Peter Reynolds

Patrick Moore and family

Patrick Moore lives with his partner and two teenage children in rural County Limerick.

In September 2020, at the height of the pandemic, a huge force of armed gardai raided their home. Patrick was out at the time so Ali, his partner and their two children were faced with 15 armed men brandishing automatic weapons.

Ali called Pat and he returned home immediately. He told the gardai there were cannabis plants growing in the shed at the back of the house and handed them the key so they could investigate. They discovered 19 plants, three small seedlings, the rest in various stages of flowering. They also collected together some bags of trim which had been put aside to make oil, amounting in total to 2.4 kilos.

The gardai also found two notebooks which recorded financial transactions and a calendar that indicated cultivation had been going on for some time.

Last week, at Limerick District Court, having already pleaded guilty to cultivation and supply, Pat attended his sentencing hearing. The whole family was there and I went along to offer moral support. We waited from 11 in the morning until his case was finally called around 4pm. The trim was valued by gardai at €48,000 (€20 per gram) and the plants at €15,200 (€800 each), a total of €63,200. By 5:30 he had been sentenced to five years in jail, the final two years suspended.

As acknowledged in court, the gardai had been acting on information received and clearly believed that Pat was some sort of major drugs baron, potentially armed and dangerous. I fervently hope that karma causes appropriate, severe misfortune to the person responsible.

Pat was a caregiver, that is someone who produces cannabis for medical use, mostly oil, which is used by people with cancer, other serious conditions and for end-of-life care. Before sentencing him, Judge Catherine Staines read eight or nine testimonials from people he had been supplying.

One was from the daughter of an elderly man who has suffered with Huntington’s Disease for nearly 20 years. When he started using the oil that Pat provided at no cost he regained his power of speech, he was able to swallow again and no longer needed all his food to be pureed. He also experienced far fewer lung infections and pneumonia. His sleep improved and his energy and vitality for life returned.

Another was from the parents of a boy who was diagnosed with leukaemia at age four and given two years to live. That was six years ago and he is still alive today. Pat provided oil free of charge and the family is in no doubt that it saved their son’s life.

There is no pretence here. Pat told me that he was selling high quality flower to a small network of friends and acquaintances. He used this to fund the production of oil for medical use, all of which he gave to sick people without charge. For those that don’t know, the ratio of cannabis flower to oil is about seven to one. You need seven grams of cannabis to make one gram of oil.

I know Pat is not alone. Throughout the UK and Ireland there are dozens of cannabis caregivers providing lifesaving medicine to sick people which, for complex reasons, conventional medicine and healthcare have failed to deliver. I know and have known several of these courageous people, some of whom put themselves in terrible danger for altruistic reasons. More than once I have seen that they simply can’t stop, even if they want to. How can you deny a sick child or someone in terrible pain when you have the ability and knowledge to help?

I have known Pat for about four years and he certainly doesn’t have a lavish lifestyle. He helps Ali run a small café in the local town and he had a business selling hydroponic equipment and supplies online. He drives an old Land Rover and at home he has a large polytunnel where he grows a variety of vegetables and even his own tobacco. He was the first person to show me that it is actually possible to grow tomatoes in South-West Ireland’s hostile climate.

To understand his sentence and why there is no sensible prospect of an appeal, it is necessary to put aside one’s opinion that the law prohibiting cannabis is wrong. All decent, rational people who are properly informed will recognise the injustice, the self-defeating stupidity of this law but it remains in force, for now.

Ireland’s Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 is a cut-down version of the UK’s Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. There are no different classifications of drugs, they’re all just controlled drugs, so heroin and cocaine are treated in the same way as cannabis. There is a particularly iniquitous clause, section 15A, added in 1999, that prescribes a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in jail for possession of drugs with a value of over €13,000. The maximum sentence is life.

Although described as mandatory, in practice the trial judge does have some discretion in ‘exceptional and specific circumstances’, namely previous ‘good character’, pleading guilty at an early stage and providing ‘material assistance’ in investigation of the offence. There is no reduction for cannabis compared to more harmful drugs. The relevant factor is the value of the drugs and therefore the inherent ‘criminality’ of the offence.

