Golden Grove pensioner with Parkinson’s battled drug trafficking charge

An Adelaide man with Parkinson’s has told a court he started growing cannabis on his neurologist’s advice – only for cops to raid their housing trust unit.

A Parkinson’s sufferer fined for growing cannabis was using the drug to treat his disease on advice from his neurologist, a court has heard.

Golden Grove man Phillip Harris, 70, and his wife Ampom Inthapanya, 62, were initially charged with drug trafficking. That was later downgraded to possession and cultivating cannabis.

Mr Harris’ lawyer, Jessica Kurtzer, said their two-year legal plight highlighted barriers to access of medicinal cannabis for low-income earners facing chronic illness.

The court heard growing cannabis was, for Mr Harris, an attempt to find relief from Parkinson’s – a brain disease Magistrate Mark Semmens described as “insidious”, “disturbing” and without cure.

He was diagnosed in 2008 and lives on a pension in a housing trust unit.

The disease left him and his wife facing a $20,000 medical bill and the court heard they decided to treat it by growing their own cannabis.

It forced him out of his job as a carpenter, and caused his once-steady hands tremble.

If found guilty of drug trafficking, the pair faced at least 15 years behind bars.

For the possession charges, the pair faced a maximum fine of $2000.

Ms Kurtzer told the court the major indictable offence – drug trafficking – was withdrawn as soon as it hit the city courts.

By June, the couple pleaded guilty in the Elizabeth Magistrates Court to the possession and cultivation charges.

Mr Semmens described how the trafficking charge had been formed on the basis of police finding stripped leaf and stalk – the remnants of three cannabis plants once growing in the couple’s backyard – discarded into buckets in their laundry.

“(It was) the leftover parts of the cannabis plants (and) had no commercial value to anyone and were the leftovers from stripping the plants to assist (Mr Harris),” he said.

Ms Kurtzer told the court the couple had grown the plants after a discussion with Mr Harris’ neurologist amid a lack of effect on his symptoms coming from “traditional” treatments.

“The research does suggest that cannabis can assist in the issues of sleeping, weight loss and also pain,” Ms Kurtzer said. “It was something the couple wished to try.

“ (Mr Harris’s) neurologist had said, ‘look, if it works it works, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t’.

“There was nothing sinister about it, it was simply growing cannabis at home.”

Ms Kurtzer in 2019 helped cannabis advocate Jenny Hallam fight charges of possessing a controlled drug for supply and manufacturing a controlled drug.

Jenny Hallam outside the Adelaide District Court in 2019. Picture: AAP Image/David Mariuz

Ms Hallam was a cannabis oil producer who gave away her products to terminally ill and in-pain people.

She was spared a conviction in the District Court – as Mr Harris and Ms Inthapanya eventually were in the Magistrates Court.

Also like Ms Hallam, Mr Harris and Ms Inthapanya were subjected to a 12-month, $500 good-behaviour bond.

Ms Kurtzer told the court the couple was forced to grow their own cannabis because the price of legal medicinal cannabis was “cost prohibitive”.

In sentencing Mr Semmens described the situation as “unusual” and “atypical” and offered sympathy to Mr Harris.

“You now have to rely on the care, Mr Harris, of your wife, now and in the future – whatever that holds for you,” he said.

During Ms Hallam’s court process University of Sydney Academic Director of the Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics and Psychopharmacology Professor Iain McGregor, explained a year’s treatment of medicinal cannabis would cost about $20,000.

South Australia is one of the only remaining states in Australia without a compassionate use scheme allowing residents to grow cannabis for medical treatment without being criminally charged.