Love of pot lands grower in jail
The Age
Tuesday March 1, 2011
A LOVE affair between a computer scientist and marijuana to enhance his performance as a male escort has ended in heartbreak and a six-year prison term for drug offences.Paul Chalmers's "romance" with marijuana worsened in 2000 when he swapped a high-paid IT role for registered work in Melbourne's sex industry.Chalmers, 45, found cooking with grass an effective and controllable way to relax and "I could have a biscuit at the right time without my [female] client even knowing".In 2005 he grew his first plant as a safer and easier method of personal supply, then the biscuits got stronger, he ate more and "I had become so in love with cannabis that I did not see any bad in it".As he told Judge Frank Shelton who yesterday jailed him for a minimum of four years in a letter for his appearance last week: "I was naive to think this, as it was now consuming me rather then me consuming it." The court was told his arrest in October 2009 ended a four-month police operation that revealed Chalmers had co-ordinated the cultivation, delivery and money of a group of co-accused hydroponic marijuana growers and distributors in the Dandenong Ranges area.Prosecutor Peter Pickering said police who bugged Chalmers's phone calls heard details of a lucrative enterprise whose grand plans involved the construction of an underground complex in Kallista.Mr Pickering described the "bunker" idea as akin to an "industrial" growing method with Chalmers and another man predicting a $3 million turnover through five years.Not only were police eavesdropping, but Mr Pickering also noted the irony that a neighbour at the Kallista site complained to the council about excavation work without a permit.Chalmers, of Tecoma, pleaded guilty to eight charges, including trafficking and conspiring to cultivate a commercial quantity of marijuana.A psychologist reported that Chalmers became reliant on marijuana to "ameliorate his persistent social anxiety" from working as an escort and childhood difficulties.Asked by his barrister, Neil Clelland, SC, during evidence about the "romance" he once had with marijuana, Chalmers said he never realised the hold it had and was blind to its harm.He told Mr Pickering the Kallista plan was a "hare-brained" idea when "I was almost crazed" and that talk of needing $2 million to retire was "just a figure plucked out of the air".Judge Shelton said the drug scene was "evil" and the charges very serious, but accepted Chalmers, a first-time offender, showed strong and encouraging signs for rehabilitation.
© 2011 The Age
