A scrap trader has been found guilty of possessing and selling cannabis, sometimes known as “wee,” by an Accra Circuit Court and has been given 500 penalty units equivalent to GHC 6,000.00. Augustine Mensah, the defendant, would by default serve 15 months of hard labor in prison. Mensah entered a not guilty plea to the crime, but a jury convicted him guilty.
Police Chief Inspector Christine Bansah stated that the Police were the complainant and that Mensah, a scrap dealer, resided at Striker, a neighborhood near Kasapreko Junction on the Spintex Road. The court was presided over by Mrs. Susanna Eduful. She claimed that on October 19, 2020, the police went to the area and detained the offender after learning through intelligence that he was peddling drugs in a kiosk.
According to the prosecution, a check of the kiosk turned up one and a half slabs of dried leaves in his microwave, 66 wraps of the same substance, and a small amount of similar dried leaves in a black polythene bag. In his charged statement, Mensah accepted the crime and said he had been peddling the drugs, according to Chief Inspector Bansah. He identified a “GH” at Ashaiman as the source of the dried leaves, but he did not assist the Police in apprehending the named “GH”.
The exhibits were sent to the Police Forensic Laboratory for analysis, the court was informed. The prosecution said that on February 20, 2021, it got a report from the Ghana Police Service’s Forensic Science Laboratory indicating that the exhibits had tested positively for cannabis.
