March 24, 1998

POT-GROWING TRANSPLANT MAN IS FREED

A JUDGE has allowed a liver transplant patient to go free after he admitted growing and using cannabis to ease his pain. Sympathising with him, Judge John Hopkin said: "I accept that’s why you were growing it; to relieve the considerable pain you must suffer. That is against the law as it stands at the present time, but there is very substantial mitigation in your case."

Richard Gifford, 49, a father of six, was given a two-year conditional discharge at Nottingham Crown Court last week after pleading guilty to producing and possessing cannabis. The judge said: "Whether this substance should be obtained by prescription is a matter for Parliament. But it does seem from a number of cases that appear before me that it is of benefit to a number of persons."

Yesterday Gifford pledged to carry on smoking the drug: "While I am still alive, I intend to carry on using it," he said. His family doctor also backed his use of cannabis in a letter to the judge.

The court heard that police found cannabis plants, some 8ft tall, growing in Gifford’s back garden in Nottingham.

Gifford said after the case that he first smoked the drug in 1968 after being medically discharged from the Royal Engineers because of a spinal disorder. He then contracted hepatitis and, in 1996, he underwent a liver transplant.

His chances of surviving were put at less than 40 per cent. At the height of his suffering, the former garage owner was smoking up to 20 cannabis "joints" a day, drinking marijuana tea and even eating freshly picked leaves with his roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

"I couldn’t begin to tell you the amount of pain and suffering I have had to endure. But I was able, once I had the availability of cannabis, to stop using prescribed drugs such as morphine and other strong painkillers which are habitually addictive," he said.

Gifford’s wife, Miriam, a clairvoyant, said she had never touched cannabis but would not hesitate to use the drug if she fell ill. Her husband said he had been buying it on the streets since the police cut down his 12 8ft plants. He has asked for a licence to grow the drug legally or be able to obtain it on prescription but he had been turned down.

Medical experts have claimed that cannabis also brings relief to people with arthritis and multiple sclerosis, and stimulates appetites of Aids patients.

Paddy Tipping, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, said that the Government had no plans to decriminalise cannabis: