cannabisnews.com: Euro-Candidate 'Uses Cannabis'





Euro-Candidate 'Uses Cannabis'
Posted by FoM on June 09, 1999 at 12:02:00 PT
Source: This is London
A London candidate in tomorrow's European election today admitted that he smokes cannabis. Shane Collins, 37, is the Green Party's drugs spokesman and fourth on its list of 10 candidates in the capital. 
He owned up to drug use and to possessing a criminal record, although he said "it's only weed and criminal damage". The admission from Mr Collins, a veteran anti-road protester and squatters' leader, will add a dash of colour to what has been criticised as a dull Euro-election campaign. While millions of Britons have tried the drug, no leading politician has openly done so - apart from American president Bill Clinton, who says he smoked but did not inhale. Mr Collins said it was appropriate for politicians talking about drugs to be users themselves. "I would not talk about football if I had not played," he said. He wants to decriminalise cannabis, although he would ban advertising for it - as well as for alcohol and tobacco. "We would like to see people being allowed to grow their own," he said. "The coffee shop system in Amsterdam seems to work well, there's nothing in the window to advertise it but it's available there so people don't have to deal with dealers, and there's less chance of people getting involved with smack." Mr Collins, who lives in Brixton, has already courted controversy by promoting ecstacy testing kits which tell nightclubbers whether their drugs are pure. The kits have been criticised by the Government's drugs czar Keith Hellawell, who believes they provide a false sense of security. The Greens are expected to attract hundreds of thousands of protest votes across Britain. If they manage to win nine per cent of the vote in London they could win their first European seat, which would go to Jean Lambert, a former teacher who is part of the party's national collective leadership and number one on the election list. Ms Lambert said: "Current policies are not succeeding in actually reducing drug use or the violence associated with the hard-line drugs. "It's something that Shane feels very strongly about, and certainly knows a lot about." She said Green politicians were willing to break the law in pursuit of their beliefs. "For us, if it's trespass or whatever, in a sense what we are after is to make people confront the issue. People are willing to take the consequences of their actions," she said. At number four on the list, Mr Collins has little chance of being elected himself - which is lucky, because he says he hates the sound of Strasbourg and would rather stay in Brixton. 
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