Glimpse inside Ipswich cannabis factory
Rebecca Lefort
A DRUG investigation was continuing today after Suffolk police discovered a cannabis factory in an Ipswich house.
Around 400 of the illegal plants were discovered growing inside a semi-detached house in Whitton Church Lane which had been transformed into a cannabis factory.
The plants, used to produce the class C drug, were being cultivated in five rooms of the house.
Suffolk police's drugs team searched the home at 8.45am yesterday and discovered the plants, which were nearing maturity.
They arrested a 34-year-old woman on suspicion of being concerned in the cultivation of cannabis.
Acting sergeant Andy Moore said: "There are ultraviolet lamps and the wiring of the house has been tampered with.
"It is a typical cannabis factor; everything is set up to grow cannabis and every bit of space needs to have plants on it.
"These factories try to reproduce a normal growing environment as far as possible.
"Our primary concern is public safety and our own safety. Once we make the wiring in the house safe we will start removing the exhibits."
Police officers wore masks and protective equipment when entering the house to protect them from the plants' spores and were accompanied by an electrician who made sure the wiring in the rooms was safe.
Sgt Moore said the plants would produce three or four yields a year worth hundreds of thousands of pounds each.
He added: "It is not unheard of for these types of places to be booby trapped, though it hasn't happened in Suffolk, so we have to be very careful."
Should cannabis be reclassified from a class C drug to a class B drug? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich IP4 1AN or e-mail eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk.
FROM the outside the house under investigation in Whitton Church Lane looked like a normal semi-detached Ipswich home.
Yet inside the home was filled with gadgets which would not have been out of place in a science fiction movie.
Dozens of ultra-violet lamps hung low from the ceilings, fans were on hand to fill the rooms with a cooling breeze, wires and cables zigzagged across the rooms haphazardly to provide all the electricity needed to run the illicit operation.
Only a downstairs toilet, hall, and the front room, with a makeshift bed, were free from the green cannabis plants which were reaching maturity.
But even those rooms were not free of the pungent smell which clung to the clothes of those that entered the factory.
Yesterday the site was a hive of activity as plain-clothed police officers from Suffolk's drugs squad went in and out of the house, while curious neighbours looked on from across the road.
The police scientific services team were on hand as well as electrical experts to help deal with the complicated electricity system which had been put in place to transform the house from a family home into a cannabis factory.