The Cannabis Debate: Legalisation could mean opportunities for investors but disruption for thousands of dealers on London estates

Patch: Marco, a south London dealer
Nigel Howard

Shot twice, stabbed four times, jailed on eight occasions but a new threat looms for estate dealer

Marco leaned against the front door of his high-rise flat in Battersea and lit up his sixth joint of the day. “There are maybe 800 flats in these endz, bruv,” he said, scanning the surrounding tower blocks. “Perfect for a man like me to do his business.”

Marco, 32, claims to have racked up £5 million sales here in the last 10 years, making him, probably, the most lucrative enterprise on this particular south London estate.

The father of four peddles one product only: cannabis. “I am strictly a crow man,” he said, as distinct from a “hard man”, who deals in hard drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine.

“People here don’t see weed as a drug. It’s so normal you almost forget it’s illegal.”

Several floors below, teenagers weaved around on pushbikes in the late afternoon sun. Did they work for Marco? “Youts [youngsters] come to me all the time,” he said. “They say, ‘Mum lost her job, man need something on the side, buss [help] me, I wanna be your shotter [dealer]’. But I got kids myself so I don’t employ anyone under 15.”

Marco, not his real name, shifts about 52kg of cannabis a year, a tiny proportion of the 255,000kg of illegal cannabis worth £2.5 billion sold in the UK every year.

My business model is simple. I buy one kilo of weed a week for £5,000 and divide it up between my team of shotters who sell to the punters for £10 a gram. We make £5,000 profit a week. Tax free 

Marco, a south London cannabis dealer

“My business model is simple,” he said. “I buy one kilo of weed a week from the plug [supplier] for five bags [£5,000] and divide it up between my team of shotters who sell to the punters for £10 a gram. We make 10 bags [£10,000] a week of which £5,000 is profit. That’s £20,000 a month. Tax free.”

The stuff is potent. “It’s 25 per cent THC,” he said, referring to tetrahydrocannabinol, the intoxicating constituent of cannabis.

But with THC levels above 15 per cent dubbed “skunk” and worryingly linked to mental illness among heavy young users, is that safe? He laughed. “I don’t think so but the higher the better as far as my customers are concerned.” How does he know the THC percentage? “I have no actual idea,” he admitted. “Man just know it’s strong.”

Marco’s phone rang constantly. Calls came from burner phones and a stream of “mates and shotters” came and went from his flat, one of several dens he controls on the estate.

In the sparse living room, with the whiff of weed in the air, his three children, all aged under 13, played Xbox, waiting for their mothers to fetch them after school.

Marco has been shot twice, stabbed four times and jailed for dealing eight times, on each occasion spending just a few months in prison despite supply of this Class B drug carrying a sentence of up to 14 years. So far nothing has deterred him from going straight back to selling crow.

Yet the biggest potential disruption to Marco’s little empire comes not from the police or other shotters muscling in on his patch — but from a threat he could never have envisaged.

Eton, City job ... dealer: the new cannabis kingpins on the block

 Daniel Fryer, left, and George McBride - the new breed of entrepreneurial 'dealers'

At the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, 250 venture capitalists and investors had gathered to discuss the burgeoning European cannabis market. The event had attracted only eight enthusiasts when cannabis consultant George McBride, 31, and his business partner Alastair Moore, 29, started running “cannabis networking evenings” on the first Wednesday of every month one year ago, but on this night it was standing room only at the IoD headquarters of corporate UK.

McBride, a former barrister, kicked off the evening by introducing their sponsor, “Tom Gray, founder of Blume Jobs, the UK’s first recruitment company focusing exclusively on the cannabis space”. Then he turned to the panel and asked expectantly: “Is legalisation coming to the UK?”

The first panellist, Old Etonian Daniel Fryer, 26, said: “I gave up my career as an investment banker at JP Morgan in the US to go into cannabis when it was legalised in California. Last year I returned to the UK for the Canadian cannabis company MPX International to build their business in the UK and Europe because we see this as an unstoppable wave. Legalisation is coming. But try telling my landlord what I do for a living. When I arrived, I said, ‘I’m in farming’. Now I just say I’m into cannabis,” he laughed. “That I’m a drug dealer.”

I spent 18 years working in the City in mergers and acquisitions, but cannabis is the most exciting sector I’ve worked in

Tristan Gervais, head of European cannabis investment banking at Canaccord Genuity

Another panellist, Tristan Gervais, head of European cannabis investment banking at Canaccord Genuity, added: “I spent 18 years working in the City in mergers and acquisitions, but cannabis is the most exciting sector I’ve worked in.

“We are seeing massive investment in Canada and the US. And the medical cannabis market in Europe is forecast to be the largest on the planet, with London at its centre. But the biggest prize will be recreational with 90 million users in Europe. This is the end of prohibition. It will be huge.”

Most of the panellists and attendees were young, driven, university-educated and with options to succeed in a variety of fields. In short, the new drug dealers seemed nothing like the Marcos of old.

The Standard had earlier gone to another cannabis networking event at London’s Cass Business School, attended by 120 students. They had listened to speakers carving up the cannabis market into three sectors: wellness, medical and recreational. They heard how “wellness” health and beauty products, in the form of CBD (cannabidiol derived from cannabis with no intoxicating effects), were already widely available in shops, how medical was growing fast, but “rec is what we are positioning for”.

But could “rec” really be legalised in the UK?

Today’s Survation poll published by the Standard indicates British public opinion has swung in favour of legalisation for recreational use.

Public opinion is powerful. It forced the legalisation of medical cannabis by the Government last year and is even more critical in this instance because without clear votes to be gained, no major political party would risk taking on the anti-cannabis lobby.

Our poll shows the potential for parties wooing the younger demographic, with 65 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds backing legalisation. Taking a fact-based approach, would legalisation be a boon or a disaster?

Over the coming days, we will publish eyewitness accounts of the impact legalisation is having overseas.

  • Some personal details have been changed for reasons of anonymity

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