2005 Election Special; Meet your Norwich South Candidates, Use Your Vote
Source: Concrete, UK
Pub date: Wednesday, May 4, 2005
Web: http://www.concrete-online.com/
Cited: Legalise Cannabis
Alliance http://www.lca-uk.org/
Don Barnard http://www.ccguide.orr.uk/donbarnard.php
Don Barnard, Legalise Cannabis Alliance
Don Barnard is the Legalise Cannabis Alliance candidate. He spoke to Joanna Lambert.
JL: How would legalising cannabis benefit Norwich?
DB: Legalisation would benefit
not just Norwich; you have to look at it on a universal stage. The tax taken from cannabis could be plowed
into the economy. The Labour
Government itself had a report done in 1998, "What would be the result of
legalising cannabis?", and it came back that if cannabis was legalised on
the market and taxed at the same rate as cigarettes, allowing £13 million for
possible increase in health problems, it would return £18 billion to the
exchequer every year, as opposed to spending £8 billion a year trying to stop
people using it. There's immediate
saving on police time, on court time, on prison time and all the problems that
have come out of prohibition.
JL: Your party's flier states "No Victim, No crime". Examples of victimless crime includes
corporate crime and taxation fraud, how do you feel about this?
DB: If you commit cooperate
crime, then you do harm somebody - you either take their money of you cause
them stress. However, when you use a
cannabis plant, or you grow a few plants, in your own premises for your own use
- how does nicking somebody, putting one or two parents in prison, help children? Ane tell me, who do I harm by smoking a
joint unless it is in an enclosed space and they object? I can get two years for running down the
street to my dealer but if I grow I can get 14 years and an unlimited
fine. At the same time, the maximum a
judge can give a paedophile would be 12 years.
So really I'm looking for justice.
JL: Did you support the Government's higher education bill (which
introduced top up fees?)
DB: No, education should be free from birth until death.
JL: In order to meet the government's target on energy production, would
you support an increase in wind farm construction?
DB: Well basically I support any type of energy that is derived from
non-dangerous fuels but I believe that wind farms cannot replace other means of
producing electricity. In particular, I
propose cannabis and pyrolysis. Not
only are you talking about generating electricity, it must be emphasised that
the cannabis plant is also a source of fuel to drive our cars. Basically what we have is a lack of
accountability by anybody to the environment and once we start looking at the
environment generally - well if everyone got stoned it would be a wonderful
world!