"This programme contains some strong language." "Over 2 million people smoke cannabis regularly." "Over half of all young people have tried it." "But how much harm does cannabis actually cause?" "'In this series, I want to see the lengths some people go to get it...'" "Not going to sell it, I'm not going to be a dealer, it's just for me to smoke." "You burgle people's houses and stuff?" "Yeah." "'.." "Find out how and why they use it.'" "That's enough to take away a bit of pain." "And discover exactly where it comes from." "This is going on all over the country and you wouldn't know that this was happening." "I'm not going to lie, I, like millions of other young people, have smoked cannabis." "I never got into it heavily or anything, and it never seemed to cause me any personal harm." "I'm curious to find out if that is the same for everyone else." "I'll be with the police as they smash illegal cannabis grows and stop the criminal gangs behind them," "I'm arresting you for producing cannabis." "They been busted, mate?" "Yeah." "See the Border Agency crack down on cannabis smuggling." "It's ridiculous." "They keep pulling more and more and more drugs out." "And fly half way round the world to see what happens when cannabis is legalised for medical use." "I was surprised myself." "I thought, smoking cannabis for asthma?" "Is cannabis as bad as some people say?" "It's addictive." "I don't know how anyone can say it's not." "Or can it actually be beneficial?" "If I didn't have cannabis, I'd either be in prison or I'd be dead." "I want to find out what's really the harm in cannabis." "A year after leaving EastEnders, I ended up in the papers after this photo of me smoking cannabis appeared on Facebook." "I was pretty surprised by the reaction I got." "And that's made me want to discover the truth about what still is a controversial and illegal drug." "I'm starting in South London, where I'm on my way to meet a young cannabis smoker who says he's the envy of his mates." "That's him on the bike." "17-year-old Tom." "Unlike his friends, he doesn't hide his cannabis use, not even from his parents." "Oh, and the reason you can't see Tom's face isn't because he's scared of the police," "He's worried being identified might affect his chances of getting into a good university next year." "My mum and dad are the only mum and dad I know that properly allow it in the house." "I know people whose mum and dad tolerate it, they're not that... will smoke a spliff with their son sort of thing." "My dad's comfortable smoking with me." "Really?" "You smoke with your dad?" "Yeah." "My first joint was from my dad." "So..." "Really?" "How old were you when your dad gave you your first joint?" "14, 15." "I just picked it up and I asked him one time, "Dad, can I smoke some pot in the house?"" "And I was so nervous because I had loads of friends around as well, and we was just like, "Yeah, yeah, sure, mate, as long as I can have a bit", and I was just like, "Oh, jeez, really?" and it just started from there." "Was it a bit of a shock when your dad did that?" "I was expecting a, "No, get out", sort of, "Get your friends out now, we need to have a talk about this"" "sort of thing." "But it was just, "Sure, mate." "Do what you want"." "I can imagine to some young people, Tom's life sounds a little bit too good to be true." "So I'm going round to meet his parents to see for myself." "Hello, Tom." "All right?" "How's it going?" "All right?" "Is this your mum and dad?" "Hello." "I'm James, nice to meet you." "How you doing?" "I'm Andy." "Nice to meet you." "Hello, I'm Claire." "The thing he was talking to me about that was quite alien to me is the fact that when he first smoked cannabis, you'd introduced it to him." "I provided him with his first ever taste of it, yeah." "It's so out of the ordinary to me." "Apparently so, but it's all terribly suburban, really." "This isn't like, you know, junkies in New York, this is a little bit of pot in Peckham." "I couldn't imagine sitting there with my mum and doing something like that." "What's it like sitting with Tom and having a joint?" "It's quite sweet, really." "It's nice." "I like it." "So, Tom's allowed to smoke cannabis at home, have his mates round to smoke it, even smoke it with his parents." "Are there any ground rules for Tom?" "The ground rules are, not school days." "It's as simple as that, really." "For Tom and his mum and dad, cannabis doesn't seem like a big deal at all." "Go on, Dad, give us a pinch of baccy." "Yeah, all right." "How much you want me to put in?" "Normal." "For you or me?" "You." "All right." "That's all of it." "I can see you were sitting there observing, Andy, are you getting a sense of pride of your son rolling a decent joint?" "Taught him everything he knew, James." "He'd be nowhere without me." "Is there any sort of etiquette when smoking with each other?" "Who smokes first, who rolls?" "Roller's rights." "Roller's rights." "I would say that is boys." "Entirely." "Are girls more polite about it?" "Yes." "There will be people watching this, just out of interest, who have never smoked cannabis, and they'd be interested in what you're feeling right now." "It's nicer than alcohol." "Tom and I have had this conversation, and I have never, ever, ever been in a group of people who, getting stoned, someone's got stroppy." "If anything, it makes you feel laid-back and loving." "'It's Dad's turn to roll the next family joint.'" "How's your dad's joint comparing to your own, there, Tom?" "What's your review?" "Yeah, it's all right." "I'll give him a seven out of ten." "'It seems surreal to be sat with a teenager and his parents watching them all get stoned.'" "This is not stupid." "They should legalise the stuff." "Really?" "That's how you feel?" "Yeah, yeah." "What I found really fascinating was what Tom's dad said, and Tom himself, about the fact that they've bonded over smoking cannabis." "They're really close to each other over it." "I suppose some dads do that with their sons by going to kick a football over the park or maybe enjoying a beer on a Friday night, and they do it through cannabis." "'So what is it that this family are actually getting high off?" "'" "Cannabis contains active chemical ingredients." "The one that gets you high is called THC, making you feel drowsy, light-headed and altering your perceptions, but there's an important counter-balance in the plant." "It's CBD, or cannabidiol, and can make you feel alert and creative." "Plants