19 July 2013

Tuggers grow houses busted

| johnboy
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grow house

ACT Policing seized a number of cannabis plants and a substance suspected to be steroids during two simultaneous Drugs of Dependence Act 1989 (DODA) search warrants earlier today (Thursday 18 July 2013).

About 6.30am, ACT Policing’s Criminal Investigations members executed two simultaneous DODA search warrants at premises located in Isabella Plains and Richardson.

During the search police located sheds at both premises which contained hydroponic growing equipment, a number of cannabis plants at varying stages of growth and dried plant matter suspected to be cannabis. Police seized a total of 30 cannabis plants with an estimated street value of over $60,000.

Police also seized a number of vials of a substance suspected to be steroids from the premises in Richardson.
ACT Firearms Registry attended the Richardson premises and seized five registered firearms which were incorrectly stored.

A 42-year-old Richardson man and a 40-year-old Isabella Plains man will be summonsed to appear in the ACT Magistrates Court at later date to face charges of Cultivating a Controlled Plant and Possession of Steroids.

[Courtesy ACT Policing]

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xceL said :

Heroin, cocaine, meth.
Those are the drugs you want to be taking off the streets, not cannabis.

How proud those officers must be to get rid of such a harmless drug

I agree that heroin, cocaine and meth are drugs that we would want take off the streets but…
“How proud those officers must be to get rid of such a harmless drug”…Wow, what an ignorant, childish statement.

PBO said :

Now she has a weed habit and a crack-baby and thats why you shouldnt smoke weed!!

I’m convinced!

I’m going to watch Reefer Madness, just to reinforce the message.

PBO said :

Baggy said :

I just can’t believe that people still contend marijuana has no side effects and is completely harmless.

Having had a friend who succumbed to peer pressure once and was subsequently so messed up in the head they’ve been kept in care for more than 10 years now, this ‘harmless’ approach floors me.

I had a friend like that once, she had 3 whole marijuana’s to herself and no one was there to guide her through the bad trip she had. She first had it when she snorted some lines of it at a rave party and she was instantly hooked. When we found her we were shocked, it was obviously not her first time, but she was inexperienced and she did not have a guide to show her how a bong works and what shotty is for.

When we found her she was unconscious in the gutter and there was a bloody budding blossom of the Slackers Garnish protuding from a hole she had pierced in her vein with a piece of rusty glass she had found on the road……… They patched her up and brought her back down from her elevated state with chips and tea, but the damage was done because the bud coming came straight from a dirty plant from the ground and with it being in her for so long, her thumb had turned green and it caused immediate, severe mental issues for her.

…She believed she could fly like she saw some asian kid do when he took the pot.

Later in life this caused her to crash her car at high speed into a busload or rapists and crackheads that the prison was shuffling around because apparently everybody’s shuffling.

The impact was so severe that the crackhead sex offender who was sitting at the spot she hit was charged with rape because he inadvertantly invaded her personal space when she hurtled towards him and impregnated her with his potent crack-sperm which can get you preggers just by thinking about it.

Now she has a weed habit and a crack-baby and thats why you shouldnt smoke weed!!

Wow that’s put me off weed for life 🙂

Baggy said :

I just can’t believe that people still contend marijuana has no side effects and is completely harmless.

Having had a friend who succumbed to peer pressure once and was subsequently so messed up in the head they’ve been kept in care for more than 10 years now, this ‘harmless’ approach floors me.

I had a friend like that once, she had 3 whole marijuana’s to herself and no one was there to guide her through the bad trip she had. She first had it when she snorted some lines of it at a rave party and she was instantly hooked. When we found her we were shocked, it was obviously not her first time, but she was inexperienced and she did not have a guide to show her how a bong works and what shotty is for.

When we found her she was unconscious in the gutter and there was a bloody budding blossom of the Slackers Garnish protuding from a hole she had pierced in her vein with a piece of rusty glass she had found on the road……… They patched her up and brought her back down from her elevated state with chips and tea, but the damage was done because the bud coming came straight from a dirty plant from the ground and with it being in her for so long, her thumb had turned green and it caused immediate, severe mental issues for her. …She believed she could fly like she saw some asian kid do when he took the pot.

Later in life this caused her to crash her car at high speed into a busload or rapists and crackheads that the prison was shuffling around because apparently everybody’s shuffling. The impact was so severe that the crackhead sex offender who was sitting at the spot she hit was charged with rape because he inadvertantly invaded her personal space when she hurtled towards him and impregnated her with his potent crack-sperm which can get you preggers just by thinking about it.

Now she has a weed habit and a crack-baby and thats why you shouldnt smoke weed!!

Baggy said :

Having had a friend who succumbed to peer pressure once and was subsequently so messed up in the head they’ve been kept in care for more than 10 years now, this ‘harmless’ approach floors me.

Well science tells us that the MMR vaccine is harmless and yet there were mothers eager to explain how their child went into a decline after it and ended up with autism.

