The UK’s independent anti-slavery commissioner, Kevin Hyland, has criticised police forces for failing to tackle the issue of enslaved Vietnamese teenagers being trafficked to the UK to work in illegal cannabis farms. Trafficked and enslaved: the teenagers tending UK cannabis farms Read moreCannabis farms are discovered every week, he said, but when they are identified they are “not being properly investigated”. Teenage Vietnamese cannabis farmers interviewed by the Guardian described being locked into terraced houses and left alone for weeks on end to tend to cannabis seedlings, with food delivered sporadically. Usually when cannabis farms are raided the people who live there, tending the plants, are arrested. Hyland said there was insufficient intelligence gathering done by police when they raid cannabis farms.

Source: The Guardian March 26, 2017 19:30 UTC