bred for a higher concentration of THC are known as skunk." "Ten years ago, THC levels varied between 3% and 15%, but now, stronger strains can have up to 20% THC, and with less CBD." "The problem is users often just don't know how strong the weed is." "That's a problem some young people try to avoid." "Not content to just smoke cannabis, they want to grow it for their own use." "They're known as hobby growers." "'So I've come to this cafe to meet Owen, a 19-year-old who's going to start growing cannabis for himself." "'I want to find out what he enjoys about smoking this illegal drug 'and why he wants to take things to the next level.'" "Owen." "How you doing?" "Nice to meet you." "How are you?" "Pretty good, thanks, how are you?" "Yeah, not too bad, mate." "What do you do, Owen?" "I'm a student at uni at the moment in my second year." "I want to find out from someone like you, enjoying smoking cannabis, what does it feel like?" "What's the good side?" "The best part of it is, when you come home after a busy day and you are all tense and a bit stressed, that first toke on the joint just chills you out." "You're instantly relaxed and just in a good place immediately." "How do you go about getting your weed?" "It's occasionally just, like, asking around, seeing who's got some contacts." "Often it's a bit difficult." "Since I've come to uni, there just doesn't seem to be the same quality of weed down here." "There may be somewhere, but I can't find it." "So I've been thinking about starting growing it." "Really?" "Yeah." "That's the plan." "Can you show me?" "Yeah." "Well, I've just bought the equipment." "'Owen's agreed to show me the grow kit he's just bought 'off the internet, which is perfectly legal to buy.'" "Why don't you talk me through what's in all the boxes here?" "Well, first we've got this." "This is a grow tent, which helps you get the right sort of environment for growing." "This is a HPS bulb, which gives you the right sort of spectrum of light." "There it is." "Pretty big." "This will also go through a carbon extractor." "Would it smell quite a lot if you didn't have that?" "Yeah, towards the end of growing, it apparently does get quite pungent." "Really?" "Yeah." "Smells like weed, I take it, not soil and stuff?" "No, it smells like weed." "This will stop the neighbours getting suspicious." "How much does all this cost?" "I got all this as a kit, so you get a discount if you buy everything together." "It was 400 quid." "OK." "If someone was to sit you down and say, like, "Why do you feel the need to grow weed?" ""Why can't you just get it off someone?" "Why perpetuate the problem by growing it?"" "I don't see it as a problem at all, and if anything, it's reducing harm." "If I was buying weed off a dealer, I don't know where my money's ending up, it could be funding organised crime or terrorism, or..." "You just don't know, whereas with this, I know where my money's going." "I'm doing it all myself and no-one else is coming to any harm." "I don't see any reason why I shouldn't be allowed to do this." "I'm not going to sell it, I'm not going to be a dealer, it's just for me to smoke." "I can see Owen's point in not wanting to fund organised crime by growing weed himself." "A small amount of cannabis like an eighth can cost around 20 quid on the street, and it's cheaper to grow your own if you're a hard-up student." "What he's planning to do is illegal." "But it seems he's not alone." "The internet has fuelled an explosion in young people buying home grow cannabis kits." "Bizarrely to me, it's perfectly legal to purchase all the equipment in the UK." "Cannabis seeds, skunk seeds." "Ashtrays, bongs and hookahs, books and magazines, bubble bags, it goes on and on." "Rolling accessories, rolling papers and blunts, scales, seeds, snuff items, stash products." "That is great." "What are stash products?" "Wow." "Wow." "It seems that everything you'd ever need is just a few legal clicks away." "Comprehensive." "It's comprehensive." "It's an absolutely comprehensive list of exactly what you're getting." "Some people even post videos of themselves showing off their green fingers." "People indoors, outdoors, tips, guides, troubleshooting, if you got a problem with your soil you can find out how to deal with that on here." "Even on your phone now, in the App Store, you type in cannabis and loads of stuff comes up." "It can take anything up to four months for a cannabis plant to grow." "But self sufficiency isn't the only thing that motivates these hobby growers." "Growing your own cannabis is seen as an ethical decision." "Some people want to avoid that contact with the black market, where they don't know where the cannabis is coming from." "They don't know what's in the cannabis and they don't know what activities go alongside the importation and distribution of that cannabis." "Growers are actually growing so that they can have varieties that are not as strong as what they can get on the black market." "Experienced or more knowledgeable users will pick and choose cannabis to suit their mood, to suit their preference." "They'll know which types of cannabis are most likely to give them bad side effects and they'll try to avoid that, and they'll know which types give them the effects they want, and they will try and secure that." "I want to see a small hobby grow for myself." "But the grower's paranoid about being found out and is only letting me see it on the condition I don't reveal where I am or who they are." "All they've done is explain the basics of their grow to me." "OK." "Wow." "So they've got reflective materials on the side, I suppose that's to get the most out of all the light." "A couple of plants in there." "They're quite young at the moment, I can see." "They're quite small." "We have a bottle here of yellow liquid, which is producing carbon dioxide, which I know from GCSE science, it's good for photosynthesis." "You've got a little fan there, and extraction system going off, and that's feeding it there, and you've got something coming in down here." "I was talking to the person that this belongs to." "This whole set-up cost him under 100 quid, including the seeds." "I mean, this is going on all over the country, and you wouldn't know this was happening." "But this boom isn't going unnoticed." "Last year, police forces across the country uncovered nearly 7,000 cannabis cultivations." "That means, on average, the police were busting around 120 illegal cannabis grows a