A WOMAN who prosecutors claim was twice caught growing cannabis at home told police ‘I am not going to stop’.
Michelle X also claimed the rules for producing cannabis were ‘unjust’ and that the law ‘needs changing’.
The 52-year-old of Lammas Close, Abingdon, denies two counts alleging the production of a drug of class B.
She claims that the drugs seized on two occasions in 2018 were to be used as ‘cannabis medicine’ to treat her Multiple Sclerosis.
Outlining the case at the start of her trial at Oxford Crown Court yesterday, prosecutor Ian Ball said police found cannabis at her home on two separate visits.
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The first, he said, took place on July 16, 2018 and the second on December 9, 2018.
Jurors were told that when officers attended her home on the first occasion, at about 9.20am, they noticed ‘a smell of cannabis’.
Inside a kitchen cupboard a ‘small cannabis cultivation system’ was discovered, prosecutors said, and a quantity of the drug seized.
Detailing the second incident, Mr Ball said police went to her home again on December 9 after a report of a suspected arson.
He said that on going inside police found more cannabis plants growing in a tent inside a bedroom.
Other equipment was also taken on that visit, prosecutors said, including air filters, reflective foil and ‘the sort of thing you might need to grow cannabis indoors’.
X was interviewed by police following each incident.
During the first police interview she said she ‘couldn’t walk’ without the drug and told officers: “I am not going to stop, if you insist on me stopping I will be in prison.
“It is an unjust law that needs changing, I will leave that to the experts.”
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Jurors also heard yesterday a second police interview X gave after the December incident.
During that police interview she said the plants she was growing had a further six weeks remaining before they would become a ‘one-year supply of medication'.
She said that without 'medication' she was ‘completely bed bound’ and that it also helped with her asthma.
She went on: “I am aware there is no legal UK use for cannabis medicine at all, there is no UK GP that prescribes anything.
“Europe is different.”
Addressing the jury of five women and seven men Mr Ball said: “We understand that she is saying she was growing the plants, which she refuses to call cannabis and calls it medical cannabis, in order to make products to medicate herself, to alleviate herself of some of the ailments that she experiences.
“It is the prosecution’s case that it was in fact cannabis.
“There is no legal use for this, it does not matter what reason she is growing this for.
“It is the prosecution’s case the reasons don’t matter, she should not be growing cannabis and has been caught growing it twice.”
X denies both counts and the trial - expected to last up to three days - continues.
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