Community sentence for Telford man who grew £42,000 of cannabis in secret room
A Telford man who grew £42,500 of cannabis in a secret room in his house has been given a 12-month community sentence and ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work.
Jason David Green grew 31 plants at his home in Ketley, Telford, in a room hidden behind a false wall, the town's magistrates heard.
Green, 43, of Waterloo Road, was told that had he been able to harvest the plants he could have been facing a jail sentence.
Mrs Kate Price, prosecuting, said police had visited Green's home after receiving information about cannabis growing.
They found the plants in a locked room separated from the kitchen and covered over by a false wall.
Of the 31 plants discovered, 20 were very close to being harvested, she said.
Mr Oliver Nicholas, for Green, said that the £42,500 figure for the value of the cannabis was based on a number of assumptions by the prosecution and that "a significant amount of caution" should be exercised when considering it.
It assumed that all the plants were female, when in fact 50 per cent of them were male and that they were grown so successfully that they could have been harvested three times in the same year, said Mr Nicholas.
A spokesman for the probation service said that the defendant had been particularly upset by the affect the coverage of his case had had on his children.
Green, who had previously pleaded guilty to growing 31 cannabis plants at his home at an earlier hearing, was also handed a 12-month supervision order and ordered him to pay £85 prosecution costs and a £60 victim surcharge.
