CLARE HOPES TO WIN VOTES FOR
CANNABIS
Source:
Coventry Evening Telegraph, UK
Pub
Date: Tuesday, 18 November 2003
Subj:
Clare Hopes To Win Votes For Cannabis
Author:
Fiona Scott
URL:
http://iccoventry.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0125nwarksnews/content_objectid=13634770_method=full_siteid=50003_headline=-Clare-hopes-to-win-votes-for-cannabis-name_page.html
Contact:
editorial@go2coventry.co.uk
CLARE HOPES TO WIN
VOTES FOR CANNABIS
The
Legalise Cannabis Alliance is planning to field at least one candidate in
either Coventry or Warwickshire.
Shop
assistant Clare O'Donnell is looking to stand either against Labour's Nuneaton
MP, Bill Olner, or one of his three Coventry colleagues - Geoffrey Robinson,
Jim Cunningham or Home Office minister Bob Ainsworth.
The
married 27 year old of Chapel End, Nuneaton, joined the alliance after seeing
what cannabis could do to help people with medical problems.
The
alliance was cannabis to be fully legalised and for people convicted of cannabis
offences to be released from prison and others to have their criminal records
erased.
She
said "I was asked by a friend who suffers chronic pain - he had a car
accident - to take him to Brighton to see someone he wanted to meet up with.
"When
we got there, it was a cannabis cafe. People there were from all walks of life,
the atmosphere was nice and relaxed. It was more relaxed than any pub.
Strangers were talking to strangers. People were not caring if the person
sitting next to them was in a wheelchair, or a different age, or a different
colour.
"When
I saw how people were working down there and helping disabled people and people
who needed cannabis it changed my outlook."
Mrs
O'Donnell who has taken cannabis during trips to Amsterdam's Cannabis Cafes,
also believes if hemp, the plant it is derived from, was grown commercially in
the UK it could be used as a bio-fuel.
She
has met about two hundred people who take cannabis for health problems and
travelled to Orkney to meet Biz Ivol, a 55-year-old woman suffering from
multiple sclerosis who was prosecuted for supplying cannabis laced chocolates
to other MS sufferers. She attempted suicide after the case was dropped.
Mrs
O'Donnell said "Hand on Heart, I really don’t think what I am doing is
wrong. I don’t think standing up and saying there are people out there who have
medical problems and who use cannabis to help them is wrong"