Trafficked and enslaved: the teenagers tending UK cannabis farms

Vietnamese teens are tending Britain’s makeshift drug factories in empty buildings from suburban homes to a nuclear bunker
The Guardian (UK)
Saturday, March 25, 2017

An international network of traffickers brings teenage boys from Vietnam to become enslaved gardeners in British suburbs. Yet every few weeks, another farm is discovered and new arrests are made. Police estimate that a significant chunk of British cannabis is produced this way. The NSPCC is so concerned by the exploitation of trafficked Vietnamese children that staff refer to UK-produced cannabis as "blood cannabis". More children are trafficked into the UK from Vietnam than from any other country; of all the identified trafficking victims who were forced into cannabis cultivation in 2012, 96% were from Vietnam, and 81% were children.