A DRUG pusher said to have made £100,000 from his deals set up a cannabis factory in a Nelson back street.

Burnley Crown Court heard how Lee Baron, 29, made £2,000 a week vacuum-packing amphetamine and spent about £20,000 setting up an unsuccessful hydroponic system to produce cannabis.

Baron was sent to prison for three and a half years by Judge Raymond Bennett.

Baron, of Hubert Street, Great Harwood, admitted supplying cannabis, possessing amphetamine and cannabis, conspiring to supply amphetamine over a 13-month period and conspiring to cultivate cannabis. Mark Lamberty, prosecuting, said police found traces of amphetamine at a house in Crawford Street, Nelson. Baron admitted he and others packed the drug into bags.

On a good week, he could bag up between 10 and 20 kilogrammes of amphetamine.

Baron said he shared the proceeds and his personal profit was £2,000.

Between January 1997 and February 1998, the defendant's profit would have been £100,000. Baron said he had a "customer base" of between five and ten people. Upstairs in the same house was a hydroponic system to cultivate cannabis. One bedroom was a nursery and another bedroom had plastic sheeting and rows of plastic guttering. The potential yield of the system, had it been successful, would have been five and a half kilogrammes of cannabis, with a street value of around £13,000.

Baron told police the hydroponic system had not really been successful and he had given it up as a bad job.

Mr Lamberty said Baron had "money to burn" and tried to buy houses to invest it.

Sara Dodd, defending, said until Baron's arrest in February, he had been a hard worker and spent 10 years progressing through the same company.

He became disenchanted by what he described as menial work and began to take drugs.

He quickly realised there was money to be made by selling them.

Baron became involved with people he had consistently refused to name - it was clear others were involved in dealing in amphetamine and setting up the hydroponic system.

He made a great deal of money, spent a great deal and over a few short months lived the high life.

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