cannabisnews.com: High Hopes at the Cannabis Café





High Hopes at the Cannabis Café
Posted by CN Staff on July 11, 2002 at 11:34:53 PT
By Russell Jenkins
Source: Sunday Times UK
Bob Marley's voice blares from the speakers and the air is thick with marijuana smoke as a teenager called Dibbz lights up another joint. The regular customers at The Dutch Experience, Britain’s first cannabis café, are celebrating David Blunkett’s move to decriminalise cannabis with a toke of home-grown “super skunk”. Few believe they are about to be embraced by “straight society”, but most are convinced that it is a step towards the kind of social acceptance they have been campaigning for. 
The smokers, an ill-assorted bunch who include ageing MS sufferers, younger professionals, a few teenage drifters, even a man in a suit and tie, hope it will put an end to the police raids that have punctuated the café’s brief history. It was opened in September last year by Colin Davies, 45, a long-term sufferer of back pain and founder of the Medical Marijuana Co-operative, as part of a campaign to make marijuana available for therapeutic use to ease the pain of arthritis and MS. The café, tucked away in an unfashionable arcade several hundred yards from the main shopping centre in Stockport, was raided by police on its opening day. Posters on the café windows cry: “Free the Weed 4 Those in Need!” Altogether, Greater Manchester Police have brought charges against 29 café staff and customers, including several resulting from demonstrations. These days the only items sold over the counter are coffee and sweet snacks. Jeff Ditchfield, who plans to set up his own cannabis café, Beggar’s Belief, in Rhyl, said the café was being run according to the rules laid down by its founder; no under-18s, no alcohol and no drugs other than cannabis. Asked whether cannabis could be bought or sold on the premises, he replied: “I don’t see any, do you?” Peter, 38, a project manager and Norwegian national who lives in Salford, has taken time off work to pop into the café. “How could I not, with all the good news coming from Blunkett?” he said. “It is obviously a step in the right direction although, of course, not enough.” He talks passionately and articulately for full legalisation as an alternative way to relax other than alcohol. Legal cannabis cafés would take the business away from dealers, who have a vested interest in pushing heavier drugs, he says. Smokers or “stoners” are functioning people, he says, often at the higher end of the social spectrum. One cannabis smoker, aged 40, with long dark hair, is rolling a one-leaf joint with tobacco and super skunk. He has rheumatoid arthritis and chooses cannabis above other painkilling drugs. “It is a positive move,” he says of Mr Blunkett’s initiative. “At least it is a start after such a long period of absolute ignorance. This is a plus, plus, plus for the smoking community.” The café’s neighbours report few problems spilling on to the streets. Norman Collins, 45, who runs Heaven Hairdressing next door, said he had seen no evidence of drug dealing or drug abuse in the vicinity. “If anything, it has novelty value for my clients,” he said. Staff who run a soup kitchen in the crypt of St Peter’s Church near by say they have never had any problems in the graveyard, and certainly no evidence of needles. Greater Manchester Police insist they had to act given the provocative and very public nature of the café’s operation. “We simply could not ignore it,” one officer said. Source: Sunday Times (UK)Author: Russell JenkinsPublished: July 11, 2002Copyright: 2002 Times Newspapers Ltd.Contact: letters sunday-times.co.ukWebsite: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/Related Articles & Web Sites:Dutch Experiencehttp://www.dutchexperience.org/Going Dutchhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13176.shtmlHigh Hopes Of Cannabis Pioneershttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12898.shtmlHasheesh To Hasheesh....http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12659.shtmlCannabis Entrepreneurs Go Dutch http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12482.shtml 
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Comment #4 posted by Xanaralk on July 11, 2002 at 17:02:00 PT:
Oh Canada
We enjoy freedoms in our daily lives that you barely dream about you Americans , but in reality , the media and "Mainstream" Culture is as messed Up as in the States with heroic tales of seized pot at the news and television programs from the US essentially showing black kids being arrrested for drugs. Old "Mainstream" people just don't get it , while we the young work hard and build the future , our parents are sealed away from the reality that smoking pot is a benign and personnal act harmless to other , and hardly to us... My father once told me he would let DIE all drug users the same day he told me he was PROUD of me . so pot is still illegal. if pot is still illegal here in ten years it is because of plain , grotesque and stupid hypocrisy . drug war hardliners here are a fringe and deviant minority , but they still have the edge ... How the F"/"/%$ck , I don't know...
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on July 11, 2002 at 15:17:10 PT
Heads Up Call In E-Mail - Abrams Report
There will be talking about marijuana legalization and you must put your phone number in the email. It's on now!AbramsReport msnbc.com 
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Comment #2 posted by TroutMask on July 11, 2002 at 13:32:24 PT
What's that sound?
That's the sound of one dominoe falling into another!I like that sound and expect to hear it a lot more often.-TM
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on July 11, 2002 at 12:38:16 PT
News Brief from Australia
Premier To Study UK Pot MoveSource: ABC News Online
Published: July 11, 2002
http://abc.net.au/news/australia/nsw/metnsw-11jul2002-13.htmThe New South Wales Premier says he will study closely a British decision to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug.While cannabis will still be illegal in Britain, possession of cannabis for personal use will no longer be an arrestable offence by July next year.Bob Carr says he has noted the move is designed to free-up police to concentrate on drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine."I was interested in the fact that the British said that possession of personal use quantities of marijuana would be treated with confiscation and with the issue of a caution or counselling," Mr Carr said."That's something we'll have to look at seriously."It is not too far from the practical position that we'd have in NSW and around Australia at the present time, where police I think broadly understand the priority for the community as being heroin."
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