Where do you buy your electricity?

In today's UK Guardian newspaper:

"Police raided a cannabis factory and arrested seven people in London yesterday as part of a crackdown on criminal gangs involved in the multimillion-pound cultivation of the drug."

"Growing problem

· Scotland Yard has smashed 300 suburban cannabis factories in London in the past year

· The average factory may produce £70,000-worth of cannabis every 11 or 12 weeks - worth about £250,000-£300,000 a year

· Police are trying to track factories by getting electricity companies to check abnormally high power usage, although many growers bypass meters with 'jump boxes' or generators"

300 per year, each averaging £250,000, that's £75,000,000 per year. That's just London; and just the ones 'smashed' by police. And not counting resin. How many billions per year spent on dope does that represent? What a powerful market force. They say we vote with our money, and there it is.

Why do growers bypass the electricity meters? Well, obviously, to save cash; though, relative to income, it's not a chronic expense. No, there's an additional reason, mentioned above: electricity companies checking abnormally high power usage and reporting to the police. British Gas have turned grass (in the worst sense of the word). They have been leading the police to 'locations they have discovered'.

An investigator for the company said there were signs which alerted him to cannabis production before the door to a house was even opened.

"'The house will look run down and the curtains in every room are almost always closed,' said the investigator. 'They black the windows out, not just because they don't want people to see what they are doing, but to keep the temperature up.' *

He said domestic cannabis farms were being uncovered everywhere, from suburban housing estates and city flats to rural locations. 'I would say we are coming across more and more of them in premises,' he added.

Smell is another big giveaway. 'You can often smell it outside the house. They ventilate the excess hot air through 12 inch covings and, on a blustery day, the strong smell disappears into the stratosphere. But on a still day the smell lingers and there is a strong odour of cannabis outside.'

'It's nothing though to what it's like inside, where the smell would knock you out,' he added."

(*Why would anyone want to 'keep the temperature up' when they're burning hot lamps? - especially if they've got 'excess hot air'!)

'stratosphere'? 'knock you out'?