Stockport Cannabis Cafe raided again, and owner goes to jail, for 3 YEARS!
They keep getting Busted! This page gives an account of the continued nonsence ……!
http://www.greenhosting.co.uk/dutchexperiencewebsiite/busted.htm
The Dutch experience was busted again, the plain clothes police who mingled with the crowd, moved in before the cafe had even opened. After initially trapping Colin Davies in the cafe doorway and causing him to scream out in pain due to his serious spinal injuries. Colin was then manhandled back into the cafe, at this point Colin was placed on the floor near to the entrance, whilst all around medicinal cannabis users in wheelchairs and on crutches looked on. After a short while Colin was then dragged away to a waiting police van. The police still remained in the premises with all the people who were in the cafe still being held there.
Here is the Cafe website: http://www.dutchexperience.org
Cannabis cafe raided as owner jailed
Thursday, 3 October, 2002 BBC Story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2296211.stm
The UK’s first Amsterdam-style cannabis cafe has been raided on the same day its owner was jailed.
The news came just hours after cafe owner Colin Davies was sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted of drugs offences.
Greater Manchester Police confirmed on Thursday the Dutch Experience cafe in Stockport had been raided by officers.
Davies had claimed the cafe was set up for seriously ill people who used the class B drug for medicinal use. He was arrested after smoking a joint at the cafe
His defence team applied for his immediate release because he has already served nine months in jail, but the judge refused.
Davies, 44, from Romney Towers, Brinnington, Stockport, was arrested when the cafe opened on 15 September 2001 after being caught smoking a joint.
He had claimed the cafe was based on similar ventures – the so-called “medi-weed” system – which operate in the Netherlands.
He said his clientele were people who smoked cannabis to ease painful illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and arthritis.
But he was found guilty of three counts of possessing a class B drug with intent to supply, of supplying a class B drug and of being involved in the importation of cannabis.
His trial heard customs officers seized cannabis worth £18,000 at Dover and 430 ready-made joints destined for addresses linked to Davies.
The prosecution also alleged £3,000 cash found at his flat was the proceeds from the sale of the drug.
Davies was also convicted of permitting the premises to be used for the smoking of the drug.
In passing sentence, the judge said Davies had persistently flouted the law.
James McCrindell, for the defence, said: “This episode began out of a genuine belief on the part of Davies that it was appropriate to help others who were in difficult circumstances in relation to their medical condition.”
Here, earlier story in the continued saga:
Stockport goes Dutch
Wednesday, 24 July, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2148590.stm
Dutch entrepreneurs are preparing to test the UK’s soft drug laws by opening up to 50 cannabis cafes. But there is already one such British establishment defying the police… in Stockport.
The opening of a so-called cannabis cafe in Stockport last September seems not to have caused the drab town on the outskirts of Manchester to descend into reefer madness.
Despite the media attention surrounding an establishment which openly flouts UK drug laws by allowing its customers to consume marijuana, many locals are unaware of its exact location.
“I’ve worked here for eight month and have never found it,” says one man standing, as it happens, just a few hundreds yards from The Dutch Experience.
Close by a council flower planter boasting a few (unsmokeable) errant hemp leaves, a group of teenagers is even less help. Their ignorance of the cafe seems to suggest the town’s youth are barely interested in – let alone being corrupted by – their proximity to soft drugs.
While not signposted, The Dutch Experience turns out to be no secretive drug den.
Situated in a cobbled arcade, the cafe’s neighbours include a hairdressers, a jewellery shop and a fitness centre, where sandwiches can be ordered by those hungry for something more substantial than the cafe’s crisps and chocolate bars.
Inside the air is not exactly heavy with the odour of hashish. In fact the smell of instant coffee seems to be winning the day.
The serious smoking takes place in a members’ room, into which you can only enter once you have provided two photos, shown your passport and signed a declaration that you are “not in anyway a police officer or informant of the police”.
The form is useless in any legal sense, but is an act of defiance for a place raided three times by the local constabulary and whose creator, medicinal cannabis advocate Colin Davies, is in Strangeways Prison for his troubles.
Despite this, at least three customers are waiting in the public cafe to join up, the whole process of filling forms and issuing laminated cards going as efficiently as can be expected from a business conducted in a dope haze.
Any spare space is given over to “Free Colin Davies” posters, a photo of Mr Davies giving the Queen a bouquet laced with hemp leaves and a picture of Brian Paddick – the London police officer who pioneered leniency towards soft drug use.
Stacked beside the stereo are exactly the sort of CDs you’d expect to be on heavy rotation. Bob Marley, The Chemical Brothers, Bob Dylan… and er, Chris Rea.
Berry – a young clog-wearing Dutchman who once guided tourists around Amsterdam’s government-tolerated cannabis coffee shops – says the 1,200-strong clientele doesn’t really fit the stoner stereotype.
“This place is busier than any coffee shop I’ve ever seen in Amsterdam. In the day it’s mainly medicinal users – people in wheelchairs and on crutches.
“We have the suits popping in at lunchtime. Then at night it’s a bit more recreational – nurses, teachers, that sort of person. Our youngest member is 18, the oldest 90-something.”
Berry is keen to stress the cafe’s service to those who say their use of cannabis eases the symptoms of serious illness. “We have people with cancer, Aids, multiple sclerosis – not drug scene people at all. It’s criminal that the government makes them go to street dealers who sell harder drugs too.”
Though many of today’s smokers are fit and healthy (though hardly bright-eyed) young men, Caroline – who smokes because of a crippling spinal problem – backs up Berry’s argument. It’s the only thing that lets me get out of my wheelchair
Caroline “I was always dead against cannabis. I even shopped my son to the police when I found out he’d taken it. But now it’s the only thing that lets me get out of my wheelchair and walk with my crutches.”
Caroline says she doesn’t mind sharing the cafe with recreational users. “As a woman, I wouldn’t go into a pub alone. Here I feel comfortable. We’re a community that looks after one another.”
The community spirit doesn’t extend to the cafe’s landlord – who is said not to be keen on his outlaw tenant and is no longer cashing the rent cheques. So what do the neighbours think of The Dutch Experience?
Hardly a tourist Mecca, the cafe has at least raised Stockport’s profile. “We had lots of enquires by phone and in person when the cafe was first in the news,” says a woman from the nearby tourist information office.
Further upwind from the pungent extractor fan which services the cafe’s members’ room, one shopkeeper professes to not understanding what all the fuss is about.
“They’re no trouble. You get some people hanging around, but they’re too spaced out to cause any trouble.”
I’d posted all these reports from press, on the progress of Cannabis law, back in june, on my blog. Do take a look. Entries for the 11th July 2002:
http://tash_lodge.blogspot.com/2002_07_07_tash_lodge_archive.html#78817318
If you want to add your nine-pennies worth, the Hempcity Community Forum, about it all:
http://213.169.220.28/upload/forumdisplay.php?s=32b573cfc50d570d71821fcafc714f7e&forumid=26