week." "I'm with Avon and Somerset police on the first day of Operation Viscount, an intensive four-week crackdown on larger commercial cannabis growers." "Last time, a similar operation saw cannabis with a street value of around ã6 million seized, and 68 people arrested." "Whilst their focus is on smashing big commercial grows, anyone caught growing even a small amount is vulnerable." "Police!" "Just go down lower." "Female upstairs." "To grow cannabis indoors, you need strong artificial light." "This generates an abnormal amount of heat, which enables the police to use thermal imaging from surveillance helicopters to identify suspicious properties." "But they don't always get it right." "This is the address we've come to today." "The heat is marked by black, so you can see the loft of this house is extremely hot." "There is other intelligence to support us getting a warrant for this one, hence, we got a warrant and executed it." "However, in reality, what's happened is the house is very hot, they keep the heating on all the time, and they've got their loft hatch." "So the heat has just gone up into the loft." "With this one, though, there was intelligence." "Yeah, there was other intelligence as well as the helicopter." "Yeah." "OK." "On this occasion he was wrong." "He was wrong!" "We get back in the van and head on to the next raid." "We go to all sorts." "Industrial units, barns, houses, sheds, lofts." "How do they keep it in someone's house?" "They use the whole house?" "I've been to a house where every room has been filled with cannabis." "The guy was sleeping in the hallway." "You never know what you'll face on the other side of a door." "That's the thing." "It could be anybody wielding a knife or machete." "Anything." "This concrete shed is at the back of a suburban garden." "There we go." "We've found some plants." "It feels like a sauna in here." "Even our camera has steamed up." "They've got 5 plant pots, and they're about 5 or 6 deep." "So 25, 30 plants, maybe, here?" "Roughly, what would you say the street value of these plants would be?" "I wouldn't like to hazard a guess but an awful lot." "Wholesale, like 500 to 1,000, you've got like 15,000 to 30,000." "Street value would probably be about double that." "Double that?" "So about possibly 50 grand?" "ã50,000 roughly." "Yeah." "50 grand worth of cannabis is now the official property of Avon and Somerset Police." "It's an exciting part of your job, then?" "It's exciting but you end up smelling of cannabis for weeks after." "You have two or three showers and still stink of it." "You've got to chuck your clothes away and wear really old clothes." "It's proper messy." "Sgt Bain calls me over into the house." "He's discovered another grow going on inside." "There's a further 25 plants in the utility room." "He's probably growing it to sell it or he's growing it for his personal use, because he's got..." "That's the next stage." "He's got a continual cycle." "Behind this as well, these are little baby ones to go there." "They'll probably replace the ones in the back shed in two or three weeks' time." "These much younger plants suggest this might be a commercial operation." "He's got a supply of 25 plants." "So every three months he's got 25 grand." "Can't exactly say it's personal use." "No." "It's amazing that this goes on in someone's house." "From the outside it's just a normal house with this operation inside." "It's all over the place." "Until you've put the cannabis seed in there, it's not illegal to have any of this." "You can own the seed, you can own this gear..." "That's perfectly fine." "If you put the seed in..." "The minute you plant it and water it, you're producing it." "Bit of a grey area." "That's the problem." "There's been some confusion when it comes to where the law stands on weed these days." "Cannabis is a Class B drug, putting it on the same level as ecstasy and speed." "Caught with it and you're under 18, you can expect a reprimand if it's a small amount and your parents might get a call." "If it's your second time, you could get arrested." "If you're over 18 and have no prior offences, you'll probably get a formal warning." "Not to be sniffed at, because that goes on your record." "Second time you'll get a penalty notice for disorder, which also goes on your record, and an on-the-spot ã80 fine." "Carry on and you can go to prison for up to five years." "If you get caught with what the police deem a large amount, that makes you a dealer and you could be charged with intent to supply with up to 14 years in prison." "Tonight the police are carrying out Operation UTAH." "Targeting motorists." "Vehicles linked to all kinds of criminal activity have been marked on a database." "The main thing tonight is beware the drugs." "We want to stay with that vehicle throughout, watch the occupants like a hawk, and make sure they don't get a chance to ditch anything before we find it." "Officers tell me offences like carrying cannabis and driving under the influence of drugs are common on operations like these." "On a day-to-day basis, on your bike, say in one night, how many times will you go past a car you suspect of cannabis?" "Maybe two, maybe three times in a shift." "The advantage of being on a bike is you can smell it." "The police set up a checkpoint near the city centre." "An unmarked van is parked up the road." "It's rigged with sophisticated cameras that record and check every number plate against the national police database." "3,000 vehicles have gone past since we've been here." "There's been drink drivers, drug dealers." "We just never know what's going to come past." "This driver has been pulled over and the police have found a very small amount of cannabis resin on him." "There's two pieces here, one there and one there." "Are you happy that's what you gave to me?" "Yeah." "Can you sign that there and put your name for me?" "He gets an official caution and the cannabis confiscated." "I got a little bit of cannabis." "That's it." "It was only a little bit, wasn't it?" "Yeah, I couldn't even make a spliff." "Did they give you a fine or anything?" "No, just a warning." "Just a warning." "That's it." "Lucky me." "A team from the Tactical Crime Unit is out on the roads." "Their car's also equipped with automatic number plate recognition cameras." "They pull over one car because a passenger has been seen smoking a joint." "It looks like the front-seat passenger's the one who's been found with a spliff, or cannabis