Keep an Eye on Your Neighbour

How to help the police in spotting cannabis farms -

"According to the police, hundreds of Britain's homes have been transformed into secret 'cannabis factories'. Criminal gangs are refitting ordinary suburban residences in order to cultivate a powerful and lucrative form of cannabis known as 'skunk', which is associated with depression, anxiety and being very, very high*.

In an attempt to combat the problem, police are asking suburbanites to keep an eye out for pot-growing neighbours. But how can you tell if next door has been transformed into a skunk farm?"

Here's how, read: Do you have a pot farm next door?

* Depression? - never. Anxiety? - best avoided. Very, very high? - no complaints.
Criminal gangs? - see World Drug Report below, "a vast army of small growers".

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4% of Humanity Stoned

The following day's Guardian carried this story:

The UNODC 2006 World Drug Report report systematically undermines the logic of treating cannabis cultivation and consumption as serious problems.

"Telling us that cannabis is a relatively harmless and inexpensive intoxicant, the report presents statistics that the drug is grown and consumed everywhere and in very impressive quantities. Based on public polling data from 134 countries, the report explains that an estimated 4% of humanity enjoys the planet's most popular illicit drug. Given the understandable reluctance of respondents in many societies to answer pollsters' questions about their illicit drug use, the survey's findings are probably too conservative. Even so, 4% of humanity is 162 million people - a number equivalent to the entire population of the UK, Germany and Sweden. In a style akin to what's what in the cannabis world we hear that it is relatively inexpensive in Kazakhstan, where 'as much as 400,000 hectares of cannabis grow wild'. 'Swaziland is known for producing high-quality cannabis,' according to the report, while, 'Malawi is ... world renowned for the quality of its cannabis.'

With the UNODC, providing evidence that an inexpensive and harmless recreational drug continues to be consumed by at least one in 25 people on the planet, and that it is supplied by a vast army of small growers with economic activity of an enormous scale, one would think that even the most gung-ho politician would realise that cannabis prohibition is a failed policy."

Here's the report: World Drug Report (it's quite thick).