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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Landlord allowed cannabis smoking
Evening News, Norwich
Saturday 26 Jun 2004 A YARMOUTH landlord who championed cannabis in the recent council elections and openly sold the drug at his pub has lost his licence. Magistrates decided Michael Skipper was not a fit and proper person to hold a liquor licence and revoked it. Skipper, who was sentenced to 100 hours community service after being found guilty of possessing cannabis with intent to supply at Norwich Crown Court in April, ran the Gallery Bar. The 58-year-old stood in this month's borough council elections for the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA), polling 187 votes. After hearing evidence from witnesses, including neighbours who told of late-noise noise and a pungent smell of cannabis wafting down the road, the licensing bench decided Mr Skipper's reign his St George's Road premises was ill-conducted. Mr Skipper, who has been given 21 days to appeal, defiantly admitted he still smoked cannabis, and after the hearing declared that legalising cannabis "would be a way of regenerating the town". He said he felt so strongly that driving drugs underground was not working that he might stand in the next general election for the LCA. Alison Ings, representing the police, told the court that seven arrests had been made during the drug raid in January, and an Ecstasy tablet was seized as well as cannabis. Cannabis was found on floors and shelves all over the premises, and apparatus including scales was also seized. She said: "This was not a one-off incident and there is evidence going back to 2001 of people saying all sorts of drugs were available on the premises." Ms Ings said evidence of Mr Skipper's "flagrant disregard for the law" was that neighbours reported having to close their bedroom windows because of a strong smell of cannabis as recently as last week. She said local people still believed cannabis was being sold because of the number of suspiciously quick visits to the bar. One of Mr Skipper's neighbours, Aliceon Blair, told how he repeatedly tore down gates she had put up in the private alley outside her 200-year-old cottage as a security measure. As a result, since he had moved to the bar in March 2000, the lives of her family and neighbours had been made a misery by Mr Skipper's customers using the alley as a late-night shortcut into York Road. She said: "We have not used our back garden for years because of the language coming from the bar, the smell of drugs and the sound of people vomiting." Mr Skipper, who had been served a noise abatement notice by the borough council, told magistrates that when he took over the old St George's Tavern it was his dream to turn it into an art gallery and bar. He said: "I started selling cannabis to open up the debate. The law needs to be challenged, but I will work within the law now."
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