Last week, in Austria, a 78-year-old woman came out to the world as a successful cannabis grower. The pensioner and medical cannabis gardener shared her run-in with the law on Austrian television’s Die Barbara Karlich Show to a receptive audience.
“Mara” from the state of Vorarlberg wanted to try cannabis in the form of tea and oil to treat her chronic pain. So she recently started to grow a few plants, using cuttings purchased legally.
Now, the cannabis granny has three flowering plants that are already over two meters high.
Not interested in hiding from authorities, Mara dutifully reported the plants and her plans to produce medicine to the police because she was unsure about the legality of her operation.
In Austria, cannabis seeds and even non-flowering plants are legal because they can not be used to make narcotic drugs. Hundreds of aromatherapy strains are sold in the country’s many clone shops.
However, once the plants develop buds, they become illegal and their cultivation becomes a criminal offense regardless of the intended use.
The officer on the phone when Mara called squeezed both eyes in what must have been pure bewilderment before informing the polite woman she could only own a maximum of two plants. Thereupon, the 78-year-old answered, “That’s all the same to me, one could pine away.”
Despite her very public outing and three flowering plants, the police have not visited the green-thumbed pensioner’s garden.