First draft .. proof readers to the fore please.

QUOTE Dear Sir,

I hope this letter finds you well and may I say it is somehow comforting to have a Human Rights specialist as DPP. I fully appreciate that you are a very busy man but I was hoping you might possibly find a moment to clarify a confusing situation I, and many thousands of UK subjects, find ourselves in? I know you need the full details to make a decision so I shall start from the beginning.

I first became unwell in April 1997. The initial diagnosis was Motor Neurons Disease but, luckily, that diagnosis was incorrect. I was found to have Degenerative Spinal Disease and an Ulner Nerve Palsy causing unrelated symptoms, I have since been diagnosed with Vascular Disease, Cardiac Heart Disease, and suffered my first heart attack two years ago. Long words that mean I
m in pain 24/7 and tire very quickly. I was an obedient patient and took every drug prescribed for me, some worked but with side effects worse than my symptoms, some only worked in doses that would damage my internal organs, and have done so, and some had no effect at all.

In 2000 my brother asked me if I
d tried cannabis? I
m no one
s angel but I wasn
t a criminal and didn
t want to get involved with people who sell drugs, so other than one puff in my teens I hadn
t tried it. The physical and mental relief was immediate, the pain didn
t go completely but seemed to be hidden from notice, the throbbing in my legs stopped, and the spasms in my hand stopped. I
d obviously found the right medicine growing on a plant after searching through all the expensive man made drugs available. That in itself might make one feel aggrieved at the hypocrisy of the law but I was to discover, what I feel to be, far more injustice. Not only was my new found medicine easing my pains and making me feel human again, something which in itself should be cause for a change in the law, the calm, detached, state allows a level of thought I had not experienced before. This level of consciousness gave me access to a spirituality within me that did not previously exist, and I began to set an hour or two aside each day to delve into this new cannabis unlocked spirituality.

As stated, I had no wish to be forced to trawl the less desirable public houses in search of drug dealers, and, as I
m such a lucky person, I was caught on my first grow in 2001. I knew nothing of the law or human rights so pleaded guilty as instructed and received six months probation. Following this I began to try to find other people who were using cannabis medicinally and spiritually, I was honestly surprised to find just how many of both there were. I even discovered the spiritual use of cannabis was well established and called Cantheism.

By 2003 I was a member of a US church called the THC Ministries. Although initially I was pleased to be amongst fellow Cantheists I soon became uncomfortable as they appeared very strictly Christian based and were selling documents written for US law to Europeans for $250. Myself and another UK Cantheist rewrote the documents to reflect UN and EU Human Rights law and offered them to the THC Ministry, they chose to continue using only the US based documents. The other UK Cantheist and myself left and decided to offer our documents freely and to attempt to bring Cantheism to the attention of the authorities and the public. The Cannabis Assembly came into being to fulfil this role.

I first gave notice to the government of my private cultivation and use of cannabis for spiritual practice and my belief that these private practices are well within the defined boundaries of Article 9 of the ECHR in September 2004 in a letter to the, then, Prime Minister Tony Blair. I have since informed a succession of Home Secretaries, MPs, the Office of Constitutional Affairs, the Queen, the Registrar General, and, of course, our current leaders. Odd that I hadn
t considered the one person who might give a sensible answer rather than just parrot policy but I never claimed genius. All the usual media outlets you would expect have had correspondence from the Cannabis Assembly over the past six years also so you couldn
t accuse us of hiding.

I
m no lawyer and don
t pretend to know the intricacies of government procedure, but I
m quite certain that if any government official is informed of a crime taking place that they believed might cause harm to someone there would be a police car in attendance in the not too distant future? I.e. the government official must inform the CPS or at least a government
policing
authority of some kind? Which means someone in the upper ranks of our national policing structure has made the decision that, most likely, I
m a minor irritant, but also that, either, I
m not breaking the law, or I
m not committing an offence they deem worthy of prosecution.

In some ways I
m grateful I
ve not been prosecuted, I
ve now experienced Her Majesty
s hospitality and have no wish to sample more, but in other ways I
m extremely disappointed that our authorities can
t simply be honest about their position? Throughout the country there are many just like me, I won
t guess at a figure but there are over 8000 in the Cannabis Assembly alone, quietly cultivating and using cannabis for spiritual practices in the privacy of their home. They are harming no one and I do not believe they deserve to live with the fear of a police raid, a criminal record, or the most ludicrous injustice of imprisonment, for growing a plant.

Is it not yet time for those in our courts and legal system to uphold the Human Rights of the people publicly rather than upholding ever the changing political desires of ever changing politicians? Mr. Starmer, I have cultivated and used cannabis for my personal spiritual practice in the privacy of my home continually since 2001. I feel cannabis to be an essential part of my spirituality and shall continue to cultivate and use it in the privacy of my home for the remainder of my life, while I remain at liberty to do so. In your opinion Mr. Starmer, am I breaking the law? Or, am I correct in believing that the spiritual practice of Cantheism is protected from prosecution under Article 9 of ECHR?

Thank you for your time. I pray you continue your work in Human Rights. I am fully aware you may feel this issue must be decided by the courts rather than the CPS, I accept those consequences and will bear you no ill will if that is the case. I might even quietly welcome the chance to get a ruling although I feel I might be waiting for it in a cell again.

Good day Mr. Starmer, may your god be with you.
Faith and patience,
Rev. Paul Farnhill