CANNABIS CAFES SET TO OPEN ALL AROUND BRITAIN AS LAW CHANGES

More than a dozen Dutch-style cannabis cafes are being planned from
Brighton to Glasgow in a major movement across the country. They range from
converted warehouses to upmarket cafes in London with budgets of ?250,000.

Less than a week after the Government's top drugs advisory committee called
for cannabis to be downgraded from Class B to Class C - severely reducing
penalties for possession - campaigners are setting up coffee shops
confident that such a move is now all but inevitable. Last week the Liberal
Democrats became the first mainstream party to adopt a policy of legalising
the drug.

The cannabis entrepreneurs setting up the coffee shops include an affluent
retired businessman, an internet pioneer and a wheelchair-bound victim of
multiple sclerosis living on disability benefits. Many have been attending
a special course in the Netherlands to teach British people how to run a
coffee shop, including how to tell the difference between types of weed and
the best tactics for dealing with police and local authorities.

The movement has taken its cue from the Dutch Experience, Britain's first
cannabis coffee shop in Stockport, which has been raided by police three
times since opening last September. However, repeated mass protests made
the police back off, and the coffee shop still attracts around 200 people a
day. In the next fortnight, Dutch Experience 2, which is in the process of
being decorated, is to open its doors in Bournemouth.

Other coffee shops are set to follow in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cumbria,
Liverpool, Rhyl, Anglesey, Milton Keynes, Braintree, Brighton, Taunton,
Worthing, and Lambeth and Hoxton in London. Britain is on course to follow
the Netherlands in having a public cannabis cafe culture.

The campaigners have been encouraged by rapidly changing attitudes to the
illegal drug, and the prospect of the Government downgrading it from Class
B to Class C. All say they would like to co-operate with police and local
authorities, but are prepared to go to prison if necessary.

Jimmy Ward, who went on the coffee-shop course in January, is currently
working 16 hours a day with eight friends to prepare the Dutch Experience 2
for its opening in the next fortnight. Ward, who used to run a haulage
business, was unable to persuade any landlord in Bournemouth to rent a cafe
to him, so he is converting a storage unit he owns.

'We're studding the walls, putting in water, and a false ceiling,' he said.
'Ever since my girlfriend and I met 14 years ago we wanted to run a coffee
shop. We thought we'd have to go to Holland, but with everything happening
here, we thought we could open one in the UK.

'Everyone locally loves it - I've had so much support from the public. But
no matter what the authorities do, I am determined to open this. I am not
worried about going to jail, so long as when I come out it is still open.'

Ward has recruited pensioners to grow cannabis for him, supplying them with
seeds and growlights, and has had expressions of interest from dozens more.
'It helps them to pay the winter fuel bills. They are angry about being
lied to all these years about how dangerous cannabis is,' he said. A report
last week from the Government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs
concluded cannabis was less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.

Jeff Ditchfield, who went on the coffee-shop course with Ward, spent last
week looking for a property to buy in Rhyl, north Wales, to convert to a
coffee shop. 'I don't want it in a residential area or near a school or
McDonalds, because the kids will try to come in,' said Ditchfield, who
retired two years ago. His cafe will stick to the strict Dutch coffee-shop
rules of banning all alcohol, hard drugs and anyone under 18.

The Deputy Mayor of Rhyl, Glyn Williams, said the plan 'beggars belief',
prompting Ditchfield to name his coffee shop 'The Beggars Belief'.

Williams said: 'We are not in the process of helping people break the law.
I firmly believe that, if you downgrade cannabis, then there'll be so many
more parents who'll come forward with tragic stories about their children.'
However, the Chief Constable of North Wales, Richard Brunstrom, has
publicly called for drugs to be legalised.

David Crane, the director of an internet company for seven years, is in the
process of raising ?250,000 for an upmarket coffee shop in Hoxton, London.
'We've been speaking to a number of different people in the music business
and media, and they are very keen, largely because they smoke dope
themselves. I absolutely believe that coffee shops are a benefit to
society,' he said.

Many of the cannabis entrepreneurs are veterans of protests at the Dutch
Experience in Stockport. Almost 100 people, including the local MEP, went
to Stockport police station holding cannabis and demanding to be arrested.
After arresting 28 people, the police gave up, prompting protesters to
declare cannabis had been legalised in Stockport.