Cannabis soup and biscuits

Cosmo Landesman meets a pot-eating senior, in Sunday Times Online:

Last week she appeared in Newcastle crown court convicted of possession and intent to supply cannabis (she will be sentenced next month). Now she is planning to stand as an MP against Peter Hain on behalf of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance and has signed a book deal for her recipes.

“You should try my cannabis leek and chicken pie, it’s wonderful,” she said. “And my cannabis lime cheesecake is heaven.”

But in February last year she was on the verge of suicide.For the previous three months she had been living a reclusive existence: no bathing, rarely eating, rarely sleeping: “A doctor had given me a prescription drug for my depression and I was suffering from terrible side effects like tinnitus, hair thinning, bruises on my arms, red lumps on my face.”

What medicine was she taking? We aren't told. The story continues:

A worried friend banged on her door and when Tabram asked for a cigarette, proferred a roll-up. “After two puffs my head was like a balloon. I lay in my chair and started singing,” Tabram recalls.

She had just smoked her first joint and it was like discovering a miracle cure. “That night I slept for 12 1⁄2 hours. In the morning I cooked my first proper meal in eight months, the red lumps on my face had gone down, my tinnitus had stopped and my hearing improved.”

Tabram did not like smoking cannabis, so her friend told her that she could cook with it and gave her the name of a Newcastle pub to make her purchases. “The place was full of all these long-haired teenagers. When the dealer came in, I went up to him and said, ‘Hello dear, are you the man with the cannabis?’ "

Mr. Landesman believes that "Tabram sincerely believes in the medicinal value of cannabis but has become an addict — to all the attention that has come her way.

"The granny who eats cannabis is suddenly a celebrity and that is one of the hardest habits to break." More on cannabis here.