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January
2007 The
story which dominated the end of 2006 and the first few weeks of 2007 for UKCIA
was the issue of contamination of herbal cannabis with microscopic glass beads. We
first began hearing of this back in late summer 2006. Following "Operation
Keymer" - a series of high profile raids against cannabis grow-ops - there
was a widespread shortage of cannabis all over the country for the first time
in a good few years. No
doubt this was the simplistic aim of the police raids and to that extent they
were very successful. However, within a couple of weeks of the raids, we began
hearing of herbal cannabis which seemed to contain "sand" or "grit",
it became known as "Grit weed". At
first we thought this was fairly benign, the sand was being added to increase
the weigh, making the cannabis more expensive but otherwise it wasn't thought
to be a serious problem. We don't think that anymore. Posts
to our forum identified this "grit" as being small pieces of glass.
We then began getting photographs of this "grit", which was very good
at reflecting light and so showed up well in flash photos (first
images November 2006). On
Christmas day we received the first solid evidence of what this contamination
was (see
26th December update). It was shown to be small glass beads used for sandblasting
and reflective road marking paint which had been sprayed onto the bud, penetrating
deep into it | 
