By Virginia Winder

Bitterness is not a trait that sits well with former All Black captain Graham Mourie.

But there's one episode in the 50-year-old's high-profile life that has left him with unresolved anger and a sense of powerlessness.

In 1994, when Graham was farming full-time at Opunake, a man employed to poison possums found a plot of marijuana growing in some bush on Mourie land.

Farmer Mourie: Rumours accused him of growing cannabis. Image: Provided by the Taranaki Herald

"So I contacted the local policeman, who was also the captain of the Opunake rugby team and in the Taranaki team, Salevi Tiatia.

"The cops watched it for awhile and then pulled it out. The following year, I thought I had better check the bush out and whoever had grown it, had done it again in a different place."

Graham again contacted Salevi. "He pulled it out with the help of a lady constable and took it down to Hawera."

Later in 1995, Graham and partner Shona Fokerd went on holiday to France, staying with friends from his Paris University Rugby Club days.

"While we were away there was another big dope bust, two or three miles away (from the farm). By the time we got home we had been implicated with it and our friends were as well and it got quite nasty."

Even worse, the police in Hawera had no record of the marijuana that Graham had reported and was later pulled out by Salevi.

"Salevi got put under the microscope as well. They found out what had happened to it, eventually."

Graham's friends were also treated badly. At the time, one was the board of trustees chairman of a local school. "They asked him to resign and our friends' kids were getting bullied at school.

"I'd had enough of this. The whole community was rife with the rumours," he says.

So Graham, a man who naturally shies from publicity, approached the media to get the rumours aired and then cleared.

But that tactic didn't work, with people still saying: "Where there's smoke there's fire."

He shakes his head: "That's the sort of thing that's really destructive in a small community."

Just how dangerous rumours can be was revealed to him in the following years when he stood for the Kiwi dairy company board of directors. A lawyer friend had been speaking to his parents about who they were going to vote for and they said definitely not Graham Mourie. "He's involved in drugs."

Graham has been deeply hurt by these untrue claims. "When people start these sort of rumours, it can have pretty long-ranging consequences."

In truth, Graham is anti drugs. "They are a pretty destructive element in society. With kids they are hugely dangerous, because your brain's not fully developed until you are in your 20s."

He doesn't condone them for older people either. "Where people have less-than-balanced personalities or mental states, they can be quite destructive."

So here it is, on the record – Graham Mourie has never grown marijuana in his life and never would.