joint, on him." "The officer is dealing with him for that." "OK, just unzip your jacket while I do a quick pat-down search of you." "OK?" "But that's not their main concern." "The officers suspect the driver might be stoned." "I'm just going to look at your eyes for a minute." "Do you know about the effects of driving whilst under the influence of cannabis?" "No?" "How often do you use cannabis?" "All the time." "How often a day?" "One a day?" "Two a day?" "OK." "I'm just looking at your eyes to see how they react to the light." "Police take driving under the influence of drugs as seriously as drink-driving." "They are reacting." "That's fine." "What I'm going to do, because of what you've said, I'm going to do what we call a preliminary impairment test." "All right?" "OK, this is what we call the Romberg Balance Test." "I want you to stand up straight with your heels and toes together and your arms by your side." "I want you to do heel to toe, heel to toe, heel to toe." "Three, four, five." "With no cannabis equivalent of a breathalyser, the police use a series of coordination tests to establish whether someone is stoned." "Heel to toe, as best you can, straight." "OK." "This is what we call the one-legged test." "I want you to lift your left hand and touch your nose." "Down." "Just keep your arms by your side and raise your foot as high as is comfortable." "Six to eight inches is normal." "That is the end of the test." "I can't see any reason why we should take you into custody." "Your eyes are within the range of being OK." "I know it's a bit embarrassing but... you've passed, anyway." "If he'd been found to be stoned, the consequences could have been as serious as getting caught drink-driving, and no wonder." "Some experts claim that smoking a joint can cause the same level of impairment on driving as drinking four pints of beer." "Where me and my mates grew up, cannabis dealers were everywhere, just like on this estate on the outskirts of London." "I'm meeting three lads who started selling weed here when they were just 15." "I want to know what got them into it." "What's your name?" "Ethan." "When I first started off I was making, like, ã20 a day." "Once you've pulled the customers in, people start calling you." "Before I knew it, I got ã100 here, ã200 there." "The guy that I was selling it for, he come to me driving new cars, you know." "I knew he was making loads of money from it, you know." "I know he had loads of guys doing it for him." "If I'm giving him ã100 a day out of what I made, and he's got 10 people selling it for him, that's ã1,000 a day." "I smoked it all." "Sold some of it, smoked it all." "Hardly make enough money." "Everyone else is making money but I just smoked it all so I wasn't earning that much weekly." "So you were no good at dealing, then?" "No." "I smoked it all, man." "You can earn more than you can in a nine-to-five, working a week, in a day when you're smoking and selling." "'These guys seem quite laid back about their past, 'but there must have been a more sinister side to all of this.'" "I got stabbed over it." "You get into all kinds of things." "You've been stabbed?" "Yeah, twice in the leg." "Because of the whole gang." "It's a dangerous game, man." "Some people say weed can't be addictive." "What do you feel when you're addicted?" "The funny thing is some people say weed isn't addictive but they don't know they're addicted." "They just think, "I'm in control"." "It's once you try to stop, you realise you are addicted." "When they started to see the downside of smoking weed, they decided to quit using and dealing and clean up their lives." "I never got to that stage where I was, like, banging my head on the wall and biting the kerb and stuff." "I never got to that stage!" "I never got to that stage but I've seen people like that, definitely seen people that smoke weed and they become crazy." "You can't even talk to them." "They're mad in the head." "I know guys that used to be good kids, good guys, and when they started smoking they're paranoid and mad." "They're quick-tempered." "These are the first cannabis users I've met who aren't singing its praises." "There's clearly a much darker side to using cannabis I've yet to see." "I've come to Dartford in Kent to meet a lad called Keian." "He started smoking cannabis when he was just 11." "Now at 14 he says he has a problem with it." "Keian?" "Hello, mate." "I'm James, How are you doing?" "His mum and dad have told me he's quite shy and withdrawn." "He spends most of his time on his own in his room." "How's it going?" "All right?" "Fine." "How much you smoking?" "Um, I'm smoking most days." "Not really a particular amount." "I just smoke most days." "A couple of joints and that?" "A couple a day." "How old were you when you started smoking?" "First tried it?" "Think I was 11 when I first tried it." "One of my mates shared." "Now I've got a bit attached to it since last year." "Since then, I've been quite on it." "It's not really good." "At first it's just fun, get stoned, laugh at anything, really." "Then after a while, you realise the effects of it." "It does mess you up quite a bit." "I've only been smoking it enough to affect me for about a year, and I've felt full effects of it." "Do you mind telling me what those effects are?" "Just paranoia, really..." "oh, I'm not sure." "Like, just say I'll be walking home on my own," "I'll be paranoid, looking at cars and thinking there's someone in there." "Different things like that." "Sometimes you can feel depressed out of nowhere." "You'll be sitting there all fine." "Like today, actually." "I was fine earlier." "Then I started feeling all depressed randomly." "People think weed is just a laugh, but it's not." "It can be really serious." "It does really mess you up." "There are people out there that reckon it's not addictive, it's a really easy drug to put down." "No, not at all." "What would you say to those people?" "It's definitely addictive." "I don't know how anyone can say it's not addictive." "Extremely addictive, or I wouldn't be smoking it any more." "Downstairs, it's time for dinner." "Where shall I sit?" "Anywhere you like." "Next to you?" "Is Keian not coming down for dinner?" "I said to come for dinner but he's not hungry." "I discover that Keian's mum Sarah also used cannabis as a kid." "When you were growing up, how old were you when you started smoking?" "I was 13." "Yeah?" "Yeah." "I started smoking quite young." "But I'm so glad that I