“Cannabis deal’ was parsley

Press, 21 November 1978, Page 7

“Cannabis deal’ was parsley

A man who attempted to: sell an undercover member of the Christchurch drug squad a small sachet of parsley for $2O in the public bar of the Dominion Hotel was convicted and sentenced to four months periodic detention by Mr F. G. Paterson, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday. The policeman, Constable P. W. Hunter, managed to bring the price of the sachet of parsley, valued at 37c, down to $l5, by the time the transaction took place in the toilets attached to the public bar of the hotel on October 5. As a result of the incident, Kieron Emery Simms, aged 26, unemployed, of Christchurch, faced a charge of fraud, namely by falsely representing that a sachet of green vegetation was cannabis.

Constable Hunter said he had approached the defendant after he had been contacted by Detective-Sergeant C. T. Dalziel, who had been observing Simms through a servery between the public bar and a private bar in an undercover capacity for nearly an hour. Detective-Sergeant Dalzeil had overheard Simms offer to sell a deal of “Durban

■Poison” (cannabis) to a fellow customer. Simms had said he would go away to get it and Detective-Sergeant Dalziel had followed him to an Armagh Street shop and waited outside until Simms re-emerged with a small packet in his hand, which the detective thought was cannabis.

After Simms was arrested, two other plastic bags containing parsley had been found on his person. Subsequently tested at the police station, the plant had been found to have no narcotic properties whatsoever. In his statement to the police, Simms said that he had decided to rip off his drinking companion. He had said that he “had some round the corner” and had gone off to buy some parsley.

The Magistrate said that he was .not so much concerned with the charge as it related to cannabis. “It is, in fact, a charge of false pretence,” he said. For Simms, Mr J. Knowles said that there was no evidence that Simms was in any position to sell drugs. “A person who offers to buy drugs, whether he is a policeman or not, deserves what he gets,” said Mr Knowles.