Jail for Cowley cannabis farmer caught tending drug plants

Viet Nguyen, 45, opened the front to police officers called to the semi-detached property in Littlemore Road, Oxford, where he was growing the class B drug in May.

Previously, Oxford Crown Court has heard that he was first arrested by officers from Hertfordshire Constabulary in 2019, when it was found he was in the country illegally.

Then, in June last year, he was arrested at a cannabis factory in Bristol by officers from Avon and Somerset Police.

Unusually in such cases, the Home Office department responsible for assessing claims that someone was the victim of modern slavery had decided that there were not ‘reasonable grounds’ to conclude that the three-time drugs farmer was in such a position.

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On Monday (July 24), prosecutor Cathy Olliver said police knocked on the door of a semi-detached three-bed property in Littlemore Road, Cowley, on May 9. It was answered by Nguyen.

The heavy stench of cannabis betrayed what was happening inside the house.

Four rooms were given over to growing the class B drug. There was a professional set-up with lights on timers and living quarters comprising a small kitchen, toilet and a bed in a living room.

Police shared these images of cannabis growing in a wallpapered room in Oxford Picture: TVP (Image: Thames Valley Police)

Ms Olliver said there were 241 cannabis plants that, if harvested, would have yielded 14kgs of the drug.

On the wholesale market the plants were worth £102,000 or, if broken down to street amounts, could have made £178,000.

Nguyen, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty on a basis to producing a class B drug. He had no previous convictions and was in the UK illegally.

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Sentencing, Judge Michael Gledhill KC said: “If you had not come to this country illegally you wouldn’t have found yourself in the position of having to work for others who were growing an illegal drug, namely cannabis.

“But you found yourself in this country without being able to work and therefore to live you had to do something and you were coerced into acting as the gardener in this property, which had been converted for the production of cannabis and you looked after those plants.

“You watered them and made sure that the temperature and the lighting were right and in return you were given very basic accommodation and food.

“Cannabis is illegal and production of it is illegal.”

He jailed him for eight months, telling Nguyen that he faced deportation to Vietnam on his release.

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