Sweden 'self-sufficient' on marijuana: police

Reports of home-grown marijuana in Sweden have quadrupled in the last decade, according to police, who claim there is now enough domestically-grown weed to supply the needs of Sweden's pot-smokers.

• Three jailed after 'grass' scam turned violent (11 Jul 12)
• Pot farming 'booming' as moonshining declines (7 Jun 12)
• Naked man in 'pot-fuelled' train sex attack (23 Nov 11)

The Swedish National Bureau of Investigation (Rikskriminalpolisen) has said police currently receive more than 600 reports annually about illegal pot growing operations.

”We’re finding medium sized cultivations scattered across the country,” said Andreas Gårdlund, an analyst at the agency, to the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

In 2000, the most common type of marijuana farm was a large-scale operation in an isolated house tucked away in the heart of the countryside, but now police find and expose mainly mid-sized marijuana farms.

And according to police intelligence, the operations are generally well-organized, though not in the traditional way, where a drug lord makes investments and lets his underlings do the cultivation of the plants, which was the norm some ten years ago.

Today it is more often a case of individuals growing their own weed from imported seeds in any spare area such as a cellar or in their flat, which have been fitted with good ventilation so that unsuspecting neighbours won’t catch a whiff of anything.

“And what they don’t need for themselves they sell on to organized criminal gangs that have already established distribution channels to the street,” said Gårdlund to the paper.

And according to Swedish Customs (Tullverket) the illegal smuggling of marijuana into Sweden has diminished drastically, especially in Skåne County where it is suspected that the domestic production of the illegal plants is particularly strong.

Police in Skåne say that they seize very little marijuana smuggled in from countries from where the smugglers are otherwise very active.

“And that is another indication that Sweden is self-sufficient when it comes to marijuana,” said Gårdlund to Sydsvenskan.

The Local/rm
twitter.com/thelocalsweden