MUSIC MOGUL SOUNDS OUT CANNABIS CAMPAIGN ALBUM

The record label boss who discovered Oasis is compiling a Band Aid-type
album as part of an on-going campaign for the decriminilisation of cannabis.

Scots-born Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records, has already approached
top British acts, including Paul Weller, Cast, Super Furry Animals and Asian
Dub Foundation, to take part.

All profits are to go to the Stapleford Trust, a London-based charity which
carries out research into addiction.

McGee, a former addict, was himself treated by Dr Colin Brewer, medical
director at the private Stapleford Addiction Unit.

The news of the new album emerged as a poll by Radio One, whose audience is
mostly under 25, found that 84% of its listeners believed that drug-taking
should be made legal.

McGee told Scotland on Sunday: "Dr Brewer guided me back from the brink of
addiction to the verge of sobriety. I wholeheartedly approve of his
addiction treatments. In retrospect, I probably owe him my life, although
the campaign for the decriminilisation of cannabis LP will probably have to
do."

McGee, who sits on the government's creative industries task force, says he
has only smoked cannabis on four or five occasions.

Yet, despite almost dying as a result of his cocaine and alcohol habit, he
believes all drugs should be legalised in an attempt to control the
industry.

If the move was made, he argues, it would mean fewer deaths from
contamination and an end to the dangerous drugs underworld.

The inspiration for the compilation album came from Rosie Boycott, the
editor of the Independent and the Indpendent on Sunday, whose campaign for
the decriminilisation of cannabis has attracted the support of scores of
famous people, including Anita Roddick, Richard Branson and Sir Paul
McCartney.

Yesterday, Brewer, who is himself in favour of the decriminilisation of
cannabis, said the money raised by the album would be used for research
projects. "We are interested primarily in medical treatments for addiction.
For example, we would like to undertake a controlled study of a group of
patients at a NHS hospital using various methods to achieve withdrawal from
opiates. This can be done using sedation or under anaesthesia."

Brewer said he was also interested in the potential of Naltrexone, a drug
which is used to take addicts off heroin. The drug has the opposite effect
from methadone, in that it stops users gaining any effect from heroin.
Brewer would like to carry out a study in which the drug was made a
condition of probation orders.

"Similar projects have taken place in Singapore and the US with good
results, but we would like to see if it could prove successful in the
British context," he said.

A spokeswoman for Creation Records said the compilation album was still in
the early stages, but the company was hoping for a summer release.