CUMBRIA CANNABIS CAFE IS 'INEVITABLE'

CANNABIS campaigners Mark and Lezley Gibson have claimed a cafe selling the
drug in Cumbria is "inevitable" after attending the world's first course on
the venture.

The Gibsons spent five days at a "cannabis college" in Holland learning how
to buy and sell the drug, keep customers safe and recognise quality stock.
Today they invited police and councillors to join them on the next course
to see how the cafes work. Mr Gibson also had this message for opponents:
"This IS going to happen."

Mrs Gibson, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, said the pressure to
provide somewhere where people could smoke cannabis for medical reasons was
becoming impossible to resist after the jailing of Stockport campaigner
Colin Davies.

Mr Davies, who opened the UK's first cannabis cafe, is in Strangeways
prison awaiting trial on drugs charges.

Illicit

"Colin left 200 people without medication," said Mrs Gibson. "They had a
safe supply and they still need to get cannabis now to relieve their symptoms.

"That is 200 people forced into an illicit market with 200 different
dealers with no quality control."

Britain's second cannabis cafe opened yesterday in Bournemouth with little
interference from the police. A Cumbria police spokesman reiterated today
that it was still an offence to possess and supply cannabis. He added:
"While it is the responsibility of the police to enforce the law, it is not
our duty to amend or create legislation. We would suggest that if Mr Gibson
is pressing for a change in the law, it would be more appropriate for him
to contact those that shape legislation.

"We will continue to take action and apply appropriate penalties against
those who break the law in relation to controlled drugs."

The Gibsons, from Alston, declined to reveal when or where they intended to
set up a Cumbrian cafe.

But Mr Gibson said he wanted to take police and local politicians to see
how the system worked in the Dutch city of Haarlem.

"I want to start a dialogue," he said. "I am deadly serious about taking a
senior member of the police over there to see for themselves.

"We are fully trained now and this is going to happen. It is inevitable."

The course, part-organised by Dutch coffee shop mogul Nol van Schaik, drew
delegates from across Britain and Europe.

It included "work experience" in several cafes and ended with a 45-minute
multiple-choice exam.

Mrs Gibson said recreational users would be allowed to smoke cannabis in
their cafe, but would subsidise "medicinal" users.

She claimed the business could also give them a chance to warn teenagers
about the dangers of other drugs.

"Kids would listen to you because they would see you as cool," she said.
"You would be able to say, 'Hang on a minute - maybe these other things
aren't cool after all.'"

Mrs Gibson hit the headlines in 2000 when a jury refused to convict her for
possessing cannabis. They accepted her argument that NOT taking the drug
would cause serious injury or death.

Last year a House of Lords committee said the medicinal use of cannabis
should be legalised. They claimed people who take cannabis to ease the
symptoms of debilitating conditions such as MS should not live in fear of
prosecution.

Home Secretary David Blunkett has already revealed he is "minded" to
reclassify cannabis as a Class C drug - meaning people could smoke it in
public without fear of arrest.