In a Nova Scotia first, a judge has sentenced a Mi’kmaw man to three months of house arrest for running a roadside cannabis dispensary that operated among many other pot peddling outfits in a First Nations community.

Darren Charles Marshall argued unsuccessfully that in running an operation called The Flower Barn in Millbrook First Nation, “he was exercising a treaty or aboriginal right to traffic in cannabis,” according to Associate Chief Judge Ronda van der Hoek, who sentenced him recently in Truro provincial court.