Swedish marijuana production soars to new heights

The number of marijuana farms has surged in Sweden over the past decade as growers typically use remote locations for large growing operations, local media reported on Wednesday.

Incidents of narcotics manufacturing reported to the police soared from some 200 in 2004 to over 900 last year, with a majority of them concerning marijuana, the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported.

"Large-scale production of cannabis has certainly risen and we expect it to continue," head of intelligence at the national police office Torstein Norman told the paper.

Pouncing on online supplies of seeds and equipment, growers typically turn home closets into makeshift greenhouses or convert farm houses and old schools on the countryside, the paper reported.

"It's probably organized crime. The larger the plantation, the better organized you have to be," Norman said.

Prosecutors are currently preparing court cases against 13 detainees suspected of putting undocumented migrants to work on a network of plantations in southern Sweden.

The domestic marijuana production has not entirely cut off foreign suppliers, who saw some 2,000 cannabis seizures by Swedish customs in 2014, most of them in the southern city of Malmo, across the Oresund bridge from Denmark. Endit