Opening the hearing, prosecution counsel tried to head off any chance of a lenient or suspended sentence by citing authorities that showed where a light sentence had been imposed, it had been increased on appeal. Prosecution counsel had already told Pat’s barrister that they would appeal if the sentence was suspended.

I was shocked, deeply disturbed, by the poor performance of Pat’s barrister. He was Mark Nicholas SC, one of the highest paid barristers in Ireland but in my judgement he was barely competent. He stuttered and bumbled and repeated himself and went all round the houses in presenting mitigation. It was awful and as I was sitting next to Ali I tried to conceal my horror. Later she told me that it was clear from the expression on my face what I thought.

In my career I have spent some time training people how to make presentations. It’s not that different to presenting a case in court. If Mr Nicholas had been an 18 year-old in a training session, I would have stopped him and sent him home to think about whether he really wanted the job. That’s how bad he was.

He made vague references to Pat being interested in meditation, that growing cannabis was part of a self-sufficiency ‘lifestyle’ and that the people Pat was supplying shared his ‘belief’ that cannabis has some beneficial properties. It was as if it was all some eccentric, hippy-dippy, whacko nonsense. Nicholas failed to mention that the Irish state has recognised cannabis as a legitimate medicine since 2017.

Neither did Mr Nicholas adduce any of the testimonials as evidence in support of mitigation. All he did was make vague references to Pat’s ‘motivation’, the implication being that he may be a bit deluded in thinking he was doing anyone any good.

I am not a lawyer but I have considerable experience in cannabis law, procedure and sentencing and my eldest son is himself a barrister, practising in England and Wales, frequently in drugs cases. So, I do have a good understanding, sufficient, I believe, to form a fair and very low opinion of Mr Nicholas’ performance.

Of all the officials in court probably the most sympathetic was the judge. She said it was quite clear that Pat was not a drug dealer exploiting vulnerable people. She remarked that €3000 cash found in the house was voluntarily returned by the gardai. They did not regard it as the proceeds of crime. I was disappointed she made the point that “cannabis causes a great deal of harm” because firstly the evidence in general doesn’t support that and secondly the evidence was that the cannabis grown by Pat had caused a great deal of good! Inevitably she added “including psychosis”. It’s appalling how media misinformation has fixed this false idea into mainstream thinking.

The judge also called Pat “naïve”, in thinking that disclosing to her he was taking a course in cannabis cultivation would help his case. Eventually she said that she was taking seven years as the starting point for his sentence but that in view of his previous good character, guilty plea and ‘material assistance’ to the investigation she would reduce it to five years with the final two suspended.

I have looked at the case reports and though I hate to say it, under Irish law, it is the correct sentence. I think she was as lenient on him as she could be. If she had gone further, the prosecution would have appealed.

Of course, to any fair-minded, properly informed, decent person, it is brutal, wildly disproportionate to any harm caused and has tragic consequences not only for Pat but for Ali and their two children.

The law is a bad law for which there is no justification. The section 15A sentencing mandate is obscene. The valuation placed on the cannabis by the gardai is absurd, although even a correct valuation would not have been below the €13,000 threshold.

I don’t think the judge is to blame. I don’t even think Pat’s barrister, Mark Nicholas, is to blame because even if he had done his job to a reasonable level of competence, it would have made no difference. But let this be a warning to anyone to reject him if he is proposed as your counsel.

The blame lies squarely with the Oireachtas, with the ministers, senators and TDs who have allowed this dreadful, useless law to remain in force. Specifically, the buck stops at the door of Helen McEntee TD, Fine Gael’s Minister for Justice. She bears responsibility for a sentence that in my opinion is sadistic and which, without doubt, will achieve nothing at all except misery for Pat and his family and massive wasted costs borne by the taxpayer.

There are good grounds to believe that cannabis may be decriminalised in Ireland within the next year or two. Inevitably, thereafter it will be legalised and regulated but even then, unlicensed cultivation and sale would probably remain an offence although unlikely to result in jail at the scale of Pat’s activity.

Hopefully, despite this conviction, Pat will be able to play a part in a future legitimate cannabis industry in Ireland. For now, I think of him in Limerick Prison as the temperatures plummet to a five-year low, of his unwell patients seeking an alternative supply of medicine and of Ali and the children with a cold, bitter hole in their lives.