Source: Article in Evening News, Norwich

Date: September 7 1998

READY FOR POLLS

LEGALISE POT GROUP MAKES ITS CHOICE

A SELF-EMPLOYED labourer and a mature student are to contest Norwich's two Parliamentary seats - calling for cannabis to be legalised.

Michael Pryce, 50, and John Adam, 44, were approved by members of the Campaign to Legalise Cannabis International Association.

And a spokesman for the organisation, which has over 350 members in the county, said they were hoping to attract at least 5000 votes in both Norwich constituencies.

"Originally we were only going to put up a candidate in Norwich North," he added.

"But a lot of our members live in the Norwich South area and were disappointed they weren't going to be given the chance to cast their votes as well."

Mr Pryce, a divorced labourer with no children, lives at Aylmer Towers, Mile Cross and will fight Norwich South.

He is also a tenant representative on the Mile Cross area Housing Committee.

Mr Adam is married with two daughters aged 19 and 12. He lives in Gildencroft, off St Augustine's, and was a free-lance design assistant before starting as a theoretical physics student at the University of East Anglia.

Bashir Khanbhal, Conservative candidate for Norwich South, a pharmacist, said voters would not be interested. "Quite frankly I think it is an insult to the British voter that they are being asked to vote on a single issue. Most reasonably intelligent people will want the chance to consider a whole manifesto," he said.

Labour's constituency party chooses its candidate at a meeting on October 6. Party bosses are thought to want to whittle the candidates down to a shortlist of six this weekend. Agent John Cook said: "Single issue candidates are an irrelevance in General Elections - and there is data to prove that."