Subj: Music mogul sounds out cannabis campaign album

Date: Mar 7, 1998

Source: Scotland On Sunday

Music mogul sounds out cannabis campaign album

The record label boss who discovered Oasis is compiling a
Band Aid-type album as part of an on-going campaign for the
decriminilisation of cannabis.

Scots-born Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records, has
already approached top British acts, including Paul Weller,
Cast, Super Furry Animals and Asian Dub Foundation, to take
part.

All profits are to go to the Stapleford Trust, a London-
based charity which carries out research into addiction.

McGee, a former addict, was himself treated by Dr Colin
Brewer, medical director at the private Stapleford Addiction
Unit.

The news of the new album emerged as a poll by Radio One,
whose audience is mostly under 25, found that 84% of its
listeners believed that drug-taking should be made legal.

McGee told Scotland on Sunday: "Dr Brewer guided me back
from the brink of addiction to the verge of sobriety. I
wholeheartedly approve of his addiction treatments. In
retrospect, I probably owe him my life, although the
campaign for the decriminilisation of cannabis LP will
probably have to do."

McGee, who sits on the government's creative industries task
force, says he has only smoked cannabis on four or five
occasions.

Yet, despite almost dying as a result of his cocaine and
alcohol habit, he believes all drugs should be legalised in
an attempt to control the industry.

If the move was made, he argues, it would mean fewer deaths
from contamination and an end to the dangerous drugs
underworld.

The inspiration for the compilation album came from Rosie
Boycott, the editor of the Independent and the Indpendent on
Sunday, whose campaign for the decriminilisation of cannabis
has attracted the support of scores of famous people,
including Anita Roddick, Richard Branson and Sir Paul
McCartney.

Yesterday, Brewer, who is himself in favour of the
decriminilisation of cannabis, said the money raised by the
album would be used for research projects. "We are
interested primarily in medical treatments for addiction.
For example, we would like to undertake a controlled study
of a group of patients at a NHS hospital using various
methods to achieve withdrawal from opiates. This can be done
using sedation or under anaesthesia."

Brewer sais he was also interested in the potential of
Naltrexone, a drug which is used to take addicts off heroin.
The drug has the opposite effect from methadone, in that it
stops users gaining any effect from heroin. Brewer would
like to carry out a study in which the drug was made a
condition of probation orders.

"Similar projects have taken place in Singapore and the US
with good results, but we would like to see if it could
prove successful in the British context," he said.