STA, 5 March 2020 - In a court epilogue of a cannabis poisoning story that made headlines in 2017, a confectioner from Hoče near Maribor has been handed a 15-month suspended prison sentence for having served cannabis-laced cookies to four of his regular but unsuspecting customers.
Niko Štekar failed to convince the judge that Zlatko Babič, a retired health inspector and fellow Hoče resident, had not informed him of the nature of the butter Babič provided as part of a cookie baking request.
Štekar reportedly baked roughly a kilo of cookies with the THC-laced butter, keeping a share of the product for himself and offering it at one point to four guests without a warning.
Two of the guests - one said he had had ten pieces - ended up in hospital to be diagnosed with THC poisoning.
The couple testified they were convinced that Štekar, who described the cookies as excellent as he detailed the recipe in court, had known the cookies were laced, saying a strange grin escaped him as they started feeling strange in the store and confronted him.
This was also claimed by retired health inspector Babič, who said he had informed the confectioner of the type of butter he was dealing with beforehand.
Babič, who was reported to the police by Štehar, was also facing charges over the manufacture of narcotic drugs, but the judge agreed the purpose of four plants discovered in his garden had indeed been personal use for the alleviation of health issues.
This was not the only widely publicised case of this sort in Slovenia in recent years.
The other involved the organiser of a cannabis plant workshop, which was held in Vrbje near Celje in 2015 and ended with 15 of the 40 participants requiring medical assistance.
Many of the poisoned participants were pensioners and the assistance of a firefighting unit was necessary at the site to get them down from a hay drying frame they had climbed on.
The organiser, who admitted the deed an got away with a one-year suspended prison sentence, said he had not counted on the factor of people eating more of something if it was free.
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