Meet the 71-year-old drug dealer

Great Granny Dawn Danby's dope dealing could see her kicked out of the same house she's been sentenced to serve home detention in.

On Friday the 71-year-old was sentenced at Tauranga District Court to a year's home detention and 300 hours community work on charges of growing, selling and possessing cannabis for supply between October 2006 and February 2007.

Now police want to take her Paeroa home a cute hillside house surrounded by well-kept gardens and littered with pot-plants which Danby says was bought legitimately and has been mortgage-free for more than 15 years.

Police have a restraining order on the property and want it forfeited to the Crown at a Proceeds of Crime hearing.

Danby a typical grandmother with walking stick and glasses told Sunday News the prospect of losing her home was "like a bad dream".

"I love it here.

"This is my home," she said.

"It (the potential forfeiture of her home) is ridiculous. It's crazy and out of all proportion.

"I wasn't too worried when I was arrested ... it's what has happened since that scares me.

"I didn't realise that jeopardy was there. I never realised my house was at risk."

Despite her convictions, Danby maintains she never sold cannabis or helped kick-start other growers' crops by selling them plants she had cloned.

She said she and her co-accused 64-year-old Douglas McKinney, her boarder for 23 years needed the dope for pain relief.

Danby, who maintained she was a law-abiding citizen, said she had not tried cannabis until she was 66 and only did so because conventional medicines did not work on her.

She was in agony before having a pelvic floor operation and was "very intolerant" of prescription pain relief and anti-inflammatories.

After the operation failed, she was riddled with so much pain she soon decided not only to smoke cannabis but also to grow it.

Until then, she and McKinney had "bought tinnies".

The cost of cannabis and fears over what other growers might have "sprayed" the product with also motivated the decision.

Danby, who also has osteoarthritis and sleep apnoea caused by obstruction of the airways, said she needed instant pain relief.

"And you don't get that with anything. You take paracetamol or something and it takes half an hour.

"You take cannabis and it works within 15 seconds if inhaled."

Danby said she made an educated choice to use the Class C drug.

She is a former trainee pharmacist and pharmacy owner and her family had a history of using the alternative medicine.

Before their deaths Danby's mother and sister, both registered nurses, had used cannabis her mother to cure respiratory problems and her sister to ease pain before her death.

McKinney declined to speak to Sunday News but Danby said he had used cannabis for several years to help him cope with a "badly damaged leg that caused him chronic and severe pain".

Taking cannabis as pain relief affects users differently to those who take it recreationally, Danby said.

She said cannabis gave her the strength to maintain a working life which consisted of doing Maori land research, counselling, English tutoring and selling Hosta plants at her local markets.

"When you're in pain, the THC and all the other compounds act on that pain so you don't get that heavy stoned effect," she said.

"You also get the well-being feeling and you're able to carry on doing a day's work."

At Friday's sentencing, Tauranga District Court Judge Peter Rollo said he believed Danby had used cannabis for pain relief but doubted it was as effective as she made out.

"You had a very full life, despite mature years, quite inconsistent with the amount of pain you should have been in and quite inconsistent with the amount of cannabis you told the jury you used on a daily basis," the judge said.

During Danby's February trial, police said if she and McKinney had not sold any cannabis during one 13-month period alone, they would have had to have smoked more than 8300 cannabis joints which was almost 20 a day.