A JUDGE jailing a businessman for growing cannabis has issued a strong warning that setting up "home-based" factories will lead to prison sentences.

Ian Cartmel, 40, was yesterday locked up for 40 months after police busted a £47,000 cannabis farm at his home at Beck House, Silsden, on December 21 last year.

Cartmel, who pleaded guilty to production of the Class B drug, was initially imprisoned for a week last Wednesday by Judge Jonathan Rose, who told Bradford Crown Court it was "a troubling case."

Cartmel was a man of previous good character who had put his drinking and cannabis use behind him, his lawyer Nigel Jamieson said.

He had built up a successful business and was unlikely to offend again.

Mr Jamieson told the adjourned hearing he had visited Cartmel in Leeds Prison and the defendant was "visibly affected by his incarceration."

He was "a fish out of water" in a wing full of drug users.

Judge Rose told Cartmel: "You are generally a decent man whose criminality represents a remarkable fall from grace."

But the factory was "a substantial and successful commercial enterprise" estimated to have been capable of producing 5.5kilos of skunk cannabis with a street value of up to £47,000.

Cartmel hoped to sell his crop wholesale to one buyer for £25,000.

Judge Rose said there had been a significant increase in the number of "home-based cannabis grows" in West Yorkshire and elsewhere.

Offenders like Cartmel hoped to make big profits for a modest outlay.

"The drug users you were imprisoned with are the product of your criminality. You are not a victim of their behaviour. You and others like you are a cause of their behaviour," the judge said.

Last week, the court heard that Cartmel was arrested when a police officer smelled cannabis after he called at his home on another matter.

Prosecutor Duncan Ritchie said it was a substantial commercial cannabis factory, with the attic, basement and a bedroom given over to cultivation of about 123 plants.

Growing equipment seized included foil wall linings and high powered lighting.

There were 66 flowering plants in the attic and 57 others in the bedroom and cellar, along with evidence of a previously harvested crop.

"This was intended for future supply on a substantial scale," Mr Ritchie said.