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Cannabis smell led to Pontefract grower’s £38,000 plants
A cafe owner who grew £38,000 worth of cannabis plants in a building next to his business premises has been jailed.
Stephen Mcloughlin, 57, was arrested after members of the public reported a strong smell of cannabis in the area of the Wayside Cafe, Darrington, near Pontefract.
Police discovered a padlock on the door of an adjacent, partially burned down building and contacted the landlord. The owner of the property then told them the building was derelict and had not been used for two years.
Officers were given a key to the building and found 73 plants growing in eight different rooms along with equipment and plant food. The court heard there were enough plants to produce 4.5 kilos of skunk cannabis worth £38,000.
It was then discovered that electricity to the building was being fed from two meters in the cafe next door,
Mcloughlin was spoken to by officers said he kept a key hidden in his till. He then admitted he was responsible for the cannabis and showed them a book on producing the drug, which he kept in a nearby caravan in which he was living.
Mcloughlin said he owned a previous business but had been made bankrupt and owed money to “undesirable people”.
He said they had given him the plants and the equipment and he had agreed to look after it but would not make any profit for himself out of the illegal venture.
Mcloughlin, now of Kent Walk, Heywood, Lancashire, pleaded guilty to producing cannabis.
Anthony Moore, mitigating, said his client had set up a textiles business with his former partner but it had got into difficulties. He said Mcloughlin borrowed money from a “less than mainstream organisation” to buy the cafe. Around £15,000 of £30,000 had been repaid but he had then had trouble making more repayments.
Jailing him for 16 months, judge Geoffrey Marson told him: “This was a sophisticated commercial operation which would have yielded a significant quantity of cannabis.”
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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