DEALER BELIEVED CANNABIS A GIFT FROM MAORI GODS

A drug-addicted grandmother who ran a "tinny" house believed cannabis was a
gift from the Maori gods Rangi and Papa, a court heard.

Mary Te Harihari Ake, 50, was sentenced in the Tauranga District Court to
21 months in prison.

Judge Peter Rollo granted her leave to apply for home detention on
humanitarian grounds because she has a young son.

Ake's cultural adviser had asked the judge to dismiss charges against her
because the gods gave all natural things on the Earth - including cannabis
- - to their people.

Ake appeared on a charge of selling cannabis after an undercover operation
at her home in Papamoa.

Crown prosecutor Duncan McWilliam told the court she had been caught
selling marijuana from another address after her arrest and had two
previous drug-related convictions.

Her primary school-aged son lived at the "tinny" house and Ake's tinnies
were kept in a large Milo tin.

Ake admitted she had a cannabis problem. She said she had counselled
troubled Maori teens on behalf of a Te Puna marae and was an alternative
Maori justice advocate.

Her cultural adviser, Rua Hillman, asked Judge Rollo to dismiss the charges
because Rangi and Papa gave all natural things on the Earth - trees,
bushes, herbs and even cannabis - to their people.

But Ake said after the sentencing that she knew she had broken the law and
must pay the consequences.

As part of a drugs operation codenamed Celtic, an undercover policewoman
visited Ake's house pretending to buy drugs.

Ake boasted to the policewoman that she ran the only "tinny" house in
Papamoa which had not been busted by police because she had friends in the
force.

Police raided the house in August 2002.

Ake kept foil-wrapped packages of cannabis and her "tick list" of people's
drug debts in the Milo tin and would sell the drug from her dining room table.

Ake admitted she had sold between 20 and 30 "tinnies" of cannabis a week
over a period of nine months.

She and her whanau smoked a third of the cannabis she bought and she sold
the rest to satisfy her own habit.

Ake described her strong beliefs in alternative Maori medicine and
alternative justice.

She still believed cannabis should be legal because it was provided by
Io-matua - the highest creator.

Io-matua provided for Maori and Pakeha, so she did not expect special
treatment because she was Maori.

She said she started smoking cannabis after a car accident and quickly
developed a heavy habit.

Ake said she was not hopeful she would be able to serve her sentence at
home because she had already been to prison and had committed drug offences
on parole.

But the shame of her drug habit and her children being shunned by whanau
because of her was worse punishment than any judge could hand down, she said.

Ake's application for home detention will be decided by the Parole Board in
the next two months.

- - NZPA