If your friend was “experimenting” she (or he, I’ll pick she) was probably late teens or early 20s, when many mental illnesses start to appear. Science tells us marijuana doesn’t “cause” mental illness, it might help treat some, make others worse or trigger episodes. Some schizophrenics report that it makes them feel better but it might make them worse in the long run. Dunno bout that. But just because your friend had a bad trip, doesn’t mean marijuana caused her ongoing problems. Maybe her emerging problems that nobody had yet noticed contributed to her bad trip and afterwards she had a lot more trouble ignoring the things that felt wrong.

I’m sorry your friend has had a rough 10 years. Hope things pick up.

Woody Mann-Caruso9:41 am 20 Jul 13

Tooks said :

You are an imbecile if you think cannabis is harmless. An absolute imbecile.

It’s mostly harmless, on par with or less harmful than most or all legal drugs. A great deal of the harm that can be attributed to use arises directly from the criminal status of cannabis. Tell these people they’re imbeciles (their collective take – cannabis rates less than 1 for physical harmfulness):

“…the UK national group of consultant psychiatrists who were on the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ register as specialists in addiction (and) people with experience in one of the many areas of addiction, ranging from chemistry, pharmacology, and forensic science, through psychiatry and other medical specialties, including epidemiology, as well as the legal and police services.”

(Nutt, David, Leslie A King, William Saulsbury, Colin Blakemore. “Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse” The Lancet 2007; 369:1047-1053. (PMID 17382831; doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60464-4) )

xceL said :

Heroin, cocaine, meth.
Those are the drugs you want to be taking off the streets, not cannabis.

How proud those officers must be to get rid of such a harmless drug

You are an imbecile if you think cannabis is harmless. An absolute imbecile. I’d like to see it legalised, however don’t assume that just because you and others here don’t agree with the law that you are in the majority; far from it. Where do you think the info comes from to obtain these search warrants? That’s right – neighbours, family, ex-friends, ex-partners.

For everyone bagging cops for these kinds of raids (which are quick, cheap and easy to do), there are plenty who support them for it. And these raids will continue forever because no government in this country has the balls to change the status quo. I can guarantee you now that these blokes will cop a slap on the wrist – at most a GBO and suspended sentence.

Regarding the value – yep, grossly exaggerated.

Here_and_Now11:56 am 19 Jul 13

watto23 said :

its not so much that its harmless, but the fact cigarettes and alcohol are legal and arguably as dangerous or more so.

I’m never sure that ‘alcohol is worse’ point helps the pro-legalisation (or regulation or whatever) argument. It invites the response that if it’s worse than the banned thing, maybe it should be banned too.

(Which probably wouldn’t go down well. I’m just saying in doesn’t necessarily help the case as much as people think (and it hasn’t worked so far).)

watto23 said :

Baggy said :

I just can’t believe that people still contend marijuana has no side effects and is completely harmless.

Having had a friend who succumbed to peer pressure once and was subsequently so messed up in the head they’ve been kept in care for more than 10 years now, this ‘harmless’ approach floors me.

its not so much that its harmless, but the fact cigarettes and alcohol are legal and arguably as dangerous or more so. IMO its better for the government to be controlling and regulating something like this than banning it.

xceL certainly disagrees in post #2.

I disagree that they’re arguably as dangerous. I’ve never heard of a single person becoming mentally incapacitated from a single cigarette or alcoholic drink.

Further, if you legalise marijuana, what restrictions will be in place on where it can be used? Will we see people smoking it with the normal cigarette smokers, or will there be restrictions such as only on private property? If this is the case, how long until it’s challenged as a civil rights violation? If there are no restrictions, what happens to the rights of people breathing second-hand smoke of a drug which can cause permanent disability? What about people who must remain drug free for their employment, who may be tested after walking through a cloud of smoke?

Who foots the bill for retraining all of Customs’ drug dogs to ignore marijuana? Do we then allow the importing of marijuana, because the dogs won’t be trained to detect it? Or do we risk dogs stopping every person who has been near smokers, and deal with the added time it’ll take to check each individual?

Lots of issues to be considered, which don’t appear to have been thought of by the pro-legalisation camp.

Here_and_Now11:51 am 19 Jul 13

gungsuperstar said :

I don’t think anyone argues that it’s completely harmless.

Unfortunately, some do. They say that there are no adverse affects, that it was all made up by the fashion industry.

So it kinda sets the debate off-kilter when some are honestly considering issues like likelihood of mental damage, respiratory issues or not, medical research, etc, etc, and someone jumps in with ‘IT’S GOOD FOR YOU THEY MADE ALL THAT STUFF UP TO SELL PANTS’.

gungsuperstar said :

7 plants isn’t going to hurt supply much… in fact 7 plants isn’t that far beyond being able to make a personal use defence… so it’s disappointing that the police even waste their time on this when there are real criminals to catch.

To play devil’s advocate: the laws do exist (whether or not you agree with them) and if the police simply turned a blind eye, the whole thing would probably get out of control. 30 plants is (as Thumper points out) probably crossing the line a bit.

Also notable that steroids were (allegedly) found, so may have been that they were looking for something beyond a bit of dakka. Not like they can just ignore it once they’ve found it.

