A UK man arrested for growing 38 cannabis plants at home defended his grow in court as his effort to cope with a rough divorce and the ridiculously high price of cannabis on the British Isles \u2014 and the judge on the court seemed to believe his story, saying there was no clear-cut evidence the cannabis was for anyone but him.<\/p>\n
On April 25, not far outside Portsmouth on the coast of southern England, police discovered 35-year-old Mark Colwell\u2019s indoor marijuana cultivation setup. At the time, officials put the street value of the crop at \u00a335,000, which is a little bit less than $45,000 U.S. dollars.<\/p>\n
When he showed up at the Portsmouth Crown Court, Colwell told Judge Roger Hetherington that the multi-room operation the police had discovered was his simple effort to cut costs. At the time of the raid, Colwell told officers he was smoking up to a quarter pound a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe ran up massive bills on his credit card,\u201d said Howard Barrington-Clark, Colwell\u2019s lawyer, told the court, according to\u00a0Metro UK<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cHe was lonely and depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n But Judge Hetherington proved to be a tough sell on the idea of 38 plants being for personal consumption, especially given the financial issues Colwell has faced since his marriage fell apart. He told Colwell, \u201c\u2018I\u2019m extremely\u00a0skeptical whether all of this was for your own use.\u201d<\/p>\n But the facts are the facts, and there was no evidence Colwell had plans to distribute the crop once it had finished.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cI think the probability was you were intending to sell some of it for financial gain to assist with your debts, but I don\u2019t make a specific finding about that,\u201d Hetherington said.<\/p>\n While Colwell didn\u2019t get off completely free in the end, it could have gone considerably worse. Cannabis is a Class B drug in the UK, which features a slightly different scheduling or tanking system than seen here in the states. Possession of a Class B drug in the UK can land you in prison for up to five years. Furthermore, production, like exactly what Colwell was doing, can land you with a 14-year\u00a0sentence in prison.<\/p>\n But the courts would not drop the hammer on a cooperative Colwell, who had always admitted the cannabis was his and that he also stole \u00a3896 worth of electricity over the past couple years to power his operation. At the end of the case, the judge only sentenced him to a two year suspended sentence. What makes this extra impressive? This wasn\u2019t even his first offense.<\/p>\n In 2014, magistrates issued Colwell a community order, a type of sentence in the UK that can be modified on a case-by-case basis, for producing cannabis. But Colwell\u2019s biggest run-in with the law came in 1999 as a teenager charged with possession and intent to supply a Class A substance. He went on to serve four years in prison on that charge.<\/p>\n But Colwell\u2019s claims of not wanting to go broke definitely carry weight. A recent\u00a0discussion on Quora\u00a0<\/a>highlighted the current price of cannabis in the UK. According to the respondents, a half ounce of above-average cannabis will run up to \u00a3140. That is up from just \u00a380 a few years ago.<\/p>\n So, if Colwell was purchasing the ounce of marijuana he is smoking every week at street prices, he would be looking at a habit that would run north of \u00a313,400 a year.<\/p>\n This week, UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid\u00a0announced cannabis would be moved to schedule two<\/a>\u00a0in England and doctors will be able to prescribe it in the autumn. Much of the discussion has been around epilepsy<\/a>, and Colwell\u2019s post-divorce depression bud likely wouldn\u2019t qualify. Colwell seems more like a flower guy \u2014 and the new law will only provide for extracts likes the ones made by UK medical giant GW Pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0how much money do you spend on your cannabis?<\/p>\n The post UK Man Blames Pot Grow on Rough Divorce, Judge Partially Buys<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A UK man arrested for growing 38 cannabis plants at home defended his grow in court as his effort to cope with a rough divorce and the ridiculously high price of cannabis on the British Isles \u2014 and the judge on the court seemed to believe his story, saying thereContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4993,50,3395,2576,3496,3157,90,139,4655,2190,1572],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28715,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28714\/revisions\/28715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: UK Man Blames Pot Grow on Rough Divorce, Judge Partially Buys<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"