Seven people have been killed in the last five years in England and Wales in incidents linked to break-ins or attempted burglaries at houses or factories which have been converted into cannabis farms.

On top of that stark statistic, in May 2022 four Vietnamese nationals died in a fire in a disused mill in Oldham, near Manchester, which is believed to have been used to grow cannabis.

Grace Robinson, a criminologist and CEO of Black Box Research and Consultancy, said: “Drug trafficking organisations have undoubtedly realised that growing cannabis in the UK is a more profitable and easier option than importing or smuggling it.”

Robinson told The Epoch Times: “Obviously due to the nature of the trade in illicit drugs, it’s difficult for growers and sellers to seek justice through legal means, leaving them vulnerable to theft and violence. It’s often children and vulnerable adults responsible for maintaining cannabis farms therefore those robbing them are rarely deterred by their presence.”

Last month Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said young illegal immigrants were being trafficked across the English Channel and employed in “cannabis farms” or in “prostitution.”

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told House of Commons last month that of the 4,600 unaccompanied children who had been accommodated in hotels since July 2021, “200 children remain missing, 13 of whom are under 16 years of age, and only one of whom is female.”

He said 176 of those 200 teenagers were Albanian nationals.

Cooper said nobody was properly investigating the links between illegal immigration and organised crime like cannabis farming.

She told the BBC: “There’s no targeted unit going after them and saying ‘Look, this is a pattern,’ where young people are being trafficked across the Channel and then into cannabis farms or into prostitution in some of the worst cases … being picked up from outside these hotels.”

In June 2021 two Albanians Andi Cani, 24, and Adrian Lleshaj, 29, and a Vietnamese Ca Van Vu, 31, were jailed for between 28 months and 40 months after they turned a former nightclub in Coventry into a cannabis factory.

The National Crime Agency said the illegal enterprise, which had 1,500 cannabis plants worth £1 million on three floors of the building, was the “largest and most sophisticated cannabis factory” it had ever come across.

Rob Barker, the campaign and communications lead at Barod, a substance misuse treatment provider in south Wales, said cannabis farms—sometimes known as grows—were very easy to start up and needed minimal training.

Barker told The Epoch Times: “It is very easy to do and it’s very easy to get the cannabis seeds online.”

But he said: “What a lot of people probably don’t realise is that the actual cannabis market is quite a violent one and probably one that has a lot of dark, hidden secrets to it.”

“There’s a lot of human trafficking involved in cannabis production. We get a lot of individuals for example, you know, coming from various parts of Asia to be trafficked through the UK to help with the production of cannabis farms and then obviously, those individuals are for example, those people who are obviously, potentially are at risk of being caught or even potentially being at risk of a victim of violent crime,” added Barker.

In December 2021, Xhovan Pepaj, a 25-year-old Albanian national, was stabbed to death while minding a cannabis factory in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

Eleven people, aged from 17 to 51, have been charged with his murder and the first of two murder trials is currently under way in a new “super court” in Loughborough in the Midlands.

Barker told The Epoch Times: “These kind of farms are born out of prohibition. Now, that’s not to say that if we legalise cannabis, that these would all be eradicated. We would still have kind of cannabis mass production, we’d still have ultimately a black cannabis market. We have a black alcohol market. We have a black market in cigarettes.”

Robinson said: “Legalising cannabis could help to reduce the violence associated with the black market by bringing the drug into a regulated and controlled environment. It could also provide a safe and legal source of cannabis, which might reduce the incentives for people to engage in illegal and dangerous activities, such as violent farm robberies.”

Barker said there had been a big increase in alcohol and drug consumption since the pandemic started and he said: “What we’re seeing now, in terms of the cost of living crisis, is we’re seeing people come into our service saying their substance use has either started, or it’s been exacerbated … because they’re experiencing a significant amount of stress and anxiety in terms of whether they can afford their bills over the next few months.”

He said there was also anecdotal evidence of people who were unemployed or on low incomes dealing drugs to “make ends meet.”

Since 2018 there have been 11 deaths that appear to have been linked to cannabis farming.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Home Office but has not had a response.