RHYL MAN VOWS TO CONTINUE SMOKING CANNABIS

A 61-YEAR-OLD man convicted of possessing cannabis said he would
rather go to prison than stop smoking the drug to ease his pain.

Last week Ron Bloom pleaded guilty at Prestatyn magistrates court to
three charges of possessing small amounts of cannabis.

Some of the drug was found at his home in Lynton Walk, Rhyl, in
January this year.

One charge of cultivating the drug was dropped.

But he insisted smoking cannabis helped ease his sciatica.

He was given a 12-month conditional discharge by District Judge
Andrew Shaw and ordered to pay costs of UKP150.

"It's wrong that I have been criminalised for taking something which
should be prescribed," he said.

Mr Bloom told the Judge: "If you are prepared to give people
methadone, a really addictive drug, why can't I have cannabis?"

The 61-year-old, who moved to Rhyl from London in 1997, later
admitted he first experimented with cannabis socially in the 1960s.

But a specialist at the Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital suggested in
the '80s he take it for stomach ulcers.

In the 1990s he began suffering from sciatica and the pain travelled
from his leg to his back.

"The pain got worse, and at times I have to lie on the floor and
can't get up to go to bed," he said.

He had to give up his job as a mobile engineer travelling around supermarkets.

Traditional painkillers prescribed by his GP caused severe headaches
and other side-effects, and in 1999 he decided to start taking
cannabis for pain relief.

He now smokes it at least once every day.

For a while Mr Bloom cultivated his own plants at home, growing just
enough for himself, but stopped doing that last year.

He sealed up his attic where he had grown them, but remains were
found by the police.

"But the police who had visited my home when my wife died suddenly
hadn't wanted to know when I told them that I was growing cannabis
for medicinal reasons," he said.

Mr Bloom, who has a 16-year-old daughter, says he knows of hundreds
of people of similar age to himself who rely on the drug for relief.

And during his court appearance he handed to the District Judge the
results of a study published in the Journal of Clinical Therapeutics
which showed that extracts from cannabis provided effective long-term
treatment for multiple sclerosis.

Sentencing him, Mr Shaw said: "You are not the first person to make
these points but unfortunately I do not make the law."

Mr Bloom, who says he is sometimes in excruciating pain when he walks
any distance, said he felt that the reclassification of drugs was inevitable.

"The one thing I want to see before I die is that cannabis is
decriminalised," he said.

"I have no choice but to carry on taking it because of my condition
and have to ignore the conditional discharge.

"If I get sent down for it then so be it, but it will cost the
government far more to keep me in prison," he added.