don't smoke any more, like I say, cos it was making me paranoid in the end." "Has it been tough being an ex-cannabis smoker yourself, and now seeing your kids going through cannabis use and experience, has that been quite tough?" "It has been." "When Keian comes to me and says" ""I really want to give up, you know, I'm really trying", and he says "I'm going to give up today", and then he's come in stoned and you think "poor thing"." "Keian, you ready?" "Keian's not hiding in his room for the rest of the weekend." "Friday night for him means he's going to a party with his mates." "Hello." "I'm in the car on my way down, mate." "I'll be there in about ten minutes." "How often do you go out like this, every weekend?" "Most Fridays and Saturdays, I go out." "His dad, Chris, seems resigned to the fact that Keian will probably end up getting stoned tonight." "Cheers, mate." "Really nice talking to you." "See you later." "All the best, mate." "See you later." "On the way back, I ask Chris how he thinks Keian has changed since he's been using weed." "When he started secondary school, he had tremendous potential." "He's very clued-up, very quick with things." "He's lost that quickness now because of the cannabis." "I just think he could've done so much better at school, but I just think he's been robbed, really." "But Keian is not alone." "More and more young people are suffering from serious cannabis problems." "Last year, almost 4,000 people his age were offered help to get them off the drug." "The police are making every effort to stop cannabis reaching the streets in the first place, by busting the big-time growers." "Officers from Operation Viscount have been tipped off by the electricity board." "They've detected an unusual increase in electricity use coming from a small industrial unit near Bridgewater in Somerset." "The information we've had is reliable." "It's been checked out as far as it can be, and I'm quite confident that we're going to find something there." "The landlord also alerted the police after finding suspicious alterations to the building." "This door, it's secured from the inside, and if you look in the edges, you can see there's some insulation, which you wouldn't expect to find in a courier's premises." "Keep forensics in mind, please, gentlemen." "Ooh, nice." "Thank you." "We've got a positive." "Could you call CSI, please?" "Sergeant Medland's team have shut down a professional grow of 262 plants, with a potential street value of about ã200,000." "This is amazing." "It's the most professional set-up I've seen." "They've gone to a lot of bother." "There's a lot of expense involved in setting this up, and they'll be quite disappointed to see it disappear from their possession." "The criminal behind this later tells the police it cost him seven grand to set this grow up." "He admitted producing a Class B drug with intent to supply, and is awaiting sentencing." "So far, I've only met people who use cannabis to get high." "But some people think they need cannabis just to function." "In Weston-super-Mare is a young mum of three who says she uses cannabis not to get wasted, but to keep her emotions in check." "Hiya." "Hello." "Laura?" "Yes." "Hello, I'm James." "Nice to meet you." "Nice to meet you, too." "Come in." "Coffee?" "Tea?" "I'll take a tea, please." "I don't really know much about yourself, you see." "No." "So..." "Um, well..." "I'm 26, and basically, I started smoking when I was about 14." "So I've been on it 12 years." "And I started smoking it because reality became a bit too much." "I couldn't deal with reality very well." "I was 14, I was helping bring up my little sister, because my parents both had alcohol problems." "They were always arguing, splitting up, you know, and it just became a bit too much, really." "So I started smoking and drinking." "But I kind of worked out that drink wasn't for me." "It made me quite violent, quite aggressive." "I was always getting into trouble, doing the wrong stuff, mixing with the wrong people, and I just really found that cannabis, for me, just makes me a better person as a whole." "Makes me calmer, makes me more reasonable, helps me to think straight." "Really?" "You think it makes you a better person?" "Yes, I do." "Yeah." "Absolutely, yeah." "I mean, when I'm not on cannabis, I'm really aggressive, really argumentative, um..." "It's very hard to find reasoning in me." "Very, very difficult." "I shout, I punch doors, I kick doors, I kick walls." "How much do you smoke?" "I have one in the morning when I get up, before the children get up." "You have one spliff?" "Yeah." "One spliff in the morning, when I get up." "I'll roll it and I'll go outside and smoke it before the children get up." "And when the kids go to bed at night, before I go to sleep, I have one then." "Sounds to me like rather than being addicted to cannabis, which is what you say and I completely believe you, it's like you're addicted to treating that anger." "Well, if I didn't have cannabis, I wouldn't be here now." "I wouldn't have my children." "I'd be in prison, or I'd be dead." "It's as simple as that." "I catch up with Laura again as she's getting the kids ready for bed." "Beth, are you going to have your hair brushed, cos we're going to bed in a minute, OK?" "I just did it!" "I know, but we need to make sure it's proper, don't we?" "Otherwise we won't be able to brush it properly in the morning." "It's also nearing the time when Laura will want to smoke her second and last joint of the day." "Right, you guys get into bed and Mummy'll sort out..." "Look at the state of your bedroom." "Guess what you're doing in the morning." "Tidying up!" "You are." "I love you." "Right, sleep now." "No noise, no silliness, OK?" "Or TV goes off." "All done." "And how was that?" "Tiring." "Yeah?" "Yeah." "They went down all right, though?" "Yeah." "How are you feeling?" "You haven't had a smoke all day." "I haven't, no." "So how do you feel right now?" "I'm definitely ready for my night-time smoke, I think." "It's been a long day." "Sitting here with Laura smoking," "I still can't ignore the fact she's got young kids asleep upstairs." "What would happen, what would you do if suddenly you heard someone crying out for you upstairs?" "What would happen right now?" "Well, I'd put my spliff down, I'd go up and sort them out." "Absolutely, yeah." "The kids come first." "And for another," "I wouldn't want them coming down here." "I try to keep this from them as much as