SELF-PROCLAIMED shaman the Reverend Love says he set up growing equipment in an alleged cannabis factory raided by police.

Now living in a converted prison truck in the Wye Valley, 38-year-old Universal Life Church minister the Rev Zion Lakshmi Love will not confirm or deny whether he was growing, or planning to grow, cannabis at the chapel, but does advocate growing cannabis for "free, medicinal use".

Police swooped on the former Methodist Chapel on the A40 in Birdwood in August to find a complex lined with plastic sheeting, with lights and hundreds of plant trays filled with soil, but very few plants. The chapel door had been forced open, and neighbours had alerted police.

He said: "It was my church. I was practising shamanic yoga there but I planned to open it as a juice bar and to give out raw chocolate and other superfoods.

"The owner – publican and farmer Mark Dew – is a friend of mine. He told me where the keys were last year and said 'do what you want with it'. He hadn't been there for four years and had no involvement with the place since. I lived there for six months. I was away on holiday when someone kicked the door in and the police paid a visit.

"There were no plants growing because there had been a fly infestation – I had put yellow fly-traps up above the compost trays. I had 50 ice-cube packs of wheatgrass in a freezer there.

"The strange thing is, when I came back a month later I found the police hadn't left any message saying they wanted to interview me.

"Eight weeks later the owner received a call from Cinderford police. I am planning to go to the police station and give my statement of truth and nothing but the truth."

Mr Love said that he had been asked by Glastonbury-based anti-prohibition campaigner Free Rob Cannabis some years ago to "develop a medicinal strain of cannabis" to give people with serious illnesses pain relief and euphoria.

He has been convicted for cannabis use in Exeter 10 years ago, and was handed a community service sentence by a court.

"Marijuana helped me as a teenager after alcohol almost killed me," he said. "Apart from smoking, cannabis or whatever you want to call it, has 22 uses – it is the most useful plant known to humankind.

"It is grown in massive warehouses run by big criminal gangs such as the Triads, who use their profits for awful things, such as people-trafficking, prostitution, buying weapons and who knows what. You never see these big operations being shut down.

"It's a state of emergency," he said. "I'm not prepared to allow criminal gangs to provide medicine for other people – an expert told me £250 million is spent on cannabis every day in Britain at a conservative estimate, and most of that goes to big ruthless criminal syndicates.

"People need to be able to grow their medicine in their own home. Maybe they could issue cannabis-growing tax discs, and use the revenue for community projects."

He said he would plead "not guilty" if caught in possession of cannabis, "because cannabis is the truth – the law is illegal."