Drug charge dismissed

Press, 12 August 1978, Page 4

Drug charge dismissed

Appearing before Mr B. A. Palmer, S.M., on charges of importing cannabis into New Zealand, a Sydney girl said that they had been in her passport wallet for three years and she had forgotten about them. Dianne Gail Lee, aged 21, said that she had come to New Zealand to stay with a friend at Methven to go skiing for four months. She said that three years ago a friend gave her the seed's to plant. “I took them to be smart” said the defendant who lived in Sydney with her parents. . She told the Court that she did not smoke cannabis because she suffered from chronic asthma. The seeds were put in a passport wallet so her mother would not find them.

Lee said that her trip to New Zealand was the first time since a trip to Bali, two months before she acquired the seeds, that she had used the wallet. “I forgot that the seeds were in there and if I had

known that they were I would have got rid of them, or if I had remembered on the plane I would have thrown them away,” she told Sergeant C. J. Shanahan. A Customs officer at Christchurch airport said that on June 18 he was asked to inspect some seeds found in the defendants possession. He said that there were more than 180 seeds found in a plastic bag inside an

envelope. He handed them to the police. The defendant said that she knew searches were made by Customs officers at airports because she had been searched when returning to Australia from Bali. The Magistrate said that charges of importing the drug were serious but there appeared to be little concealment of the drug. He found her possession inadvertent and dismissed the case.