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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Addict grew hisown to save cash
Felicity Collinson Hartlepool Mail
Thursday 08 Feb 2007 felicity.collinson@northeast-press.co.uk A MAN became so addicted to cannabis that he cultivated his own drugs farm and visited Amsterdam to pick up the latest tips. Hartlepool man Stephen Tumilty, 34, could no longer afford the prices charged by the town's cannabis dealers and so decided to grow his own, Teesside Crown Court was told. The 34-year-old, who has smoked the class C drug for 15 years, started off with a 20-plant farm in his girlfriend's loft and visited Holland's capital to pick up the best growing tips. But in 2002 the drug abuse landed him in a mental ward and he and his girlfriend split in 2004. A friend sub-let him a pair of units in an abandoned chicken factory on the town's Usworth Road Industrial Estate. The court heard that he paid the £90-a-month-rent out of his Giro. Tumilty had 18 plants and 42 cuttings when Hartlepool Drugs Squad raided him on December 1, 2004. But Tumilty knew that there was an even bigger and better cannabis "grow" in the building run by others. Prosecuting, Tim Bubb said the police found the entrance, a hole in a wall covered by a filing cabinet, and after smashing their way through a padlocked door they found 400 cannabis plants worth £10,000. Detective Constable Scott Hendry, the officer in charge, said that the "grow" complete with extractor fans was the best he had seen. Tumilty pleaded guilty to producing a Class C drug on the basis that he had nothing to do with the bigger farm. Mr Bubb said that Tumilty's fingerprints and cigarette stubs were found there. But he claimed he was invited in by the operators and paid visits to scrounge cannabis. Judge Peter Armstrong accepted Tumilty's story, saying: "I take the view that the evidence just falls short of proving that he was involved in the larger grow." He had two previous convictions for possessing cannabis in 1996 and one for producing it in 2002. Tumilty told the judge: "It used to be fairly bad use, but no more." The court heard that at one point he was smoking 30 joints and 14 grammes of skunk cannabis a day and also a pipe stuffed with the weed but without normal tobacco. Tumilty of Stephen Street, Hartlepool, was given a nine months jail sentence suspended for two years. http://www.hartlepooltoday.co.uk/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleID=2033827&SectionID=1109
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