and the cultural prevalence of that argot may reflect changing patterns of availability, whereby the demand for cannabis in resin form was superseded by an emerging market for super-strength skunk weed. The demand started then to be met, not just by criminal traffickers (Dorn et al., 1992) and gangs (Harding, 2014) but by entrepreneurial individuals within criminal communities.

Pathways into cannabis cultivation

Everyone is into it now, I mean, it’s like fucking hell, growing weed is the biggest employer round here. If you took it away mate, there really would be poverty. In terms of industry there is nothing else left here. (Carlos)

Round here now, is all growing weed … There isn’t anything other than that. Just in my area, which is what, about say three square miles there are what, three hydroponics shops now, and there aren’t many people round here with greenhouses. I mean, for fuck’s sake, most of the people on this estate live in tower blocks! (Ricky)

It’s a good thing as long as you keep it quiet and out the way. I got really into it at one point. It’s not as hard as everyone makes out. Best part is it’s not going to get you a big sentence, even a house full two … three year tops with previous but I’ve known people get a lot fucking less as well. (Bert)

It is worth noting at the outset that while those we spoke to were all too aware of the intangible (social and intrinsic) rewards of growing cannabis (Weisheit 1990, 1991a, 1991b), and while these cultivators talked about a range of motives such as social reputation, not just the financial profits, it was the latter that served as a primary motivation for involvement in growing. Cannabis was frequently referred to as ‘green crack’ and ‘green gold’ and allowed those we interviewed a lifestyle that would otherwise have been unavailable to them.

While some growers foregrounded discussions with an emphasised concern with quality of product, rather than simply the narrow desire for a profit, the two features are arguably inexorably connected, as a quality product is more marketable. For example, ‘Ray’, himself a habitual and heavy cannabis smoker, grew both to earn a reasonable living for him and his family and to ensure he had access to a steady supply of quality produce. Ray was scathing of those who grew purely for commercial reasons without appreciating the product but was very much in the minority in this regard:

You put more care into I think [when you use it yourself]. Where other people go wrong is, instead of concentrating on producing a lovely smoke, they are trying to grow money. Pick an easy to grow strain, bung as many plants as possible under as few lights as they can get away with, it’s not the way to go on. (Ray)

However, while Ray (who had strong feelings about the amount of expertise and work which goes into producing top grade cannabis and was particularly aggrieved when the researcher used the term ‘weed’ to describe his produce ⁵ ) was all about quality, a deeper reading quickly shows that quality of product is not the predominant driver. He frequently discussed the financial rewards and told us that with each ounce retailing at £180 rigidly, each grow operation nets him nearly £3000 every 10 weeks. Ray currently has three ‘grows’ on the go, but likes to have four or five. There are few legitimate jobs that offer a salary such as that for such limited labour.

However, while there are many cultivator users (Potter, 2010), there are also growers much more ready to cite the profit line as motive. ‘Bert’ is in his late fifties and is, by self-definition, a career criminal. Beginning as a small child growing up in the rough West End of Newcastle, he has gained both his living and his status from crime for as long as he can remember. Having served his ‘apprenticeship’ in children’s homes, detention centres and, inevitably, prison, there are few crimes he has not committed. Like many of his contemporaries, and reminiscent of Dorn et al.’s category of the ‘criminal diversifier’ (Dorn et al., 1992), Bert has had to constantly adjust his methods of earning to accommodate an ever mutating criminal milieu. He began his ‘professional’ career in commercial burglary and progressed to armed robbery. During the late 1970s and early 1980s he sealed his reputation both as an ‘earner’ and also as a dangerous and often extremely violent individual. He quickly became one of those who possessed in abundance what Winlow (2001) notes is the power of a violent reputation.