possible." "What if one of them run in now?" "Um...to be honest with you, nothing, because to them, this is a roll-up." "And Ellie, in all honesty, she'd be like "Mummy, are you rolling a medicated fag?"" "That's what she'd say - "Are you rolling a medicated fag?"" "That's what she thinks it is, a medicated fag." "And I'd just be like "Yeah." "Let's take you back up to bed, come on."" "So how's that now?" "Yeah, it's nice." "You can feel the anger going down and...the relaxation coming up." "It's a really, really nice feeling, just the tensions of the day just slowly simmer down." "It just feels like a weight's been lifted." "There are a few places around the world where cannabis has been decriminalised." "If Laura lived in one of these, she wouldn't need to break the law, and I'm not talking about Amsterdam." "I've flown 5,000 miles across the Atlantic and into San Francisco." "I'm here because California is one of 15 American states where cannabis has been semi-legalised." "Ever since 1996, it's been legal to buy cannabis, as long as you live in the state and have a prescription and medical card." "My first stop is the college town of Berkeley, just across the bay from San Francisco, and home to around 25,000 students." "So how easy is it for someone like yourself to get a card?" "They'll give you a card for anything." "And how much would one pay to get a card?" "150." "You can actually get them for, like, 90 bucks somewhere in San Francisco." "50 in LA." "Yeah." "So, for 100 bucks, I could go and get a card?" "Yeah, and it's...permission to hold over an ounce on you, and six plants to grow." "Do you guys have a better education with cannabis?" "Yeah, we just use it responsibly." "We don't get super-baked and go fuck shit up." "We sit at home and watch TV and hang out." "It's not like alcohol or any other drug, and that's why in our area, cops only make you stomp it out because to them, it's not that big of a deal." "I know a lot of cops that have smoked marijuana too." "A lot of cops I get pulled over by smell my weed and go "That smells good!"" "You know, a lot of the cops really don't care." "A lot of cops will just give it back and let you go." "Sounds very different from how it works back home." "But are these cannabis prescriptions really as easy to get as those college kids are telling me?" "Occasionally, I have trouble sleeping." "I'm wondering if I lived here, whether this would be enough for me to get a legal prescription for weed." "Hello." "Come on in." "Hello." "How are you?" "Hi." "'To find out, I'm meeting Dr Hanya Barth, one of a small but growing number of doctors 'who specialise in prescribing cannabis for everything 'from arthritis through to depression, and even cancer and AIDS.'" "Basically, my job is to evaluate you and decide whether your condition would benefit from the use of medical marijuana." "I don't suppose you prescribe it for a chesty cough, do you, because I've got one." "Actually, it works for asthma." "Really?" "Yes." "Cannabis works." "That seems so counter-intuitive." "It does." "It's a bronchial dilator." "Some people with a bit of a cough, it brings up all their phlegm, and then they feel like they can breathe again." "Wow." "I was surprised myself." "I thought, smoking cannabis for asthma?" "!" "Yeah, right!" "It doesn't seem right." "It doesn't, but a lot of my patients have been able to stop their inhalers." "Well, there is something that I've suffered with for quite a few years, on and off in bouts, which is insomnia." "OK." "It maybe lasts for a week or two when it's quite severe, and then" "I'll be OK for a few months and it might come back." "Have you used marijuana at all, cannabis, or never?" "I've smoked cannabis before, but not to treat...my insomnia." "And...well, did it help you sleep?" "I suppose it does make you feel sleepy, yeah!" "I suppose so, yeah." "So that's one of the questions that I ask patients." "Have you tried it, and if you have, does it alleviate the symptoms for which you want to see me?" "What do I do about going to get it?" "I would give you what's called a recommendation." "It certifies you, it has your name, your birth date and when I saw you in my office." "The exact words of this are:" ""He or she was found to have a medical condition that in my professional opinion" ""would benefit from the use of medical cannabis."" "I would give this to you and then, if you wanted, you could go to a dispensary and purchase marijuana." "But doctors don't decide what strength or strain of weed you should use." "That's where cannabis dispensaries come in." "I'm heading to the Berkeley Patients Group, one of the first dispensaries set up in California." "Part Amsterdam coffee shop, part like an ordinary chemist, these non-profit places advise you what strain of cannabis is best." "And there's an awful lot to choose from...and some surprising ways to take it." "What is that?" "This is kind of a novelty piece, actually." "It's a giant pipe." "It's actually functional, and it's almost like a two-person job." "One person to hold it, another person to light it." "We rent stuff out here in this store for people to medicate with in our lounge." "A prescription from my GP back in Britain costs ã7.20." "So how much would it cost me here to get my so-called medicine?" "It starts at 60 an eighth, at the top of the line, all the way down to 10 dollars." "We have Casey Jones at 35 an eighth today, which is almost unheard of in other places, you know." "35 an eighth, it's very affordable." "UK Cheese." "What makes it UK?" "The strain itself actually originated from the United Kingdom." "Really?" "I'm slightly disappointed that the strain that's representing the UK is only in the middle of your menu." "I want to be represented in the higher end!" "It's true, we do have the Dutch strain at 60." "Is that the better stuff?" "Right, OK." "Are you a patient yourself?" "I am a patient." "We're all patients here." "I meet another staff member in the medicating area." "Will has just finished his shift and invites me to sit down with him whilst he "medicates"." "Can I ask you what for?" "Sure." "Chronic pain and anxiety, mostly." "OK." "And how do you prefer to consume your cannabis?" "Um, I like to use a bong a lot, water pipe, some people call it." "It's a cleaner way of smoking it." "You get the filtration from the water." "Yeah." "It's a little less harsh." "How's that?" "It's very good." "Very sour taste." "Do you get the effects quite quickly?" "Um, some