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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Court told of cannabis couple's cottage industry (THC4MS)
News & Star, Carlisle Monday 04 Dec 2006 A COUPLE ran a cottage industry producing bars of chocolate containing cannabis for multiple sclerosis sufferers, a jury heard today. Mark and Lezley Gibson distributed about 22,000 bars from their home in Alston, Cumbria over a six-year period before their arrest last January. They were helped by Marcus Davies an old school pal of Mark Gibson who operated a Post Office Box address. The Gibsons, both 42, and Davies, 36, are on trial at Carlisle Crown Court where all deny two counts of conspiring to supply cannabis in 2004 and 2005. Davies lives in Cambridgeshire. Prosecutor Jeremy Grout-Smith told the jury that police took action after receiving a complaint that 33 packets of Canna-biz chocolate had been discovered at the Royal Mail sorting office in Carlisle on January 25 last year. A few days later officers entered the home of the Gibsons and discovered items including cannabis, chocolate bars, labels, mailing details and a coffee grinder. A few months later Cambridgeshire police went to the home of Davies and discovered he was cultivating cannabis plants in two sheds. He was also running a PO Box number and had contact with the Gibsons. Mr Grout-Smith said the Gibsons were in effect running a cottage industry making chocolate bars impregnated with cannabis. It was advertised as being for medical purposes. They were not conventional drug dealers but believed their actions would be helping people alleviate the pain of a debilitating illness, however that was no defence to these charges. He said: “To supply cannabis, even if you believe it is doing good, is not a defence.” He said Mark Gibson, during his police interview, had admitted sending about 22,000 bars to addresses around the world. They had always sought proof that the recipients were MS sufferers. The jury heard this morning that Lezley Gibson was herself an MS sufferer and that the other two defendants had stood in the past as candidates of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance. A juror made it know to Judge John Phillips this morning that they had a relative who suffered from MS. The judge made it clear that was no bar to them sitting on the case. The trial continues. -- Please sign these petitions: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/search?q=Cannabis+ WebBooks Amazing Amazon Store: http://astore.amazon.co.uk/webbooks05
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