A former parliamentary candidate should be jailed for possessing and cultivating large amounts of cannabis because merely fining him sends the wrong message to the community, the Crown argued yesterday at the Court of Appeal.

Gershwyn `Shilo' Smith was fined $30,000 in February when he admitted possessing 2,173 grammes of cannabis, 545 cannabis plants, and cultivating the drug at his home in Spanish View Road, Smith's.

Judge Archibald Warner said then that jailing Smith, who claims he used cannabis for medical and religious reasons, would only make him a martyr.

Smith's lawyer Victoria Pearman said yesterday her client used cannabis in tea, in salads, and boiled it like spinach.

"This was his staple. He is a voracious user of cannabis and this six pounds (of cannabis) might be used in a week," she said.

She said there was no question of Smith, a six-time parliamentary candidate who campaigns to legalise cannabis and is also known as High Priest Mohatma Shiloh Mahdi, supplying anyone else and that his $30,000 fine was adequate punishment.

But Crown counsel Charmaine Smith told the court that although the Crown accepted the drugs were for personal use, cultivating was so serious an offence and there was so much cannabis involved that it merited an immediate jail sentence.

Cultivation still carries a life sentence in Bermuda, and she said the fines were "wholly inadequate.

"It is not adequate to send the message to the citizens of Bermuda nor is it appropriate to say if I use it for food or medicine or sacraments, that it is OK to grow it," said Ms Smith.

"The spirit of the alternatives to incarceration programme does not apply in this case. We say we need to look at specific circumstances of the case and specifically the respondent (Smith).

"We say that the imposition of fines on someone with this defendant's resistance to the law, his attitude and philosophy to the law, is wholly inadequate.

"The judge noted the lack of remorse and our submission is that there is insufficient deterrence in the fines.

"Given the Crown's concession that the cannabis was not for supply, we are not saying the public has to be protected from the defendant distributing it.

"Our concern is the philosophy, and growing philosophy, that cannabis is cool and that its OK. The judge had the responsibility to take that into consideration when sentencing the defendant."

The Crown had originally asked for a sentence for five to seven years for Smith. Ms Smith said the Crown wanted Smith jailed for between 18 months and three years on both offences.

Ms Pearman said there was no evidence that there was an outcry over Smith's sentence or that that the public demanded he be locked up.

Appeal Court President Sir James Astwood, sitting with Mr. Justice Zacca and Mr. Justice Worrell, remanded Smith in custody until the court makes a ruling on the appeal.