When armed robbery and burglary became, as Bert puts it, ‘too much of a fuck on’ in the early 1990s (he cites changes in the way wages were paid, new cash in transit practices, CCTV and the rise of private security as the context for the demise of his former ‘trade’), Bert had the right kind of ‘friends’, the necessary reputation and a sizeable lump of ready cash to be able to participate in the burgeoning drug scene (see Dorn et al., 1992). Part of a group who were both manufacturing and importing amphetamines, he made a lot of money and enjoyed, for a time, the sort of lavish and hedonistic lifestyle that many aspire to, but few achieve. Fast and expensive motors, exotic holidays for him and his family, he encapsulated the drug dealer role. The bubble burst for Bert soon after the millennium when what had started as a trivial incident with a neighbour resulted in him receiving a five year sentence for serious firearms related offences:

It was just a fucking daft thing, full of drink and ‘carry on’ [Cocaine], I didn’t really think … We’d been ‘ricking’ [arguing] for a while, he was a noisy cunt, I had ‘one of them’ [a shotgun] so I blasted his windows and the nosy cunt next door to him as well, ha it was canny funny though, I could hear the daft cunt on the phone to the polis, screaming he was, daft, but funny. (Bert)

Whilst serving this sentence Bert was further convicted of an arson attack on a local pub which had taken place some months earlier. He had publicly and violently clashed with the landlord apparently, then the pub mysteriously burnt down shortly afterwards. For this he received a further four years to run consecutive, making nine years in all. On his release almost five years later, almost everything he had once had was gone. Upon his re-entry into the outside world, Bert began looking for new opportunities and was quickly drawn to cannabis cultivation. His nephew had begun to establish himself as one of the locale’s more accomplished growers and was more than happy to set up his uncle.

The first time I just filled up the bedroom of the council flat I had at the time, got our lad (his Nephew) to show me the crack [instruct him on how to grow etc.] and that was it. It’s a piece of piss once you know the dance. After that I started to do it properly, I rented a house up near ******* [names a rural location] and filled the fucker with plants, and I mean filled it, every room apart from the kitchen and little bedroom, 200 plants altogether. (Bert)

This was a common theme in our research, where several times we met individuals who were willing to disclose cultivating supplies in rural locations, seemingly weighing up the benefits of quiet isolated locations (which were perceived as less susceptible to robbery by other criminals and less out of the gaze of the forces of law and order) against the potential increased scrutiny that could be encountered in quiet, close knit rural locales. However, it seems that such decisions were often loaded, in part because the serenity of rural locations meant that transporting equipment and the final product was not in and of itself a wholly risk free activity. ⁶ Bert developed his professional approach and was soon producing large amounts of high quality cannabis, cropping between 10 and 18 kilos every nine or 10 weeks.

Not unlike Bert, ‘Archie’ started his cultivation business after the intersection of opportunity and necessity. Archie is a 40-something man who was raised on a deprived and run down inner city estate in the 1980s. While he does not have an extensive criminal record for involvement at the ‘heavy end’ of criminal business like Bert, he has a well established reputation for violence and a physical appearance that suggests he is not unfamiliar with the use and application of force. In the early 1990s, Archie worked as a ‘minder’ on drug deals for a well-known local criminal who imported car-hidden consignments of cannabis and ecstasy tablets in vehicles on ferries between the Netherlands and the UK. Archie ‘gave up the game’ and settled for a while with a partner, working legitimately in the security business, before the relationship ended leaving him homeless, unemployed and in need of money. With a loan from a criminal associate who had formerly been involved in the importation business in the late 1980s, he began a small scale cannabis cultivation business in the cellar space of a rented property.

It was just I needed cash, and I knew I could shift the product when I had it. I was on my arse basically [financially insolvent], it was like I had come out of jail or something and I had nothing, so it was the only thing I could see I could do. I used to be involved as security on runs from overseas, just muscle in case anyone tried to ‘tax’ what was being brought in and that, and I thought at first I would do something like that again, just to make some money, but by the time I split with her, the world was changing. That bringing solids over on the ferries, that had all stopped, and it was all grow houses and that, so I just thought, I will get me into that. (Archie)

In keeping with Archie, ‘Jordan’ is 25 and has been growing cannabis as his main source of income since he was 19 years old. Jordan is the son of one of the area’s ‘pioneers’ of cultivation who brought the methods he had learned in Holland back to the UK in the 1980s. Having grown up around the practice, cannabis production is very much in his blood and he describes his pathway in a manner not unlike that of a legitimate apprenticeship served through a family firm:

I’ve grew up with it. I knew it was how me mam and dad got their money and it was just always there. They always smoked green in the house, it was just normal. I even used to go with him to grow houses as a kid … I’ve never had a proper job. I’ve done a few weeks here and there, fiddle work like, just labouring and shit. If I could get a job that paid as well as growing the green I would but that’s not going to happen is it? (Jordan)

