A fifty-six year-old Welsh man has been jailed in Britain for one-year for growing cannabis for private medicinal use.

A judge in Swansea Crown Court said the accused, Eric Mann, had not tried sufficient conventional remedies for his chronic arthritis and therefore could not plead that he had a medical need to smoke cannabis.

Mr Mann, a retired oil refinery worker, argued that he had a right in law to avoid serious physical harm and had used cannabis to avoid the side-effects of legal pain-killers. .