SUPER-strength cannabis so potent that just one puff can cause schizophrenia is being grown by Merseyside drug gangs.
Cannabis resin, usually smuggled in from Morocco, has been replaced by home-grown super skunk as the drug of choice for sale by criminal gangs on Merseyside.
Experts warn this new strain of cannabis is so incredibly strong it can bring on the early signs of schizophrenia from a single puff.
Today Merseyside’s police chief has warned that organised gangs are moving into the production of the drug as a quick way of making cash.
* A cannabis farm found in a house in New Brighton last Thursday.
* 1,000 cannabis plants in a £1m drug factory found by firefighters called to a blaze at Elmsfield Close, Gateacre, on March 8.
* A hi-tech cannabis factory with £200,000 worth of plants inside a semi-detached house at Jeffereys Crescent, Huyton in February.
* In January, 41 addresses in west Everton were targeted by officers who seized cash, a hydroponics system for growing cannabis, industrial fireworks and class A and B drugs.
Cultivated in houses rigged with professional heating, lighting and feeding equipment, the crushed cannabis leaves are thought to be up to 25 times more potent than that smoked in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Instead they have been replaced by a mental health timebomb waiting to explode.
Merseyside’s chief constable, Bernard Hogan-Howe said: “Cannabis is not the harmless substance some people believe it to be.
“This new super-strength cannabis is here on Merseyside and is creating problems now.
“The legacy of people taking this drug today could well be felt for generations to come.”
According to the National Treatment Agency, an arm of the NHS, just under 3,500 people in the north west sought treatment for cannabis addiction last year.
The number of under-18s treated nationally doubled to nearly 10,000 over the same period.
Research to be published this week in The Lancet is said to show skunk, which has high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is more addictive and socially dangerous than class A drugs such as LSD and ecstasy.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder where the sufferer struggles to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses to others, and to behave normally in social situations.
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