The contemporary English ‘professional’ cannabis cultivation business

‘Carlos’ is a young man who readily identifies himself as a professional criminal, before adding the caveat ‘that is what just about all businessmen are, because you don’t make a profit by playing it straight’. Carlos set himself up with several small scale growing operations (such as in vacant flats) in order to meet the demands from his regular customer base for cannabis. Carlos has successfully dealt cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy for several years, buying off a network of more serious criminals, but with money to spare and frequently also finding his client base asking for cannabis that he had to source elsewhere (and finding that the profits from buying it from others were not so much as with ‘weed’ that could be gained independently), he moved into cultivation and is reaping the benefits of being ‘more self-employed’. He initially and temporarily set himself up a small self-financed grow operation using his own vacant flat when he moved in with his partner. He also continued to declare himself single and residing in the same property to the council, to continue receiving housing benefit at the highest rate, while she did the same so that she would also continue to reap full benefits and suffer no reduction in income due to their cohabitation, a strategy employed by a range of growers we have encountered:

I know loads of lads, who I could get it off, but it was an effort, and they were unreliable, fucking let downs who would mess you about and that. I knew a lad who had grown a small crop himself like, and he was saying how easy it was to set up, and I just thought, I have the money, I got some spare space, fuck it, I will only do a few plants you know, just give me a little crop. It’s a decent earner. It was just like a bit of diversification in business like. Plus, with the smoking ban and things being bad, a lot of people were not going out and buying big loads of gear [cocaine] for nights out, they wanted two grams for a night in in front of the telly, so I had to do it basically, it just made sense to do it. (Carlos)

It would seem then that in many instances induction into the cultivation business is a blend of access and opportunity, often centring around a nexus of knowledge, availability of space and criminal connections that are the key background factors underscoring individuals’ involvement in commercial cultivation. Of all of these, access to space was a key feature, and it is worth noting that it was a common practice we encountered that people in relationships declared themselves ‘single’ to the local authority in their area to keep on their own flat or house whilst living elsewhere with a partner and continuing to claim benefits as a single person. It is then these ‘ghost’ properties, tower blocks, houses, maisonettes and flats that are often used as grow sites either by the occupier themselves or ‘rented’ out to others who use the space for commercial cultivation (Potter, 2010). Few of our respondents legitimately rented space in order to cultivate, as that was a high risk activity. While some suggested that such practices were possible, for example by using false identities, space was more easily acquired informally or by exploiting contacts in the impoverished communities in which they resided where there were often people willing to take risks for limited financial reward. However, to do that means exposing oneself to what one interviewee described as ‘the misfits, bigmouths and un-reliables’ who populated such socially excluded locals, and for that reason, many of the successful cultivators were careful who (if anyone) they would go into business with.

‘Fish’ is the perfect example of this. He and a network of men he knows are involved together, but they are known to one another and bonded by trust borne out of group solidarity in seeking violent confrontations with like-minded rival football supporters. Fish essentially starts others up in cultivation, acting in a manner that is akin to that of Potter’s ‘franchiser’ (Potter, 2010), by finding space and running grow operations through a range of women he knows in an outlying area near to where he resides. He keeps the number of plants relatively small (‘a couple of plants and it will never really come back on you’), but replicates those arrangements frequently. The latent reputation he has for violence means that if anyone is caught by the authorities ‘holding the crop’, they take the blame. For this they usually get a modest financial reward every time a crop is harvested and a decent supply of weed for personal consumption. For that reason, Fish holds a further line that he does not broadcast all that frequently:

‘use fucking younger lasses with one or two kids, with a shit place and no dollar, and start fucking bending them over, get the ones that’ll grateful, the plain girls that don’t have fucking much else going for them except a couple of kids, and you start off by fucking them. You can tell them not to say anything, and then just set them up with a small crop. That is the way you want to run it, because basically if they know what is what and it is all casual and that, you will be alright, but then they also know it’s their tenancy on the line, so keep it a mix of fucking, love and fear. With needy single lasses with kids, you can get away with anything if you make them cum once in a while, and that sort of lass doesn’t have that many other people to say anything too. You just need to fucking educate them a bit to be savvy and keep their mouths shut. (Fish)

