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News Release
The Dutch Experience, 0161 480 5902. Hooper St, Stockport, Gtr Manchester.
www.dutchexperience.org dutchexperience@hotmail.com
Date: Monday, 28 January, 2002

For Immediate Release

More International Support for Continuing Civil Disobedience Campaign for
Jailed Cannabis Activist, Colin Davies, Held for Over 3 Months Without Bail.

Today, at 4PM, the well-known Italian leader of the Transnational Radical
Party, Marco Panella, MEP, will become the latest public figure to seek
arrest for possession of a small amount of cannabis at the Stockport police
station, Greater Manchester. He is taking this action in support of jailed
cannabis activist, Colin Davies, who has now been held in Strangeways
Prison without bail since the 20th of November last year.

Panella will then refuse bail, as has his colleague, MEP Marco Cappato. This
will require that he be held overnight. His bail hearing will then be held
tomorrow, January 29, 2002 at the same time as the committal hearings for
Colin Davies, 2 other MEPs, and 30 other protesters, arrested previously.

Hearings for MEPs.

Tomorrow at 10AM at the Stockport Court House, Edward Street, committal
hearings will be held for MEPs Marco Cappato, and Liberal Democrat Chris
Davies, and 30 others who have sought arrest in support of Colin Davies (no
relation to MEP Davies) and against cannabis prohibition.

More Civil Disobedience Scheduled For Tomorrow.

At 3PM tomorrow there will be additional acts of civil disobedience at the
Stockport Police Station, Edward Street, in support of Colin Davies, who
has previously been acquitted twice on charges of supplying cannabis to
medical patients. Davies became a medical cannabis user himself to treat
pain caused by a severe back injury. He has been deprived of cannabis while
imprisoned and forced to use debilitating narcotics.

Dozens of UK protesters will be joined by 5 activists from the French
cannabis reform group, CIRC, and by 8 Dutch activists from the Global Hemp
Museum in Haarlem, The Netherlands.

Colin Davies is the co-owner of the Dutch Experience Cannabis Cafe in
Stockport, the UK’s first Dutch style “coffee shop.” Davies opened the Dutch
Experience on September 15th of last year in order to be able to supply
medical cannabis to other patients, following the practice of the Mediwiet
program in The Netherlands. The patients are given the cannabis at
discounted prices subsidized by sales to non-medical users, in a safe
environment away from hard drug dealers.

The Dutch Experience remains open and continues to provide a peaceful
gathering place for the cannabis community.