Pot Club Goes Nationwide

Cannabis clubs – where users flout the law by meeting to smoke and buy the Class C drug – may soon open nationwide.

Next month founding members of New Zealand's first cannabis connoisseurs' club, Auckland's Daktory, plan to meet fellow users throughout the country to help set-up Daktories in other cities.

In the 14 months since the Daktory opened – in November 2008 – there hadn't been a single police raid on their Delta St premises until Sunday News asked questions of police this week.

Police national headquarters refused to comment, as did Waitakere police, but in the last few days four police cars swooped on the Daktory.

Officers executed a search warrant and Daktory members said they confiscated lighting equipment and lap-top computers.

Detective Rhys Wilson wouldn't comment on what police had seized, but said a number of exhibits had been taken and police had a considerable amount of work to do at the address. Police charged one man with cultivating cannabis and further charges against him were likely, Wilson said. The Daktory boasts more than 2000 members who pay a monthly fee to smoke (mainly, their own cannabis) within the club's spacious warehouse.

Members, whose names remain confidential, must be at least 18 and sign up for a year's membership. Green, 59, said the oldest club-member was "in their late 70s", and that doctors, lawyers, court officials and business people were among the membership. Schoolteachers were most highly represented, he said. Green, who changed his name from Ken Morgan by Deed Pole, runs the Daktory. He holds the company shares in trust, but plans to turn ownership over to a community trust in the near future.

See the Sunday News for the full article.