To think drug manufacturing like in Breaking Bad couldn't happen in the UK

[WakeUpFast]

I've recently started watching Breaking Bad (to fill in for The Walking Dead ) and have got to season 3 (so no spoilers please!).

I just don't think someone could manufacture drugs like that in the UK.
We have no open, unclaimed land. Every piece of land is accounted for. Every house and persons living in it are accounted for. We can't use fake names just like that.

There's loads of other reasons but am I being naive to think this? I've heard of weed factories in houses, but how common is this? If someone used a caravan as a drug lab, where would they park it without someone smelling the emissions?

I'm not planning on becoming a drug lord, I promise , just very intrigued by how drugs are manufactured and distributed in the UK.

Try buying a big batch of decongest ion medicine over the counter - Pharmacies won't sell large amounts.

Or paracetamol ...

No land unaccounted for

Plenty of bits of land even near London.... www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/25/cannabis-forest-discovered-in-south-west-london-kingston-upon-thames

But there's a difference between growing a bit of weed in your attic (as my parents do!) and having a whole cannabis production plant with heat and lights - not the same thing at all.

Most MDMA and pills are imported from Holland where it's easier to get the requisite chemicals.

The case I linked to wasn't growing a bit of weed in the attic, it was an attempt to produce £4m of amphetamine every 48 hours. I agree that most people growing a big of weed are doing it for personal use but we do have larger scale drug operations going on in this country.

I live in the arsehole of nowhere. I could be harbouring Lord Lucan, Elvis and Shergar out here and no-one would be any the wiser. People who want to find my house usually can't. Getting a taxi is a logistical nightmare. I imagine a drugs manufacturing business could go unnoticed for some considerable time.

I think mousenberg is the one who knocks...

Surely the fact that you are in the middle of nowhere means you are more curious and more likely to check up on/ make a friendly call on someone setting up nearby.

The bright lights for cannabis production need blackout at all windows - that would be a bit suspicious.

I used to plan to kill any intruder with a blunt instrument and dump the body - but round here, despite being in the countryside, some dog walker's dog/ farmers sheepdog/ wandering hill walker would be sure to come across it at some time.

There's a huge house near me nicknamed 'Blofeld's lair' because it looks just like the Bond house in the original film. Huge walls, cctv, massive iron gates, and looks relatively normal from tge front but is six times the size it looks due to a vast underground section at the back. It was raided by armed police years ago for drugs/firearms/criminal activity etc. and has been boarded up ever since. The block paving is now almost covered by foot tall weeds.

I have an enormous windowless outhouse that would be perfect for cannabis farming...I imagine...as I know nothing about cannabis farming. Obviously.

But the mouse?! Op are u ok?!

I'd completely forgot about this thread! Some very interesting comments about drug manufacturing. Yes I hadn't considered Scotland 😆...I'm obviously very naieve about this all! I wonder if the cold temperatures up north would affect the quality of the products though. You'd need extra heating for growing cannabis, expensive!

Oh yeah, the mouse, for anyone who cares! When I was sitting in the living room mnetting that day I could hear a scratching sound but it would stop every few seconds. Kept hearing it and thought maybe next door are doing something. But no, the sound was coming from behind the T.V stand. So got up and moved it back and this bloody small brownish grey thing shot between my legs squeaking. I screamed and that's when I sent that last comment! After a lengthy stand off I managed to trap it under a potty and waited until dh got home to deal with it. He didn't want to kill it so somehow managed to throw it outside and it scuttled off.

Meth is a huge problem in Australia and you can "cook" it in the back of a car. A good cook is sought after by the drug gangs and headhunted so to speak by other biker gangs who control the drug distribution.

Sadly most cooks get brain damage due to the toxicity from the fumes.

Don't know about England but occasionally some "comes" into Scotland but mostly the north East.
The families who run the drug business in the central belt and west coast of Scotland don't won't meth as heroin is more lucrative. As in people don't die as.often which is bad for business 🙁

It's the same destruction as crack.

Cannabis farms aren't unusual in the UK. A house just up the road from me was busted a couple of years ago and turned out to be entirely given over to hydroponic cannabis growing. I live in a sleepy Georgian market town in rural nowheresville, not somewhere 'edgy' at all.

Im bing watching breaking bad thanks to this thread. Needed a good series to watch. Also heard the spin off better call saul is good.

Having lived in both the US and the UK, I'd say it's far easier to use a fake identity in the UK. In the US it is much more common to be asked for photo ID and SSN for everything you do.

I work in a lab.

Just saying.

Really bloodofareptile? See I think it's harder because we have a small country with a smaller population than the U.S.
I'd really love to see how a drug operation works. In BB Gus doesn't seem to have any fear. Is that how they do it here? There could be people drug dealing right under our noses under the guise of a legitimate business and we wouldn't know. I find that really intriguing.

Maidofstars, I used to too...😉

I reckon if it happened in the UK it would be in someone's greenhouse somewhere in the home counties. A lot of pharma companies round there had redundancies in the late 90s/2000s and I've got tons of ex-colleagues who took early retirement and are now pursuing hobbies such as beer brewing, large vegetable growing, doing tough mudders, and getting their PCV license. With FB pictures as proof. It's probably all a cover :-)

Yes - in the US you need photo ID for just about everything and all of your credit (and therefore job prospects and housing prospects) are intimately linked to a unique number (SSN) that you give out for everything and is checkable through credit checking services.

I have used photo ID here maybe twice. Proof of who you are in the UK usually amounts to utility bills, etc which always strike me as very easy to fake compared to a state-issued photo ID.

Everything here also seems much more lax about "real" names - I "go by" a nickname. In the US, I had to use my legal name on everything so it would match ID/SSN. Here even my employer uses my nickname and bank accounts/tax/etc have never had an issue with the names being different.

They can and it does...........I missed out on my dad for best part of my childhood for that exact reason

Not sure of the relevance of photo ID - without issuing any spoliers, although Walt was operating under a nickname, he wasn't using a fake ID with it.

Gus wasn't using a fake ID.

A lot of people seem to get very hung up on this "real name" nonsense - it doesn't do much to stop crime; better to address the actual issues.

Met use is increasing massively in the UK. It's huge in the chemical sex scene. Horrible drug. Not that there are any pleasant drugs.

Meth! Bloody phone.

I used to work with someone who lived on a very remote farm - we used to have to pick things up from the farm so knew it was there but it really was in the Middle of no where.

He had a huge area of it set aside to grow drugs on and I was > when I found out. It was such a lovely area and he was such a respectable and lovely man. I would never have guessed what he was up to!

I live in Surrey and there was a boy recently locked up for cooking and distributing Meth, he did it in a remote shed. Apparently he was astonished by the volume of eager customers and made an ever increasing quantity. He was 16 when caught, no idea what sentence he got.