cannabis more than others." "Yeah." "Nicely medicated?" "Yes." "I feel definitely relaxed, you know." "I feel like...it's just like the pain has kind of ceased." "I just start feeling really mellow, you know." "Driving back in to San Francisco, I'm curious to see just how open people are about smoking what they all insist on calling their medicine." "I head to a record store and catch a whiff of something very familiar." "How are you doing?" "I was going to ask if you're cannabis smokers, but I can smell it already." "You having a smoke?" "Yeah." "Do you guys have the card thing that you need?" "We do." "Do you?" "So this is it, you're a card-carrying medical cannabis patient." "Right, OK." "What are you diagnosed with...what are you using it for?" "I just..." "Because I like to smoke, that's..." "I think I said for sinus headaches." "But that's just a front." "Every day before I leave the house, I'm definitely medicating." "I'm a true, like, cannabis fanatic." "I like sativas in the morning, I like indicas at night." "I like Kush all the time." "I use it for dealing with the world." "So you smoke daily?" "All day, every day." "From morning till night?" "All day, every day." "I would think that that would have harmful effects, smoking every single day, all the time." "I feel better than ever." "In Britain, I've seen police uncover illegal grows." "So i'm wondering where all of this legal weed here is coming from." "John." "Nice to meet you." "John has given up a lucrative job as an estate agent to become a full-time cannabis grower." "This is considered a small grow by California standards." "Small scale farmers like myself are everywhere, and a lot of them are doing much larger gardens than what I have here." "How many plants do you have here?" "About 65 to 72 is my range." "That stays within the legal limits of the area, and it is enough for my patients for their needs for the next couple of months." "A garden this size can yield approximately 8,000-10,000 a month, maybe." "Are you a patient yourself?" "I am a patient myself, yes." "What's your ailment?" "I suffer from occasional depression." "I have a very light ailment." "I medicate very occasionally." "This is starting to get faintly ridiculous." "Every single person I meet tells me they are medicating, often with a smile on their face." "Are there people that aren't patients, haven't got any medical ailments, and they're just getting a card to..." "Yes." "Yes, yes." "A lot of people do it." "I would say greater than 50% of people with medical cards are using it for recreational purposes." "And what's your personal opinion of people maybe like that that are flouting the situation here?" "I...philosophically for me, it's a benign plant." "It should be enjoyed." "It should be used, sparingly." "We know what it can do, you know." "The truth is out there." "The progaganda is skewing more towards reality at this point, and it's only a matter of time before it's an accepted part of society." "Before I head home, I've got just enough time to squeeze in a little bit of window shopping." "The demand for cannabis is so high here, it's created California's latest retail boom." "Amazing." "Absolutely amazing." "It's like a BQ!" "This is weGrow, the first in a chain of superstores legally supplying everything a cannabis grower could ever need." "Started up by a former Wall Street trader, they aim to open up in all 15 American states where medical cannabis is legal." "These are marijuana plants - I can smell them." "Yeah." "Yeah, that's cannabis." "Madness!" "I mean, there's a massive contrast from what we see in the UK - go to a hydroponic shop, and they're growing tomatoes." "Around these parts, it seems coming to weGrow is as normal as browsing the aisles at IKEA." "Welcome to America." "HE LAUGHS" "I'm back home in Britain, and back in a place where cannabis is still very much illegal." "Having met those young people who get away with using cannabis for so-called medical reasons," "I'm meeting someone here who would give anything to be in their shoes." "How are you doing?" "Yeah, I'm all right, thanks." "'Jason, who's 30, is one of thousands of people in Britain 'who suffer from the debilitating illness ME." "'He's had it since he was ten.'" "What are you going through?" "It's kind of like living with the worst dose of flu you've ever had in your life, but constantly." "That is kind of what it's like, day in, day out." "Your legs literally don't work, and with added extras like migraines, and...just not being a normal person." "'Jason has turned his back on conventional medication because of the side-effects.'" "With painkillers, you've got all the liver failure, you've got possible stomach damage, pancreatitis, all these different things." "I was, like, "What do I do?" "I'm not taking any more painkillers."" "Someone said, "Have you thought about cannabis?"" "I was, like, "No." "Very much not." "Why would I?" "I'm against all drugs." ""Why would I want to take one of the harmful ones?"" "'But Jason did decide to try it, and his symptoms were relieved.'" "Cannabis means life for me." "Literally, life." "'To avoid using tobacco, which Jason thinks is more harmful, 'he uses a vaporiser - something I've not come across before.'" "So that's just enough, just to take away a bit of pain." "Right." "You just put it onto the vaporiser, and let it heat up, which then vaporises off the THC and the CBD, so once it's done, you just take the tube and just..." "So right now, you're actually committing a crime, right this second." "How does that make you feel?" "It is really difficult to get your head round it, the fact that, just sitting here, taking away my pain in the safest possible way that I can, that is breaking the law." "Are you prepared to go to prison, or are you prepared to...?" "Well, I haven't got a choice." "It's as simple as that." "I'll just take my chances." "'I can see that Jason really believes that cannabis is the best thing for his pain relief." "'Unlike some of the people I met in California, I feel that he's for real." "'But as he's breaking the law, I wonder what his mum and dad think of this.'" "Did he try and keep it secret when he first started smoking cannabis?" "To start with, he didn't keeping it a secret, but he didn't tell us, because he knows I worry." "Did you notice as big a change in him as he did?" "Definitely." "It was nice to see an actual life coming back into him, that could perhaps get some normality, but unfortunately, it's