Glastonbury shopkeeper ‘has secretly sowed cannabis in council flower pots for two decades’
The hemp shop owner isn't committing a crime, as the unwitting council are the ones watering the plants
A SHOPKEEPER revealed he has been secretly planting cannabis seeds in a town’s flower displays for 18 years.
The man, who changed his name to Free Cannabis by deed poll, sowed a marijuana plant in a council tub outside his hemp shop in Glastonbury, Somerset.
But a passerby spotted it and he was reported to cops, and the council had the plant removed.
It is thought he has not been charged as it is legal to buy the seeds, and he argues he is not actually growing them.
Free claims to have spent the past 18 years growing weed in the council's public tubs, even scopping the Glastonbury in Bloom Award in 1998 for a display which featured the plant.
In the same year, the hemp shop owner also got in trouble for trying to hand a cannabis plant to then Home Secretary, Jack Straw.
Free, who sells a completely legal form of hemp for medicinal processes, said: “I and others drop the seeds into the tubs, they get watered by nature and the council.”
"I am amazed that people get so excited about this, it's a sad reflection of society's hemp-phobia."
"My dream is to be out of business - I just want to live in a world in which this plant is honoured and respected and grown freely."
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Local councillor John Brunsdon said: "It was reported to the police but this happens all the time, we just remove them when we come across them.
"People shove it in plant containers as a joke, the odd plant in the odd tub, they turn up every year .
"Glastonbury in Bloom is a major event so there are a lot of displays for them to target, it's clearly people having a lark at the town's expense.
