I want research
licence to grow pure cannabis
Source: ic North
Wales
Pub Date: Friday 16 January 2004
Subj: I want
research licence to grow pure cannabis
Author: Carl
Butler
URL: http://icnorthwales.icnetwork.co.uk
Ref:
http://www.ccguide.org/bbci170104.php
I want research
licence to grow pure cannabis
A CANNABIS
campaigner on trial for drugs charges yesterday told a jury he had applied for
a Home Office research licence to grow the drug.
Jeff Ditchfield,
43, of Rhyl, told Chester Crown Court street cannabis from "dealers and
gangsters" was usually so polluted it contained only 5-8pc of the drug.
He told the
jury: "I have written to the Home Office asking if I can have a research
licence so that I can cultivate and grow it to produce pure cannabis.
"The Home
Office are asking for more information and I am still in dialogue with
them."
Ditchfield, of
Water Street, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of possession of cannabis
and canna-bis resin and two charges of possession with intent to supply
cannabis and cannabis resin, after police found the drugs in his car on
September 6 last year.
Police had
executed a search war-rant at his shop, Beggars Belief, at Water Street.
The court heard
the shop was equipped to sell "horticultural materials". Asked if
this was for growing cannabis, Ditchfield said it could be, but all the
equipment was legal and could equally be used for growing any plants.
The jury went
out at 3pm yesterday and are expected to deliver ar verdict this morning.
Ditchfield
admits the drugs were his and that he would have supplied them to someone who
was in genuine medical need. The jury heard his defence is one of
"necessity" - that he kept the drug because he genuinely believed it
should be administered to someone in pain.
Multiple
sclerosis sufferer, excouncillor Glyn Williams, of Caerwys, told the court how
Mr Ditchfield had supplied him with cannabis which had given him more relief than
any other drug he had been prescribed over 20 years.
Karl Scholz,
prosecuting, told the jury: "The outcome of this case is important. You
should put aside your own views about whether you think cannabis should be
legalised or not, or whether it is beneficial.
"Do you
think it is reasonable or necessary that a person not medically qualified
should be allowed to maintain a stock of cannabis for him to decide on an
application being made to him, whether to prescribe cannabis, and in what
quantities.?"
Summing up, Mr
Recorder Elgan Edwards, who described Ditchfield as a "intelligent and
likeable man" said: "It is not your role or mine to decide whether
cannabis should be legalised. The fact is cannabis and cannabis resin is
illegal and to supply it is illegal."