POT BARN: The cannabis industry in Switzerland is booming

The pot barn in Switzerland is having a huge boom in sales, six years after the country legalised "marijuana-light".

KannaSwiss is growing 3,000 plants in a brightly lit greenhouse where electricity bills run to £12,000 a month.

But that’s small change when considering the Swiss taxman is expecting revenue of £20 million on legal sales of £80 million this year alone.

With the KannaSwiss wholesaler supplying many of the 140 shops that are registered to sell low-THC cannabis with pot to smoke or take orally.

The firm, which compares the high from low-potency pot to drinking a couple of glasses of wine, has even had to quadruple its staff to 20.

"You feel like you should be high, because you have a body high, but your mind is completely clear," said KannaSwiss boss Corso Serra di Cassano.

As di Cassano walks past six barrels of dried weed – ready for delivery – with a retail value of roughly £800,000, he adds: "We're really seeing the boom in the last month or two.”

Switzerland changed its laws in 2011 to let adults buy and use low-potency cannabis with a THC content of 1% or lower, the chemical compound that produces a high.

But its money-making potential was only discovered late last year, officials said.

"It started gradually last year, and then suddenly things went crazy in December 2016 and in 2017," said a spokesman for Switzerland's Customs Agency in Berne, which taxes the trade.

One of the cannabis shops KannaSwiss supplies to is Doctor Green’s, founded by Paul Monot.

He says his store's trade has grown briskly following its December opening, hitting monthly revenue of 50,000 to 100,000 Swiss francs on sales of four to eight kilos.

He now has plans to begin marketing products in up to 40 stores.

"Our customers are very mixed. It is really not only the stereotype of unemployed joint smokers, wearing backward caps and sneakers," Monot said.

"They are from all walks of life: 88-year old people are coming, as well as workers, bankers and lawyers."

Carole Rodriguez, a 58-year-old nurse from southern Switzerland, said she visited Doctor Greens to take the edge off her arthritis.

"I am going to brew it in a herbal tea, to fight against pains linked to my joints," Rodriguez said.

"I'll try to cook it in small biscuits, but I'd rather eat it than smoke it because I am not a smoker."

Despite the success, police in Switzerland are still adjusting.

Cops in Zurich and nearby Schaffhausen still confiscate cannabis when their officers find people using it, arguing it is impossible to discern whether its THC content falls within the legal limit without an expensive test.

Geneva police said they were also looking for ways to check whether a batch of cannabis is legal.

Barbara Broers, vice-president of the Swiss Society of Addiction Medicine, said there could still be health risks, for example if growers use pest control chemicals.

"We don't know what is in it. There are inadequate checks of really what is in the substance," Broers said.