Warning : This is entirely a work of fiction. Any connection to any persons real or imaginary is purely coincidental. And if you're looking for the happy ending, it's at the end.
The following notes may, possibly, be of help to anyone growing.
Pottering about in the greenhouse on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I hear voices and see a half dozen people in civilian clothes walking down the path. Half a dozen! That's a lot in one go.
The lead guy identifies himself as a cop, and starts jabbering on about looking for cannabis. Some go into the greenhouse. There's a warrant produced.
There's some chitchat about the plants and then into the house.
It's worse than having a bunch of kids swarming around the place. They are into everything, poking around, looking at photo's searching through the kitchen stores. Phone numners, computer, they get everywhere.
Generally very good natured.
Great quotes from the cops (all true):
"If it was legal, I'd be at it myself."
"I wish I hadn't found this," from ban garda, after opening up a gaily coloured tin.
"My religion is drink"
"When are you opening up the coffee shop?"
Silence - in response to a question: is there one of youse who thinks the Garda Commissioner is a honest man?
"Half the country is smoking cannabis" - one cop's estimation of the amount of tokers.
When I refused to inform on my alleged supplier; "You wouldn't be true
Sligoman if you did [inform]."
I'd been explaining how cannabis was my religion. I accompanied them as they left to the gate. The top cop pulled out a Bible and said this is my religion. I didn't know cops carried Bibles around with them. "Do youse all go to church?" I asked, and a great chorus of yeses came forth from them. I asked for the Bible and found the bit - on the second page - where God gives all seed bearing plants to man and it shall be to you as food. "Cannabis has got seeds, hasn't it?"
They all laughed heartily, amid calls of: "Oh well, there's a revised version out now" and something about the 1971 Misuse of drugs act. Another said that there was a bit in the Bible that proved the local judge was a bollocks. They got into their two cars and drove off, the boots crammed with cannabis plants.
The next day, another visit. This time there's a dog, a lovable springer spaniel. They will be distracted by the smell of another dog, incidentally, and it missed a nodge of soap bar and some of last years dried hemp in a wee jar, with airtight lid.
"Didn't I tell you we'd be back tomorrow. Willie's on overtime!"
On the whole, very chatty and friendly. This is part of the game - to get as much information as possible out of you. On the other hand, there's no point in getting aggressive with them, as they have a lot more aggression and the back up to use it too.
They were talking about taking the computer, but in the end they chilled out.
A week or so later, coming back on the Dublin train, there's four of them waiting for me as I step off the train. Bustled into the car and off to the station. On the way, they stop two young lads on a motorbike and get them to come up to station too. A car coming against them on a very narrow street is viciously sworn at for not going up on the pavement to let them pass. The top cop tells another cop to takle down the cars number. But maybe that was put on for my benefit.
Searched with no great enthusiasm or thoroughness. More light hearted banter.
Since then, nothing except an occasional weekly cop car driving past the path to my house, then turning back a hundred yards up the road and leaving the area.
Oh yeah, the happy ending? Do you recall Ming, the cannabis dude
who sent a whole bunch of spliffs to politicians (in November 2001)?
His webpage is www.ming.td (temporarily
out of action).
He was arrested and released. Nine months later, he gets a letter from the DPP ( Director of Public Prosecutions) saying they will not prosecute him.
"I cultivated cannabis; the State knows I cultivated cannabis. I am not to be prosecuted for it."
"I find it amazing. The next time a person is in court for the possession of cannabis, can they not come along and say: 'I know another person who was found in possession of cannabis and they are not being prosecuted for it?'
"Cannabis has been legalised as far as I am concerned," he said.
Me too.
A letter to the Minister for drug strategy which maybe triggered this fictional raid