Enslaved Albanian migrants manpower behind Britain’s thriving skunk cannabis industry, cops reveal
ENSLAVED Albanian migrants have become the manpower behind Britain’s thriving skunk cannabis industry, police have revealed.
They are being offered free passage to the UK — only to be forced to work in factories producing the super-strength weed.
While many end up being prosecuted, their paymasters are making hundreds of millions of pounds to send back to Albania.
Steve Brocklesby, operations manager at the National Crime Agency, told The Sun: “Albanian organised crime groups have established an increasing dominance in the cannabis market, establishing farms throughout the UK.
“These ventures are often staffed with illegal migrants who enter debt bondage, working on the grows in exchange for passage to the UK.”
Cannabis production in Britain used to the preserve of Vietnamese gangs, police say.
READ MORE ON DRUGS CRISIS
But now the overwhelming majority of Albanians prosecuted for criminal offences in the UK are related to the class B drug, analysis suggests.
The Sun found 83 out of 91 cases in the three months to July were linked to drugs, 70 of them to cannabis.
Albanian sources say the flood of migrants brings replacements as quickly as police take growers out of circulation.
Experts say cannabis abuse is adding to Britain’s mental health crisis as it causes delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, and psychosis.
