Monday, March 09, 2009

Vietnamese Drug Gangs.

In my previous post about incarceration rates for different nationaliities, the Vietnamese were at the top of the list, which was somewhat surprising, to me at least. In the comments 'NW London Cynic' points out that it is because of the involvement of Vietnamese gangs in running cannabis farms. Doing a google news search on "Vietnamese" & "Cannabis" seems to confirm that with citizens of the country being sentenced for running cannabis factories in Bradford, Reading, Croydon, Ely, Norwich, and Keighly:

This cannabis factory — found in an upmarket Keighley suburb — was among several operated by a trio of Vietnamese drug producers.
Hard to believe isn't it- there is such a thing as an upmarkey Keighly suburb!

14 comments:

Sue said...

I'd like to know why there are so many vietnamese in the UK. I'm quite baffled.. they're not EU, they're not Commonwealth.. why?

Ross said...

There aren't that many, 10000 Vietnamese nationals and 25000 people born in Vietnam.

I'd guess a lot of them are the boat people who escaped Vietnam to go to Hong Kong, then under British rule.

Anonymous said...

If cannabis were legalised, how many would be in prison then?

In fact, how does that apply for all nationalities? We might see some perpetrators of victimless "crimes" freed.

Ross said...

"If cannabis were legalised, how many would be in prison then?"

I don't know because the data doesn't breakdown each nationality of prisoner by offence. Probably a lot though

Mind you one of the worse things about criminalising drugs is that it means that the drug trade is controlled by criminals, it might be the case that if drugs were legalised they would just start going into other forms of organised crime rather than simply go straight.

Anonymous said...

Keighley (and note you have 2 typos) gradually becomes open countryside including Bronte country.

Compared to Dewsbury, Bradford and Halifax, it's comparatively gentrified. If it were more on a commuter route then I can imagine it quickly moving up market. Unfortunately the nearest big city, Bradford, is in permanent decline. What business it has clusters around the south side close to the M62. Leeds is a little too far.

Anonymous said...

I left this out before

Here is the Google map for that Keighley address. Switch to Satellite view and see the size of house, garden and the amount of open space nearby. I think that demonstrates my point.

Ross said...

"Switch to Satellite view and see the size of house, garden and the amount of open space nearby. "

That's me told.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Cannabis farmers in the UK traditionally need larger houses/gardens to keep away from prying neighbours.

Anonymous said...

' it might be the case that if drugs were legalised they would just start going into other forms of organised crime rather than simply go straight.'

This doesn't seem a likely development with the Vietnamese in the UK (who are in fact largely of Chinese ethnic origin). They seem to have locked onto cannabis farming as the quickest way to get the capital required to 'seed' legitimate businesses.

( Most of the nail parlours in London are owned by this ethnic group via this benign form of money laundering.The Chinese-Vietnamese are also behind the rapid growth in cheap 'noodle bars' seen over the last decade.)

Personally I think this puts them a cut above most of the other highly ranked nationalities, who seem to prefer recycling their ill gotten gains into hideous 'bling' jewellry and pimpmobiles.
Also, coming to the UK via Hong Kong, they probably know that much of that territory's wealth was founded at the outset (Jardine Matheson et al)on our forcing Bengal opium onto the hapless C19 Chinese ! How the tables have turned.

Ross said...

"This doesn't seem a likely development with the Vietnamese in the UK (who are in fact largely of Chinese ethnic origin). "

I assumed that most of the Vietnamese in the UK are ethnic Chinese, because I've read somewhere before that they made up a large proportion of the refugees from the country.

All these Cannabis growers are too young to be part of that movement though so I wasn't sure about that. I tried googling the names to see if that was a clue but that doesn't really help because a lot of the Vietnamese names have Chinese equivalents.

JuliaM said...

"Personally I think this puts them a cut above most of the other highly ranked nationalities..."

Indeed!

Anonymous said...

I have never understood why selling opium to the Chinese is sees as such a bad thing. It was nothing compared to the slave trade. Far more people have been killed by smoking which we also sold to the Chinese.

and of course, we also took gave them the entire modern world. Is it our fault that they embraced the worst idea, Communism, in history?

Laban said...

Keighley Borough has some lovely areas. East Riddlesden, Laycock (The Turkey Inn, all the villages up to Haworth - not to mention the posh bits where the mill-owners used to live.

JuliaM said...

And right on cue:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7933630.stm