against the law." "What are we going to do if the police come knocking at the door?" "What would happen if the police came in, raided his room and took him away?" "I'll go with him." "That's all there is to it!" "But I hope it doesn't." "It's ridiculous to be in that situation - knowing something's helping him, prolonging his life, because the painkillers would have killed him." "It's his life, and it's not fair that life has treated him the way that it has, and he just needs to have some sort of normality." "And if this is helping him do it, then I stand by him." "If I could take this ME off him now, I would." "Just to give him a few days' rest." "But unfortunately, I can't." "Professor Nutt." "Good to see you." "I'm James." "Nice to meet you." "'I'm meeting Professor David Nutt, one of Britain's leading scientific experts on the effect of drugs, 'to find out why he thinks cannabis can't be legally prescribed to someone like Jason.'" "I think it's appalling that, since 1971, we have not been able to prescribe cannabis for medicinal purposes." "Queen Victoria thought it was the most wonderful treatment for childbirth pains, and that's why she had so many children." "She swore by cannabis medication." "'Professor Nutt used to be the Government's top scientific adviser 'on how to classify banned drugs..." "until this happened in 2009.'" "The Government's chief adviser on drugs policy has been sacked after insisting that alcohol and cigarettes are more dangerous than cannabis and ecstasy." "'It was Professor Nutt's job to provide scientific facts on the harm of drugs." "'Controversially, he claimed horse-riding was more dangerous than taking ecstasy, 'and that cannabis was one of the least harmful drugs, putting it after alcohol and tobacco." "'His findings didn't sit well with the Government, and he was fired.'" "It's hard to know why I was sacked." "They probably got fed up with me telling the truth about drugs, and pointing out the fact that the current drug laws are not based on science and evidence." "Cannabis isn't broken down into toxins, so as far as we know, there's no damage from the cannabis itself." "It doesn't damage tissues." "One of the reasons cannabis is safer than almost any other drug is, no matter how much you take, you do not die." "It is never lethal." "'So if this is true, why does Professor Nutt think the politicians didn't want to listen to him?" "'" "Once a drug's illegal, you cannot have a rational debate about it, with a politician at least." "Illegality puts it in another dimension." "Illegal activities, legal activities." "They say you can't compare them, but you HAVE to compare them." "The whole process of thinking rationally about drugs was completely disrupted by the last Government." "I'll ask you outright - what's the harm with cannabis?" "The biggest harm of cannabis at present is the fact you get a criminal record if you're caught with it." "And that's why I've been so keen to get the harms in proportion, because I think the harms of a criminal record are much, much greater than the harms of cannabis, to the average person." "This is not an opinion shared by the police." "It's the next road on the left." "Officers from Operation Viscount are continuing their crackdown on illegal cannabis grows, and I'm back with them as they're about to strike again." "One of the first places they check is usually the loft, a common place for hiding a cannabis grow." "No, it's clear." "But nothing is found there, and so, armed with a drugs warrant, the officers continue to search the rest of the property." "Within minutes, they find a small stash of weed in the kitchen." "Just a couple of ounces there, but we'll continue the search." "Soon enough, I get called upstairs to see evidence of a recent cannabis grow." "You can see the residue of a leaf there." "Yeah." "There obviously was some cannabis in it." "Your average cannabis smoker won't have this." "This is for someone who's growing." "Yeah." "Growing or drying quite a lot of..." "Yeah." "'Outside, Sergeant John Bain uncovers further proof that cannabis has been grown here.'" "He's growing some plants in here." "Not many, six plants." "Just a very small little set-up." "I'm stunned that the heat given off from growing six cannabis plants can be picked up by thermal imaging." "We've had ones that've only been one or two plants." "It still shows up." "They've got to have a 600-watt bulb to get any growth at all, so even with a couple of bulbs, it still generates 1,200 watts' worth of heat, so..." "I don't think people realise that." "No." "No, people don't." "'Someone else a bit shocked by all of this is the homeowner." "'He's just come back to find his front door missing and his house full of coppers.'" "We've been busted, mate." "Yeah." "I've got six plants on, and...busted." "They were your plants, were they?" "Yeah." "Yeah." "Cos we were maybe speculating you had a son that did it, but it was you yourself?" "No, it was me, mate." "Why were you growing cannabis plants?" "My debts are fucking...sky high." "I need some money to get me out the shit." "Because what this guy has been doing is illegal, it's up to him to repair any damage the police have caused." "Everybody round here knows, I go round the fucking Clove and have a drink on a Monday!" "Why didn't they just come round there and I would've opened the door for them?" "Now it's going to cost me for the fucking door!" "So you've got to pay for that door now, as well?" "Oh, yes." "All for growing six plants..." "Yeah, six plants." "Now you've got your door smashed in." "Yeah." "'The police formally arrest the man for the production of a Class B drug, 'and take him off to the station for more questioning." "'Whilst that signals the end of this small cannabis grow, 'next time I discover that this is just the tip of the iceberg." "'I'll meet some ringleaders responsible for the commercial cannabis boom in Britain...'" "The only thing the police are doing at the moment is putting more money into the hands of the organised dens." "'..spend time at one of Britain's only cannabis addiction programmes...'" "We could fill this place." "Absolutely fill it." "'.." "I'll follow the UK Border Agency in their attempts to stop cannabis being smuggled into Britain... 'and I'll find out about the serious organised cannabis gangs 'that are also tied up in hardcore drugs, violence and even people-smuggling.'" "Were you allowed to leave the house?" "It sounds like slave labour."