Jim Jones said :

DrKoresh said :

Boo! Po-po should be out doing something useful for the community, instead of conspicuously busting small-time growers and trying to look Tough On Drugs.

30 plants at $60K.

Small time?

I dunno where the coppers are getting their drugs from, but they’re getting ripped off: they always grossly overestimate the ‘street value’.

Does anyone seriously contend that 30 plants are worth $60,000? $2,000 a plant? Gimme a break. Even if you’re selling at $300 an ounce (which is hardly a viable price to be onselling to distributors – you’d be lucky to flog it direct to clients at that rate), each plant would have to yield over 6 and a half ounces of good quality dried head. The leaf is next to useless.

Okay then, let’s remove the inflated dollar figure.

30 plants is not what you’d call personal use, unlesss you are Bob Marley.

True – but you gotta share the love.

30 plants is hardly a ‘major operation’. Sounds more like ‘personal use with a good dose of exuberance’ to me.

gungsuperstar10:54 am 19 Jul 13

Right.

So they’ve utilised however many resources to track down 7 plants, and inflated it’s street value by around 500%… Don’t they have anything better to do?

Baggy said :

I just can’t believe that people still contend marijuana has no side effects and is completely harmless.

Having had a friend who succumbed to peer pressure once and was subsequently so messed up in the head they’ve been kept in care for more than 10 years now, this ‘harmless’ approach floors me.

I don’t think anyone argues that it’s completely harmless. But the average stoner isn’t the bored, lazy hipster that the stereotype suggests. Here in Canberra, the average stoner is a well educated professional who is aware of the science that suggests cannabis generally only “causes” schizophrenia in people who have a disposition to it anyway.

The biggest reason that the criminalisation of cannabis makes no sense is because when compared to alcohol, the personal and societal affects are markedly less.

Show me a stoner who has ever gone on a bong-fuelled rampage of street violence?

7 plants isn’t going to hurt supply much… in fact 7 plants isn’t that far beyond being able to make a personal use defence… so it’s disappointing that the police even waste their time on this when there are real criminals to catch.

Baggy said :

I just can’t believe that people still contend marijuana has no side effects and is completely harmless.

Having had a friend who succumbed to peer pressure once and was subsequently so messed up in the head they’ve been kept in care for more than 10 years now, this ‘harmless’ approach floors me.

its not so much that its harmless, but the fact cigarettes and alcohol are legal and arguably as dangerous or more so. IMO its better for the government to be controlling and regulating something like this than banning it.

BimboGeek said :

DrKoresh said :

Boo! Po-po should be out doing something useful for the community, instead of conspicuously busting small-time growers and trying to look Tough On Drugs.

I agree with you but complaining isn’t going to solve the problem. We need drug users and non users alike to hold their heads high and say “These things should be legal for these scientifically documented reasons and here are our evidence based suggestions for dealing with the social problems caused by drug addiction.”

Personally I’m in favour of a medical approach using barbituates, methadone, etc and with a second line that prescribes the drug of addiction in controlled doses to people who have trouble quitting. Sure users will still be using but at least not taking the risks and committing the crimes associated with illegal procurement.

& the cone smokers unite………

I just can’t believe that people still contend marijuana has no side effects and is completely harmless.

Having had a friend who succumbed to peer pressure once and was subsequently so messed up in the head they’ve been kept in care for more than 10 years now, this ‘harmless’ approach floors me.

Judging by the size of the plants and the fact that they said the plants were in varying stages of growth I would’ve thought 60k was rather disingenuous.Mind you it always looks more impressive when the plod embellish the numbers..

DrKoresh said :

Boo! Po-po should be out doing something useful for the community, instead of conspicuously busting small-time growers and trying to look Tough On Drugs.

30 plants at $60K.

Small time?

I dunno where the coppers are getting their drugs from, but they’re getting ripped off: they always grossly overestimate the ‘street value’.

Does anyone seriously contend that 30 plants are worth $60,000? $2,000 a plant? Gimme a break. Even if you’re selling at $300 an ounce (which is hardly a viable price to be onselling to distributors – you’d be lucky to flog it direct to clients at that rate), each plant would have to yield over 6 and a half ounces of good quality dried head. The leaf is next to useless.

DrKoresh said :

Boo! Po-po should be out doing something useful for the community, instead of conspicuously busting small-time growers and trying to look Tough On Drugs.

I agree with you but complaining isn’t going to solve the problem. We need drug users and non users alike to hold their heads high and say “These things should be legal for these scientifically documented reasons and here are our evidence based suggestions for dealing with the social problems caused by drug addiction.”

Personally I’m in favour of a medical approach using barbituates, methadone, etc and with a second line that prescribes the drug of addiction in controlled doses to people who have trouble quitting. Sure users will still be using but at least not taking the risks and committing the crimes associated with illegal procurement.

Heroin, cocaine, meth.
Those are the drugs you want to be taking off the streets, not cannabis.

How proud those officers must be to get rid of such a harmless drug

Boo! Po-po should be out doing something useful for the community, instead of conspicuously busting small-time growers and trying to look Tough On Drugs.

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