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Cannabis Campaign: All over Europe, cannabis is now on the agenda

Amsterdam's cannabis festival, the UK 'Change The Drugs Law' tour - and support from the European Civil Liberties Committee

Sunday 23 November 1997 00:02 GMT
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Amsterdam plays host to the annual cannabis festival next week, and Independent on Sunday readers are invited to take part.

There are still places available on a special package that provides two nights hotel accommodation, all travel and entrance to various seminars and gigs for just pounds 110. Adam Peters of the Oxford-based International Study of Ecological Agriculture Netherlands group, said: "We have held a number of places open for IoS readers. This is a unique educational adventure. We have lined up a range of special speakers and performers that include the authors Kevin Williamson, Howard Marks, Brian Barritt and Fraser Clark."

Coaches will pick up travellers at various points around the UK but for an extra pounds 100 readers can forego the ferry for a return air trip. For more information, call 01865 396556.

Elsewhere in Europe, drug law reformers are getting organised. To the surprise of campaigners, the European all-party Civil Liberties Committee has just voted in favour of decriminalising cannabis.

The proposal by the Dutch MEP Hedy d'Ancona calls for the harmonisation of member states' laws on drugs, to allow regional authorities the independence to pursue their own policies. The initiative, which was drawn up within the European Parliament, passed its first hurdle by the narrow majority of just six votes.

Ms d'Ancona, a former health minister, said: "The consumption of cannabis must be officially decriminalised so as to take account of the situation in most member states." She recommends that ministers should authorise member states or regions to develop a system where the sale of cannabis to adults may be regulated. The proposals form part of a ten point plan. Among them is the central aim to overturn the 1961, 1971 and 1988 UN conventions on drugs which binds members to a policy of maintaining the prohibition. The d'Ancona report calls for the Council at the General Assembly on Drugs, to be held next June, to give states the authority to decriminalise drugs.

It also stresses the need to bring national laws into line with the way they are applied in practice. This recognises that in some countries a de facto tolerance of cannabis for personal consumption is already in place.

"Most national governments seem in practice to be less strict than official policy guidelines would have us believe," d'Ancona said. But she is confident that a European policy is slowly but surely taking shape.

In the UK, the "Change The Drugs Laws" tour leaves London this week to hold conferences in Liverpool, Edinburgh and Dublin. The tour is supported by Howard Marks and Irvine Welsh and coincides with the publication of Kevin Williamson's book, Drugs and the Party Line. They will also be present tomorrow in Liverpool at the Bluecoat Arts Centre, School Lane (tel 0151 709 5297). On Tuesday the roadshow moves on to the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh George Street, (tel 0131 220 4349). On Saturday they will be in Dublin at the Temple Bar Music Theatre, (tel 00 353 1 6709202)

BBC Radio Scotland is holding a debate on the decriminalisation of cannabis tonight at 10.30pm. Guests will include Willie McKelvey, the former Labour MP, George Kilday, secretary of Strathclyde police federation and Dr Stefan Janacavic, from Wirral health authority.

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