Cannabis grower tells police "I'll keep growing drug"

A CANNABIS grower told police he would not stop producing the drug when they raided his town centre home and found crops capable of providing him with around £30,000 of it a year.

Phillip Gardner, of Dale Street, was jailed for 20 months at Warwick Crown Court after pleading guilty to producing cannabis and possessing the drug with intent to supply it.

The 39-year-old's two-bedroom terraced home was raided in February.

Police obtained a search warrant, but eventually had to force their way in after numerous failed attempts to get him to answer the door.

Once inside they were confronted by an annoyed Gardner who told officers: "At the end of the day, I’m 38 and I’ve been doing cannabis for 20 years. You’re not going to stop me; I’ll just grow some more."

In the living room they found extraction ducting leading from one of the bedrooms where they found a large growing tent fitted with a sophisticated growing system with 25 non-flowering cannabis plants.

An expert calculated when mature the plants would have produced around 1.12 kilos of cannabis with a street value of £10 a gram, and the system was capable of producing three crops a year.

In the bedroom where Gardner slept was what was described as a cannabis nursery with a further nine small plants in pots and in the garden shed was a bin liner containing 20 dried-up cannabis root balls, prosecutor Stefan Kolodynski told the court.

When interviewed Gardner said he had been growing cannabis for his own use for the previous six months because he could not afford to buy from local dealers.

John Brotherton, defending, added he had begun selling some to people he knew in an attempt to recoup the £800 he had borrowed to cover his start-up costs.

Jailing Gardner, Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told him the offences were too serious for anything other than an immediate custodial sentence.

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