LACMA |
Shiva, destroyer of worlds and enjoyer of cannabis sacrifices. |
A British couple busted with a house full of cannabis plants tell the judge that they sincerely believed that the world was coming to an end Dec. 21. The ganja, they say, was for medicine as well as for a sacrifice to the Hindu goddess Shiva.
“It was for my own use, not for commercial use,” 46-year-old Ketarzyna Dryden-Chouen told a Gloucestershire court Tuesday. “I thought I could use it for medicinal reasons. If I’d had access to pure alcohol I had the idea of making an oil with it.”
Police say that Dryden-Chouen, her husband and her stepson were all growing it to sell for profit. They say that more than a quarter-million dollars has moved through their bank accounts in recent months.
Dryden-Chouen, meanwhile, says that a mouse who lives at the family home speaks to her and doesn’t care about worldly possession such as money. “My life brings what I need,” she told the court, according to the Gloucester Citizen. “I grow vegetables and look after the house. Our outgoings are very minimal. I don’t take anything from the universe other than what I need, all I absolutely need.”
The money, she says, likely came from donations from people she had helped in her part-time gig as a healer.
Her husband, Clive, was a little bit more level headed. He admitted to growing it, keeping it, smoking it and (importantly) enjoying it. But he never sold it. No sir.
But for some reason, the courts aren’t believing them. The two face charges of cultivation with the intent to sell as well as money laundering for the cash that has come and gone from their bank accounts.