Subj: Cannabis Campaign - The message marches on

Date: Apr 4, 1998

Source: Independent on Sunday

The message marches on

By Graham Ball

The sun shone, the bands played and everyone had a great
time on the great Independent on Sunday decriminalise
cannabis march last week.

The police estimated that 11,000 marchers gathered in Hyde
Park but an autonomous observer has calculated that 15,000
arrived for the rally in Trafalgar Square.

There were no arrests during the two-mile march and
everyone, including the police, can congratulate themselves
on the good natured, party-like atmosphere of the whole event.

Many campaigners from Scotland and parts of Wales sent
messages of support and regret at not being able to make the
long journey to London. While others, some with unhappy
previous personal experience of the law, stayed away for fear
of being arrested.

After the march the Drugs Tsar, Keith Hellawell, denounced
the campaign in a newspaper interview as a 'red herring'. "That
must be proof positive that you are getting through to him,
why else would he try so hard to marginalise the march?"
wrote Brian Flowers of Brighton.

Here is a sample of the many other messages from
supporters.

"It was good to see everyone using their basic human right to
peaceful protest. I believe that last week's march was just the
beginning. If we can continue with this pressure over the
coming year(s) maybe we will be criminals no longer," said
Graham Powell of Cambridge.

"The rally was the nearest thing to a free festival I have been
to for years. I danced my life out down Park Lane and outside
Fortnum and Mason's. I had to get a train home at 7pm so I
hope I didn't miss any of the after-rally fun," writes Ana
Heyatawin, Gloucestershire.

Yorick Brown e-mailed from Leeds to say: "It was great to be
with like-minded people last week, the backing of a national
broadsheet makes a difference . keep the pressure up and
maybe some day the laws in this country will be based on
intelligent and considered opinion, rather than knee-jerk
reactions and mass hysteria."

One writer, who asked for his name to be withheld, reported: "I
saw loads of policemen laughing, joking, lazing around in vans
and yawning, it just goes to show that cannabis smokers are
not a problem to the police. Can you imagine that number of
drinkers all together? What a nightmare."

* A CROWN Court jury has cleared a man who was accused
of growing and supplying cannabis to relieve his wife's acute
Multiple Sclerosis symptoms. The jury, in Warrington last
Friday, accepted taxi driver Alan Blythe's defence of "duress
of circumstance" by a majority decision. In doing so they
ignored the judge's suggestion that Mr Blythe had failed to
prove duress of circumstances for the charge of cultivation.
The court was told that 10 cannabis plants, pots of cannabis
bush heads and a variety of growing equipment was found
during a 7.30am raid on the Blythe's home in Runcorn last
July. In evidence Mr Blythe described how his wife could
hardly work and attacks of extreme dizziness. "After these
attacks she would be absolutely suicidal," said Mr Blythe.

After the case he said he would go to prison rather than see
his wife suffer more of the agony which had made her suicidal.