DIY cannabis farmer ‘couldn’t afford habit’

A 37-year-old Oldham man turned to the Internet to learn how to grow cannabis, because it was costing him too much to feed his habit, a court was told.

David Moss started taking the drug at the age of 12 and regularly used two to three ounces a week, Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court heard.

But he found it too expensive when prices reached more than £200 an ounce, and he decided to grown his own.

Police armed with a search warrant went to his address in Oldham in April last year, and Moss immediately admitted he had set up a cannabis farm.

Officers found almost 66 grams of cannabis plants in the house along with scales, a propagator, and a cannabis grinder.

Plastic sheeting was found in a bedroom of the address in Leamington Street, Littlemoor, and a piping system, powered by an electrical pump, had been set up to keep the plants watered.

The estimated value of the haul was around £300 but it had been difficult to estimate what the eventual yield could have been because of the young age of the plants.

When interviewed by police, Moss said he had bought cannabis seeds from a shop in Rochdale and researched how to cultivate them from information available on the Internet.

Moss, now of Siddall Street, Oldham, was given a six-month community order, after pleading guilty to a charge of cultivating cannabis.

Judge Stephen Dodds told him he accepted that he had been growing the drug to feed his own habit.

“I am satisfied that you were only in the junior league in terms of cannabis growing, and that it was for your own use” he said.

But the judge warned him that if he did not mend his ways and found himself before a court again, he could expect to be dealt with in a far stricter manner.