Quote Originally Posted by babystarbud
its not as bad as the media makes out, sounds like the usual scare tactics.
i especially like the bit about it funding "criminal networks"
how stupid do they think the public are? we didnt buy that argument with copyright theft, and we dont buy it with cannabis plants.

the police cannot just come and kick your door down on some other persons say so.
think of the compensation claim for stress they would have after battering down the wrong door with zero evidence.

what the police could do is watch you a bit, if a complaint is made, and if your exhibiting certain types of behavioural patterns, like lots of visitors at unusual hours, or causing any type of disruption/anti social behavior in the area, they could se that as further evience and maybe get a warrant.
or they could even just knock on the door under the pretence of looking for witnesses of a local crime, to see if you give your game away.

either way, if you are an otherwise respectable "law abiding" citizen with a regular life, and you dont have 100 plants scattered across three rooms and a house stinking of weed, and an ammount of unconcious students in your front room, youve pretty much got nothing to worry about.

besides, in these cases, ( and granted theres been a lot recently in the UK ) i think theres been more busts because a hell of a lot more people are smoking and growing thier own than there was just a few years back. so logically, the ammount of busts will rise.
who knows, maybe the ammount of busts hasnt risen, its just that its fasionable with the media at the moment, so it gets more lime light, or HPS light in this case, lol

and also, ive noticed all these high profile busts have been what i would describe as "small scale commercial" rather than personal grows (typically a whole residential house conversion), and theres always mention of electricity theft. how a commercial grower is so poor they have to resort to stealing electricity, is beyond me, there are more sensible locations, and ways to explain high power usage if you really were serious about covering some serious ground space with plants.
Good post, in fact electricity bills have gone up almost 80% recently, which means that smaller growers will probaly be more inclinded to grow and sell to cover what it costs to run a small scale setup, its a very moderate increase on what the price of energy used to be. Although people are still being busted I think it really comes down to greediness of smaller growers wanting to make profit, doubling, trippling their setup capacity and paying for it as a result. At least your not at risk of getting shot or put in jail for years like the US, don't think anyone growing under 200 plants as faced jail time yet, just fines, could be wrong.