Multiple sclerosis sufferers around the world swore by the chocolate bars made at Mark and Lezley Gibson’s gift shop in the Lake District.

The couple sent out about 22,000 of their bars and made no secret on their website of the special ingredient that made them so popular.

But that ingredient was to lead Mr and Mrs Gibson into the dock at Carlisle Crown Court yesterday, where both are accused of conspiring to supply cannabis.

Along with a family friend, Marcus Davies, 36, they set up the campaign group Therapeutic Help from Cannabis for Multiple Sclerosis and on their website, www.thc4ms.org, offered their “Canna-Biz” chocolate bars, the court was told.

Mrs Gibson, who suffers from MS, her 42-year-old husband and Mr Davies made no secret of their campaign to legalise cannabis for therapeutic pain relief.

They made no charge but there was a request that each “buyer” establish that they were an MS sufferer and that they make a donation to meet production costs.

Over a period throughout 2004 and up to February last year about 22,000 of the 150g (5oz) bars were despatched, each one of them laced with 3.5g of cannabis. A mailing list with 460 addresses was later found by police.

Mr Gibson and his wife, from Alston, Cumbria, along with Mr Davies, from St Ives, Cambridgeshire, who is said to have operated a post office box address for the cottage industry, deny the conspiracy charges against them.

Jeremy Grout-Smith, for the prosecution, told the jury that while the trio might be well intentioned, they had no defence against the charges which carry a maximum sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment.

“To supply cannabis, even if you believe it is doing some good, is not a defence,” he said.

The court was told that police became involved in January when the duty manager at the Royal Mail sorting office in Carlisle contacted them about a package which had spilled open during sorting. Officers seized 33 Jiffy bags containing the Canna-Biz product. Each of the packets carried a PO box address in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, as the return address. The wrappers also carried the website address which was later found to be run by the three defendants.

Mr Grout-Smith said that they were not conventional drug dealers but believed their actions would help to alleviate the pain of a debilitating illness. MS is a progressive disease which attacks the central nervous system.

Officers raided the Gibsons’ home in February, discovering cannabis chocolate bars, labels, packages and a mailing list.

Mr Grout-Smith said: “They also found some machinery for the manufacture of the bars, pots, pans, and a grinder, all to be used in what was really a cottage industry to make chocolate bars impregnated with cannabis.

“When analysed they were found to contain 3.5g of cannabis each, ground up and distributed throughout the 150g bar.”

Several months later officers pursued their investigations to Mr Davies’s home where they found cannabis plants in two sheds. The householder insisted the cannabis was for his own use.

Details were found of three bank accounts, registered in the name of Mr Davies’s girlfriend, in which about £40,000 had been deposited during a two-year period.

At least two of the accounts were thought to be used for money related to the cannabis chocolate enterprise.

“So this seems to be distribution on quite a large scale and, to some extent at least, the defendants may have benefited financially, although the Crown does not claim this was their main motivation.”

During a police interview, Mr Gibson admitted sending 22,000 bars to addresses around the world. But first they had sought proof that the recipients were MS sufferers.

The jury was told that Mrs Gibson suffers from MS.

A juror who made it known to the judge that she had a relative in the family with MS was told this was no bar to deciding guilt or innocence in the case.

The trial, expected to last seven days, continues.

The facts, man

The main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC

Source: Times database

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