2 weeks Ago By Ari Yanover
In a Nova Scotia first, a judge has sentenced a Mi’kmaw man to three months of house arrest for running a roadside cannabis dispensary that operated among many other pot peddling outfits in a First Nations community. Darren Charles Marshall argued unsuccessfully that in running an operation called The Flower Barn in Millbrook First Nation, “he was exercising a treaty or aboriginal right to traffic in cannabis,” according to Associate Chief Judge Ronda van der Hoek, who sentenced him recently in Truro provincial court. “There was no foundation to support such a conclusion, and the court dismissed the application before it even got off the ground,” the judge said.
“It is worth noting that a belief in a right is quite different from an understanding based on a considered analysis of a situation. Our society is democratically organized around laws and determining that a law does not accord with one’s preference does not entitle one to breach it.” The judge noted a “proliferation of illegal cannabis trafficking operations across the province on First Nations’ lands and the RCMP are actively engaged in shutting them down.
This, it was argued, is the first sentencing decision to be delivered in such a matter. The Crown characterizes marijuana trafficking as serious and Mr. Marshall’s degree of responsibility as high.
The court agrees with those characterizations.” The judge imposed a six-month conditional sentence on Marshall for possessing cannabis for the purpose of selling it, and a 12-month conditional sentence, to be served concurrently, for the Excise Act charge of “receiving for the purpose of sale a cannabis product that is required to be packaged and stamped.” For the first three months of his sentence, Marshall “will be on house arrest with limited opportunity to leave his dwelling.
For the next three months he will be subject to a curfew from 10 p.m. till 6 a.
m.,” van der Hoek wrote in her decision dated March 31. She also issued forfeiture orders for seized items, “including the building, and the cannabis-related items, as agreed to by counsel,” and fined Marshall $8,762.
50. The forfeited items include 3,000 grams of dried cannabis, 49,000 milligrams of cannabis extracts, and 99,276 milligrams of cannabis edibles. Mounties fielded “community complaints” about The Flower Barn, said in her decision.
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