] Date: Fri 30 May 1997 Source: The Daily Telegraph, London, UK (Electronic Telegraph Issue 735) Contact: Fax: 0171 538 6455 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk) Patient grew cannabis after hospital tests By Hugh Muir A MAN given cannabis as a painkiller during Home Office tests grew the drug when the research finished, a court was told yesterday. Andrew Betts, 30, who suffers from an incurable stomach illness, was the sole subject of licensed tests at Hammersmith Hospital in west London which enabled him to halve his daily intake of morphine. This led to a dramatic reduction in his sideeffects and meant that he was no longer clinically depressed. But when the tests came to an end Betts, Britain's only known sufferer of Familial Mediterranean Fever, an inherited and nonfatal condition, was forced back on to morphine with a dosage usually prescribed for terminallyill cancer patients. He then grew 45 cannabis plants from seed at his home using tin foil, lighting, a fan and propagator, said Roger Smart, prosecuting, at Maidstone Crown Court, Kent. Despite an unsophisticated, makeshift greenhouse, some of the plants grew to four feet tall. They were discovered after police received a tipoff and raided his semidetached house last August. Mr Smart said the plants were found in the back garden and cellar of the house where a room had been lined with silver foil and other drug production equipment. Had they matured, the estimated total yield of all the plants would have been 220 grammes. Betts would have grown the plants and selected the female ones which contain higher levels of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. He would then have sampled them and disposed of the rest by feeding them to his pet chinchillas. "Betts said that, if the police had not found the plants, he would have picked and dried the leaves before smoking them in cigarette papers," said Mr Smart. "He admitted he knew it was illegal to have cannabis other than as part of the Home Office trials." He had two previous convictions for drugrelated offences. In 1987, he admitted supplying cannabis resin and in February, 1994, he admitted smuggling 300 grammes of herbal cannabis through Harwich. He received a sixmonth conditional discharge for the second offence. Penelope Barrett, defending, said: "It would be easy for an observer of this case, particularly in light of his previous convictions, to report him as some kind of menace to society but this is an extremely unusual set of circumstances. "The drug was not to be pedalled but kept for him. He was not seeking to cause direct harm to anyone else but to alleviate what he saw as a very real dilemma. His position was that he was caught between the devil and deep blue sea. Take such levels of morphine and he was like a zombie; do not take take it and the pain was crippling." Betts, a father of three, of Gillingham, Kent, originally denied the charge of cultivating cannabis but changed his plea to guilty after Mr Recorder Peter Morgan ruled that his defence of necessity or duress could not be put before a jury. Conditionally discharging him for two years, the judge said: "Although I admit to great sympathy for the defendant and the pain he suffers I cannot bend the law as I see it for his sake. You will not be justified or excused if you repeat the offence or use cannabis when not under licence." Outside the court, Betts's wife, Lesley, said she was not happy about the outcome. "I would rather the case had gone to trial," she said. "It is unfair that he was not even given a chance." Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1997. "Electronic Telegraph" and "The Daily Telegraph" are trademarks of Telegraph Group Limited.