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Criminals Using Drones To Find Cannabis Farms and Steal Crops
schwit1 (797399) writes "There has been a huge surge in the number of hidden cannabis farms across Halesowen, Cradley Heath and Oldbury, towns on the outskirts of rural Shropshire some seven miles from central Birmingham. They require hydroponic lights for the marijuana plants to grow – and the huge amounts of excess heat given off make them easily spottable for a would-be criminal with a drone carrying infrared cameras. One such man says that after finding a property with a cannabis farm he and his crew either burgle or 'tax' the victim."
... to legalize and regulate.
In the old days, criminals would just follow others out or use dogs trained to sniff out other peoples grow ops in some farmers field, woods/back wood lot/etc. They're just going hi-tech, nothing to see in that sense.
Om, nomnomnom...
"They require hydroponic lights for the marijuana plants to grow"
What the fuck is a hydroponic light? Are we talking sonoluminescence or what? That's gotta be inefficient.
You mean an HID light, which produces tons of heat and is easy traceable from both ballast noise and heat.
Shoulda gone LED, suckers.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This will lead to thousands of drug enforcement pilot jobs getting offshored to afghanistan where militants can remotely fly drug search drones around England for 100th of the price of a guy in a Cessna.
You can easily legalize MJ and continue your money-generatin war on all the other drugs. It's like a token gesture to the people to make them think the government has given them something, while at the same time pacifying them even further. Win/Win (for the government).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Halesowen? Cradley Heath? Oldbury? Shropshire? Where are these towns, Middle Earth?
the Colorado Government is already at it with their right wing propaganda
Colorado is (narrowly) governed by the Democrats, not right wing. The Democratic governor is trying to slow down states from legalizing, despite it being a roaring success for everyone.
In fact what you'll find these days, is that most right-wing people lean libertarian - which is exactly why the people of Colorado (who lead independent/to the right) were perfectly fine legalizing something so many people did all the time anyway.
Look to the Democrats to shut it down... They are the ones that need the massive funds the government gets from the war on drugs to help fund lots of other progressive measures.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Many growers have been doing this for years. Its not a big deal. You dig out a big hole in the ground, line it with concrete, throw a roof on it, and then pile dirt on top of the roof. No infrared signature.
You can even put it under your house or another greenhouse that has vegetables and flowers. If anyone quizzes you about all the materials you say its for that.
There is an issue with the smell. Nothing you can really do about dogs besides creating a hermetically sealed compartment that has very serious airfilters. Which is sort of the Walter White solution.
Anyway, build underground... its easy and works.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Except for that's not how it's panning out in places like Colorado and the Netherlands, where it's largely smaller growers who are making money....
Monstar L
You don't necessarily even need a hard kill, with the accompanying risks of damage/injury to bystanders and their property...
Thanks at least in part to the robust market for green diode-pumped solid state lasers, moderately alarming and dangerous IR lasers are ubiquitous and cheap. Depending on the quality of your optics and the robustness of theirs, outcomes ranging from temporary washout of the image to swift and permanent death of the imager are highly likely.
According to a newspaper article in sweden (translated)
Drug dealers have set up webcams to be able to monitor police activity in the area.
Except for that's not how it's panning out in places like Colorado and the Netherlands, where it's largely smaller growers who are making money....
The Netherlands here. Not quite. We have this utterly silly situation where the selling of mj is sort of legal, up to a certain weight and only in designated establishments (the famous coffeeshops). However the growing and distributing is quite illegal.
The mom and pop growers are entirely insignificant compared to organized criminals. The latter produce way more than local demand, so much of that is exported.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
These are noteable for being a few of the places in the UK where the pronounciation actually reflects the spelling.
The best answer would be a Net Gun.
From market or DIY. That's $400 or $60-$80.
I think many of the catched drone parts can be salvaged, after the fall.
If I understand you correctly, any marijuana sold at Dutch coffee shops must then have been either grown illegally or smuggled into the country?
