Episode Timeline
View all episodesNovember 30, 2020
10,300,152
138,211
6,481
1.40%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
While weed laws are becoming more progressive in many states across the US, cannabis cultivation can still get you some serious prison time in the UK.
Most smokers have no idea where their buds come from, but the higher demand and continued criminalisation of weed in the UK has engendered a black-market supply chain of human deprivation: ‘Cannabis slaves’, often trafficked from Vietnam, are forced to tend to massive grows worth millions in street value – completely against their will.
For spliff connoisseurs who have been smoking their whole adult lives and hold down regular jobs and have families, picking up poor-quality hydroponic weed from dodgy dealers in blacked out cars or down dark alleyways has become less and less desirable. Guerrilla growers are an online community of cannabis cultivators in the UK who harvest their weed plants in the wild, hiding in plain sight sometimes on the side of motorways.
Growing certain strains of cannabis that can withstand the British climate, many have been supplying themselves and their friends with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of organic weed for almost a decade. It’s all grown outside in the sun, bypassing dealers and without being traced by the police.
Our drugs editor, Max Daly, linked us up with two guerrilla growers who were about to retire from the cultivation game, just as they were harvesting their last ever crop.
Click here to subscribe to VICE
About VICE:
The Definitive Guide To Enlightening Information. From every corner of the planet, our immersive, caustic, ground-breaking and often bizarre stories have changed the way people think about culture, crime, art, parties, fashion, protest, the internet and other subjects that don't even have names yet. Browse the growing library and discover corners of the world you never knew existed. Welcome to VICE.
Connect with VICE:
Check out our full video catalog
Videos, daily editorial and more
More videos from the VICE network
Click here to get the best of VICE daily
Like VICE on Facebook
Follow VICE on Twitter
Follow us on Instagram
The VICE YouTube Network:
Motherboard
VICE Sports
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
