An Effingham County woman who has pled guilty to a marijuana possession says she is not a drug dealer.

Anne Redd has pled guilty to a marijuana possession charge and faces sentencing next month. But she said she was growing the pot for her medicinal use.

“I am not a drug dealer. I am not a lawbreaker,” she said. “I grew the pot for my medical sue because I am disabled. I don’t know any drug dealers. I am anti-drug all the way.”

Redd was arrested last July at her Reedsville Road home while tending to her marijuana plants. Effingham County Sheriff’s Office investigators found about a dozen pot plants, and Redd also had a 9mm pistol and a 30.06 rifle in her possession. Those weapons, Redd said, belonged to her son.

“The guns were in the house because he had come to shoot an armadillo for me,” she said.

Redd said she grew the pot plants because she hurt her back in a 2012 auto accident, when a teenager slammed into the back of her truck.

“I don’t do drugs. I’m not a pill taker,” she said. “The only thing that would help is to smoke marijuana to ease the nausea.

“I didn’t do anything but grow the pot,” she said. “There was no intention to sell it. What I grew the president of the United States can have legally in Washington, D.C. I am a land-owning, taxpaying, hard working citizen. There was no criminal intent.”

An Effingham County grand jury indicated Redd on March 16 for one count of manufacturing marijuana, one count of possession with intent to distribute, two counts of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

Redd also said she is a different person than she was when she was first arrested and convicted on drug charges.

“That was 25 years ago,” she said. “My life has been turned around. I have become the most honest, hard-working person there ever was. I’m a very well-respected woman.”

Redd said the moniker “Cocaine Annie” was “a nickname they made up at the jailhouse. That was not true at all.”

Redd said she wants to get involved with the Effingham County Animal Shelter and help it become a no-kill facility.

“They have one in Ridgeland (S.C.), and it’s not as big as the one we have here,” she said.