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Half a million pound cannabis farm discovered – is it time to legalise the industry?

Following the discovery of a cannabis farm in a mock Tudor home, an iconic chapel, an empty shopping unit just yards from a police station and in a mansion a stone’s throw away from Buckingham Palace a new plot has been unearthed inside a disused restaurant in Brinsley, highlighting the scale of un-taxable money been circulated in the industry.

Residents living near the former Farm House Restaurant – which has been disused for more than a year – had believed it was being renovated, with workers boarding up the site around two months ago.

But after Nottinghamshire Police were alerted about excessive electricity use from the property by Western Power Distribution, officers kicked down the doors of the Cordy Lane site on Wednesday morning to find more than 1,000 cannabis plants growing inside.

The plants were being grown through some 10 rooms spread over two floors, with an expected street value of half a million pounds.

This comes as research from North America shows that people in the United States and Canada spent an estimated $53.3 billion of taxable money on legal cannabis products in 2016, with the black market finally losing ground to the legal market which operates under the eyes of the law.

Read the financial case for legalising cannabis here.

Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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