A DISABLED Magor man who uses cannabis to alleviate his pain says he feels vindicated after charges of producing and possessing the drug against him were dropped on Monday.

Darren Pritchard, 34, of Blenheim Park,who is paralysed from the waist down after a diving accident, had denied producing cannabis and two charges of possessing the drug.

At Cardiff crown court today, prosecutor Lee Ingham said Mr Pritchard was a tetraplegic and the Crown Prosecution Service did not intend to offer any evidence on the charges. Mr Pritchard, he said, accepted he was growing cannabis for his own use.

After the hearing, Mr Pritchard said: "I am over the moon - it's a weight off my shoulders. I would have been fighting an eviction notice (because of the drugs charge) had this not happened today.

"I have now been accepted onto a trial programme where cannabis is prescribed free - and so no longer has the need to grow my own."

Judge William Gaskell told the court: "This is a defendant who is extremely ill. He is paralysed from the neck down and he uses cannabis in an attempt to ease his pain. "The cost of a prosecution would be out of all proportion to the public interest."

Mr Ingham said the allegations came to light when the police went to Mr Pritchard's home in December and discovered the drug.

Formal verdicts of not guilty were recorded.

Mr Pritchard said after the hearing that he broke his neck in a diving accident in 1991. He and friends were at a disused quarry in Oxfordshire. Mr Pritchard dived in head first and his neck became lodged in gravel beneath the surface.

"I died," he said. "I was under there for a while. They pulled me out and brought me back."

Mr Pritchard, who spent more than a year in hospital, said he started regularly smoking cannabis three months after the accident.

He said it eased his pain and reduced intense muscle spasms.