Cannabis café boss is convicted on drug charges at third trial

Detectives in Manchester could scarcely hide their delight yesterday when, at the third attempt, they won drugs convictions against the owner of Britain's first Amsterdam-style cannabis café.

Colin Davies was acquitted at his two previous trials after persuading juries that the class-B drug was medicinal. But the 44-year-old, who has been in custody for a year for a breach of bail conditions, was sent back to jail after being convicted of offences for which he was arrested on his Dutch Experience café's first day of trading, in September 2001.

A jury of seven men and five women took five hours to convict him of six offences, including importing and supplying drugs. He faces a maximum 14-year term but will probably get far less. Davies traded cannabis while on bail. He was recording a BBC TV interview when police made further raids.

"He has been openly laughing at the law but thankfully it appears justice has caught up with him at last," one police source said. "Davies has been a thorn in our side for years and we are very pleased he has got his just desserts."

In the three-week trial, the prosecution at Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court claimed the café provided a "façade of moral legitimacy".

The volume of cash and drugs linked to Davies appears to have convinced the jury. Police had found £3,000 in cash in his Stockport flat at a time when he was drawing £56.25 a week in disability benefits.

Customs officials also seized £18,000 worth of cannabis at Dover in eight packages, complete with 430 ready-made joints – all destined for addresses linked to Davies, a former carpenter. A café volunteer was found to have £1,160 in cash on him, while 4.5lb of cannabis resin was discovered in the boot of Davies' Dutch business partner's car.

But Davies' customers, as in previous trials, testified that his £15 packets of super-skunk grass and Lebanese Gold resin were medicinal.

Davies claims the roots of his enterprise lie in an encounter in the smoking room at the Sheffield spinal injuries unit where, temporarily paralysed by breaks to three vertebrae, he met a paraplegic car crash victim who told him to try cannabis for the pain.

At a time when the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, was planning in effect to "decriminalise" cannabis, the authorities seemed resigned to Davies' trade. Davies will not be sentenced until he has faced two further trials on charges of perjury and possessing cannabis later this year. But his work has already left a legacy. His café has spawned plans for similar enterprises from Brighton to Glasgow.