A different example of this similar outsourcing practice is provided by ‘Billy’, a 38 year old who lives in a semi-rural ex-mining community in the North East of England. He lives with his wife and two very large dogs in a smart semi on a well-heeled private estate. He drives a Range Rover sport with private plate and this stands on the drive alongside a small commercial van with the name of his building firm across the side. Billy grows cannabis as part of a range of financial schemes, both legal and illegal. His ‘legitimate’ business vies for contracts nationwide. Billy’s involvement in the actual physical side of the firm is minimal and he prefers to spend time at the gym in which he owns a half share. As he puts it ‘I don’t really graft [work] much myself these days, I set the jobs up and the lads crack on’.

Previously employed as a bouncer, a career frequently linked with entrepreneurial criminality (see Winlow, 2001), Billy has always earned his living on the fringes of legality. He has had several firms in the past which have all gone into liquidation only to be revived under a different name and director soon afterwards. He has also been declared bankrupt and has had ‘issues’ with the tax man, but aside from this he has no criminal record and would never class himself as a ‘villain’. He sees his cannabis growing business as a lucrative sideline that operates alongside his legitimate ventures. This blend of legal and illicit enterprise means that Billy leads a very comfortable life. He enjoys fast motorbikes and is always proud to inform you how many bones he has broken over the years, while exotic foreign holidays also feature large in Billy’s hedonistic pursuits with all-inclusive resorts in Thailand, Goa and Mexico being his preferred destinations.

Billy grows his cannabis largely in the homes of people he knows, for a share of the profits. He has rented properties in the past but prefers the lower cost and lower risk of using the homes of others. He supplies and installs the equipment and makes sure that his instructions are followed to the tee:

I make sure they do what they are supposed to do and I call in regular to check how it’s going, well obviously I like to save a bob or two [laughs] naw, it’s better to have someone there, as long as you trust them but [laughs] I don’t let them dry it out. When I crop it I take it away to dry elsewhere, you end up ‘losing’ a lot when it dries otherwise [laughs again] I hang it in the dark and dry it properly as well. Too many fuckers rush it [the drying process] they’re in a hurry for the cash. The amounts of times people have tried to sell me damp gear, fucking daft cunts. (Billy)

Billy pays his tenant farmers half of the profits, reaping a high reward for activity in which he is largely removed from any real risk:

There’s no way it can come on top [go wrong, get discovered] if you set it up right. You have to spend the money; people try and grow it on the cheap. The way I rig a place out, I do it properly, I’ve put up false walls in places in the past, why, it is me job like [laughs] I use good charcoal filters for the smell, extractor systems, I can do it where you don’t need a fan, I never try and cram too many in either. I bypass the ‘leccy’ [electric supply] but only loop off the room it’s in, otherwise it looks radge [mental], this way your bill stays the same. Feed is MASSIVELY important so is flushing them, it’s a skill to grow gear as good as I do [laughs]. (Billy)

While we did find divisions amongst those we interviewed, these were not framed around the grower typologies of the past, but were rather premised on age. Indeed, we would suggest that age and length of time involved in growing cannabis was at the heart of these dissimilarities in growing practices. Younger growers, those of the internet generation, favoured more technological approaches and a hydroponic system. They were more likely to use grow tents and automated feeding systems than the older growers. They tended to gain their knowledge from the internet (Potter, 2010) rather than by word of mouth and were much more obsessed with keeping up with the latest ‘trendy’ strains of cannabis. Cannabis cup winners were always discussed with great excitement and younger buyers would always enquire as to the name of the strain they were getting when buying a deal. ⁷ The younger growers were also much more ‘smell’ conscious and wanted strong weed with a strong odour to match. This was despite the growing popularity of low odour strains with commercial growers and seed suppliers.

