Arrested for growing one dagga plant to ease friend’s pain

THE negative picture of ineffective policing and protected drug lords painted in Thursday’s leader is a far cry from the situation out here on the Garden Route.

On the very morning of your editorial, our local police force conducted a successful operation in the “War on Drugs”, no doubt in response to President Zuma’s embarrassing remarks about the Western Cape being the country’s “drug capital”, as recently reported in this newspaper.

Officers swooped on premises in a Stilbaai suburb and arrested the owner-occupier on charges of cultivating and dealing in cannabis (“dagga”).

It was several hours later when I met the accused, Johan (not his real name), but he was still shaken by the sudden arrival of the SAPS team, not to mention the search, seizure and his subsequent arrest.

The investigating officer apparently threatened him with incarceration in “a flea-infested cell” if he refused to disclose where he’d sourced the single cannabis plant in his possession.

But, although he kept mum, the police eventually relented and released him to appear before the magistrate on March 10.

Johan told me that he’d been growing the plant for a friend of his who was suffering from chronic pain and who believed that it might help. The friend couldn’t grow his own because he’s not well enough.

I laughed and offered Johan odds that he would have ended up using at least 10% himself for “quality-testing”, but he assured me that the whole lot was for his sick pal.

He confessed that he had smoked dagga in the past, once in 1949, but that it hadn’t suited him so he’d not bothered with it since.

I explained to Johan that he had a few options, ranging from payment of an admission-of-guilt fine through to asking the high court for a stay of prosecution on grounds that the law prohibiting cannabis is unconstitutional.

Throughout the country there are dozens of cannabis prosecutions thus stayed pending the outcome of the “Dagga Couple” legal action against the government.

Johan felt strongly that his case should also be stayed, but he doesn’t fancy the numerous appearances he’d still have to make before the magistrates or the required 750km round trip to the high court in Cape Town.

At 84 years of age, he likes to make the most of his remaining time, so he’s decided to pay the R500 fine and accept the criminal record – his first ever – that goes with it.

Of course, it’s by far the wisest course and I backed him fully. But I can’t shake off this lingering doubt as to whether or not justice has really been served. Stephen Pain Riversdale