STATE OF TASMANIA v KARL WOISETSCHLAGER 10 DECEMBER 2019
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE BLOW CJ
Karl Woisetschlager, you have pleaded guilty to a charge of trafficking in a controlled substance. The controlled substance was cannabis. You have also pleaded guilty to a charge of importing cannabis seeds. I am going to deal with that charge as well, under s 385A of the Criminal Code.
You were visited by the police in April of this year, and they found that you had been undertaking a cannabis growing operation on quite a significant scale. The street value of the cannabis plants and products found in your possession has been estimated at over $50,000, based on the assumption that all of it would be sold by the ounce. It also appears that you made sales totalling something like $30,000 or $31,000 from two cannabis crops grown at your home. There were 15 growing cannabis plants.
You are 70 years old. You have reached that age without any significant prior convictions. You are a retired prison officer. You came to this country in 1970 and you worked as a prison officer for some 24 years. You grew the cannabis from seeds which you had mailed to you from Europe. I am told that you were surprised by the quantity that the police found at your home once they harvested and dried the plants and measured and weighed everything.
You were using a little of the cannabis that you produced for pain relief. But mainly you were growing it to pay a debt to a friend. All of the money that you made from sales has gone in paying the set-up costs and in paying the debt to the friend. You are now in a position where you are living on an Australian pension and a small foreign pension. You are struggling to make ends meet. As it is you have a mortgage debt of about $10,000 on the property where you live.
People who cultivate cannabis on this sort of scale are almost invariably given sentences of imprisonment. As you would probably be aware, a lot of those sentences are wholly suspended. When I saw the scale of your operation, I initially thought that this case probably called for a wholly suspended sentence plus a community service order. But I have been told that you are suffering from chronic lymphatic leukaemia; that your long-term prognosis is not good; and that you suffer from arthritis in the shoulders and neck.
It is clear that you will not be doing anything like this again. Having regard to your age and the state of your health, I do not think I should contemplate making a community service order. So, although many might think you are getting off lightly, I think the most appropriate penalty is a wholly suspended sentence of imprisonment.
I am not going to make an order for the payment of a pecuniary penalty. I could either order you to pay $31,000 or make no such order. I do not have the power to order you to pay part. From what I know about your financial position, I think it would be unjust to make the order that has been sought. But the making of the order for the costs of the analysis has not been opposed and I will therefore make that order.
On the two charges, I convict you and sentence you to eight months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended on condition that you commit no offence punishable by imprisonment for a period of 18 months. I order that the items listed in paragraph 21 of the Crown statement of facts be forfeited to the State of Tasmania. I make an order for costs in the terms of s 36B(2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 2001 in the sum of $2,750 in respect of the costs of analysis.