Older cultivators and purchasers it seemed were much more concerned with both the weight and importantly the ‘dryness’ of the deal rather than its name or pedigree. Older and more established cultivators tended to favour more traditional growing methods, growing in soils or composts rather than rock wool or similar, and were more likely to feed the plants manually themselves. Both groups placed just as much emphasis on correct pH levels and the right nutrients to feed at the right times, and it was clear that it was common to all ages that individuals had researched the whole process in great depth and had extensive knowledge of quite complicated horticultural and chemical processes. There was also a high degree of technical knowhow in many of the set ups, with knowledge of electrics ventilation and plumbing also forming a part of the knowledge base. However, for all the expertise and wider cultural discussion, the essence of growing activities for all our cultivators ultimately came down to a desire for profit, as again Fish articulates:

Whatever people do, in the end the lads involved in growing are moved by money, anything else is just like fucking preferences and that, but at the bottom line, whatever way you go, most people who are involved in real fucking growing, you know real cultivation that is supplying most of the demand, not fucking students with a few plants on or fucking aging sixties hippies, now, most growers are in it for the fucking base line, and at the end of the day, that’s the fucking big dollars it nets you. (Fish)

Conclusions

In this article we have sought to consider the localised and contemporary cannabis cultivation practices amongst urban inner city locales in the UK. As we have shown, this market is clearly not fixed or static, but is one that has been changing, evolving and mutating since it first emerged during the late 1980s and early 1990s from one that was based around importation and distribution to that of a home-grown industry. ⁸ In the days before the internet and before the development of growing equipment for sale in retail outlets and online, much of the cannabis in the UK had been imported by criminal networks. Often the older growers we encountered were the early pioneers who had been at the fore of the import trade and had moved to cultivation from the early days, often having to improvise to furnish their operations. These people had often moved with the times, from trafficking to cultivation (Dorn et al., 1992). In interviews with the older cohort we heard halcyon recollections of stealing light bulbs from street lighting, short ferry journeys to European destinations and movement over borders, tales of the good old days. Yet from the early years, our cultivators recalled the immediate impact of skunk. Younger growers had little knowledge of what our older interviewees described as the ‘soap bar’ cannabis prevalent in the early 1990s, which was notorious for its poor quality and likelihood to contain very little actual cannabis. The poor quality was often mentioned by older cultivators, who spent time reflecting back on the appalling quality of imported cannabis resin bars, with stories of them being adulterated with plastic, henna, wax and even mice droppings. In essence, many were not misty-eyed about the times when the market had been monopolised by British organised crime groups that cared little about the quality of their product.

While there is some evidence, even in our research, that the activities of some early cultivators rubbed up against or even intersected across these practices, it was the emergence of ‘skunk’ cannabis that was high quality, clean and very strong, and the fact that domestic cultivation is arguably easier, safer (there is no risky smuggling needed) and more profitable than importation, that alone would probably be enough to fuel market substitution even if domestically-produced cannabis was on a par, quality and strength wise, with imported cannabis. What does seem more certain is that, where cannabis is concerned, the largely bygone trade of importation has generally passed.

What united our participants, irrespective of geographical location and age, was that the rise of the internet and the ease and availability of the equipment needed for cultivation clearly reversed the monopoly of criminal importers and democratised the process of home-grown cannabis cultivation (Potter, 2008, 2009). So too, like in other areas the rise of the internet proved to be the catalyst for wide scale alteration in traditional organised criminal practices (Treadwell, 2012). The internet has radically altered the contours of the (home-grown) UK cannabis marketplace. When the first cannabis growing equipment stores began appearing in the regions in which we undertook research in the early 1990s, there was an inevitable trajectory toward change and a greater democratisation of glocal opportunity (Hobbs, 1998), but there is little to suggest that anywhere was this driven by alien organised crime groups (Silverstone, 2010, 2011; Silverstone and Savage, 2010).

Rather, it seems, it involved the usual suspects; enterprising, working class males with a foot in the illicit marketplace, the eye for an opportunity and the mind for decent profit, yet that should not blind us to the often stark and brutal realities of such worlds. It is largely not only one of ‘happy hippies’ growing good weed for their chilled out and peace loving ‘friends’, but of men on the precipice of social exclusion clawing themselves into a better position by exploiting the limited illicit opportunities around them, and turning to one of Britain’s few viable, profitable and available home-grown industries as a means of sustaining the ‘lush life’ they desire (Hobbs, 2013). Unsurprising when for the majority on the estates and streets around them, the availability and opportunity for progressing any other home-grown business start-ups are increasingly limited.