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
That is correct. Like I said, an utterly silly state of affairs. So the output of these coffeeshops is legal (provided they respect the weight limits, don't sell to underage visitors, etc) while their inputs aren't.
The way it is now (but this is being debated constantly) we are basically not enjoying the major potential benefit of decriminalisation, which is taking the wind out of the sails of organized crime.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Actually, if you read the original story this is just one man talking, and there's a pretty good chance he could just be spinning a yarn for a journalist. Drone aircraft are rare here in Britain, and thermal cameras are similarly rare and expensive to buy (the thermal imagers fitted to high-end BMW cars are about the cheapest such units).
All UK police forces which operate helicopters (which is pretty much all of them) have a stated policy of keeping the thermal image camera turned on whenever the helicopter is in flight, and the operator has standing orders to note the location of any unusually warm buildings for later assessment by ground units. This is likely where this man has got his idea from, but I seriously doubt that he is actually putting it into practice.
The people who are the real problem are the criminals. The only way to resolve that issue is by cutting them out of the market.
The only other problems are a public health issue. You'll have more cases of people driving under the influence, and smoking in general increases the cancer risk of the population. Now whilst those are credible issues, they're no worse than the legalisation of tobacco & alcohol. In fact, you could argue that tobacco & alcohol are worse due to their higher incidence of addiction & the latter's habit of causing an increase violence.
Drugs would no longer be grown by organised criminal gangs.
They would be grown by respectable businessmen who have no problem with killing 50% of the people who buy their products while deliberately making them more addictive.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
AFAIK you can grow hemp for fiber legally in the Netherlands. I would not be surprised if that is how people got the cannabis in the first place.
Possibly so, at first. However, these days the strains used for industrial use (rope, clothes, paper) are almost a different species from the ones for, um, recreational use. In fact, some of the mom and pop growers specifically do so because they find the stuff from the coffeeshops too potent.
Is the law on cultivation actively enforced or not? If the law is only on paper but not enforced it might as well not be there.
Yes, it is actively enforced. Everything over 5 plants constitutes a rather serious offense, and people do get caught.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
For all of the badness of Philip Morris, I think I'd still rather they be running the show than the guys who kidnap busloads of people, rape them or make them fight to the death, and then bury them in the desert.
I don't think that's just personal squeamishness talking. It may very well be that the sociopaths who did bad stuff for the cigarette companies are just as evil as the sociopaths who run the cartels. But they do seem to control themselves a little better when they can make tons of money by staying in the law's good graces.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Let's say we go after the bastards, then. Make tobacco illegal and drive them underground. We could outsource the production and distribution of tobacco to Los Zetas and it would be a net win, right? At least that terror Philip Morris would be out of the picture.
To some extent, I measure how threatening they are by how dangerous they are to me as a bystander. I'd much rather see a major cigarette outlet near my house than an illegal marijuana distribution center. I can avoid most of the problems with a cigarette outlet by simply not going in. Not so much with the drug import hub.
We seem to have managed to neuter them pretty effectively by taxing cigarettes and making the public aware of just how bad they are for us. It looks like smoking is down about 60% in the US just due to minor regulation and social trends. Our approach with other drugs doesn't seem to be following the same trend.
Finally, measuring "evil" in absolute numbers is fraught with problems. If all we care about is number of dead rather than how they died and why, we'd be pounding on GM's door too. And of course, I don't think we Americans would be so unconcerned about the drug war if it was our country that they were turning into a failed state. Deaths notwithstanding, the total collapse of law and order in a democracy is something that should be talled on the "drug cartels are bad" side of the ledger, even if it's not our country they're doing it to. Duffel bags full of the heads of police officers and elected officials in some foreign country aren't a really big deal for us, so we tend to turn down the knob on "evil" when we assess it.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
The cops go looking just before dawn. When the lights have been on all night and the air is coldest. Only a moron would go looking in the middle of the afternoon.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'