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UK: Cannabis Choc Three Gulity

News and Star, Carlisle

Saturday 16 Dec 2006

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A CUMBRIAN couple and a friend who supplied cannabis chocolate to 1,600
multiple sclerosis sufferers to ease their symptoms have been convicted
of conspiring to supply the drug.

It took a jury just 30 minutes to deliver guilty verdicts on Mark and
Lezley Gibson, both 42, and their co-defendant Marcus Davies, 36.

Lezley Gibson, diagnosed with MS in 1985, wept as the jury foreman at
Carlisle Crown Court declared all three defendants guilty of two counts
each of conspiring to supply the class C drug.

Throughout the trial the three defendants had argued that their sole
purpose was to help people with MS. Lezley Gibson said using cannabis
had kept her well, helping her to defy a doctor’s prediction after
diagnosis that she would be in a wheelchair within five years.

But summing up, Judge John Phillips told the jury a recent Appeal Court
ruling had made it clear that no defendant can now rely in law on
medical necessity as a defence.

The trial heard how the Gibsons, helped by Davies, created a cottage
industry supplying cannabis-laced chocolate bars from their home in
Front Street.

At its height the operation saw the couple posting off up to 150
Canna-Biz bars a week, supplying two per cent of the country’s
population of MS sufferers.

With each bar containing 3.5g of the drug, and costing £2.70 to make,
the operation was funded by donations of cannabis and cash.

The bars were sent out free of charge, but only to those who could prove
they had MS by supplying a medical certificate or doctor’s note.

Davies ran a website and had a PO Box in Huntington, using it as a means
of collecting orders from MS sufferers who wanted to receive the chocolate.

As many as 36,000 bars were made and sent out by the Gibsons, the court
heard.

In his closing speech, Lezley Gibson’s barrister Andrew Ford spoke of
the police attitude to the Gibsons after she was cleared of possessing
the drug in 2000 after she argued that cannabis kept her well.

Two years later, chief superintendent Brian Horn – described by Mr Ford
as “the absent voice of reason” – ruled that police should cease to
investigate the Gibsons.

Mr Ford said: “He decided to discontinue surveillance on the Gibsons and
not further investigate them.”

Following earlier publicity about Lezley Gibson being cleared of
possessing cannabis in 2000, Mr Horn didn’t want police to look
oppressive and vindictive by taking action, said the barrister.

Police finally acted in January 2005 when a package containing a bar of
the cannabis chocolate burst open at the Junction Street sorting office
in Carlisle.

The Gibsons’ home was raided within days and the couple arrested.

All the defendants said they made no money from supplying the chocolate
bars. Nor did they charge any of the people they sent them to.

Mr Ford said the Gibsons had more than 1,000 letters from GPs.

The Gibsons and Davies, from St Ives in Cambridgeshire, will be
sentenced on January 26.
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=446719

 

 

 

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