POTTY ABOUT THE CANNABIS CAUSE

The Legalise Cannabis Alliance candidate, Derrick Large, is standing in the
Romsey by-election mainly to raise awareness of the issue, he announced
this week.

"Getting it out in the open is a far better way of dealing with it," said
the 40-year-old from Kings Somborne. He spent two years working in
Holland, seeing for himself the coffee houses where it is legal to smoke
cannabis. He and his partner, Irma Kok lived in Tilburg, a medium sized
town with about 20 coffee houses. "They are just pleasant small
places. You could take your grandmother to most of them," he said.

Mr Large wants to see cannabis legalised in this country, but subject to
similar controls as those applied to alcohol and tobacco. It would not be
available to people under 16. He said he was appalled that 25% of
teenagers aged between 14 and 16 had tried the drug. "It's called a
controlled substance, but the only control that cannabis is subject to is
from criminals, which gives it a spurious glamour," Mr Large said. "What I
want to do is to make cannabis boring."

He stresses that cannabis is the only drug he wants to see legalised, and
thinks once this has happened, it may have a knock-on effect and make other
drugs less appealing.

Mr Large was born in Chandlers Ford and went to school there. He served an
apprenticeship as a plumber on leaving school and then became a pipe fitter
at Fawley before moving to Holland to take up similar work. Forced to give
this up because of health problems, he took an IT course and is now
studying computer networking.