PRESIDENT OF 'CIRC' JEAN-PIERRE GALLAND WILL BE TRIED FOR THE "OPERATION CANNABIS OF DEPUTIES"

MEPs GIANFRANCO DELL'ALBA AND OLIVIER DUPUIS WILL TESTIFY REAFFIRMING THE IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ACTIONS.

Brussels-Paris, March 25, 1998. Deliberately violating the law, the CIRC (Committee for the education and the Research on Cannabis) recently sent to French deputies a publication titled 'Cannabis, a Letter to Legislators' with a joint, to highlight the gravity of the French situation. In 1996, over 50,000 people have been interrogated for the simple use of cannabis (that is a criminal offense.)

Since January 22, Mr. Galland is under strict police control, and will appear today Wednesday, March 25, at 1:30 p.m. before the XIV Correctional Chamber of Paris for "having bought, possessed, transported, offered, incited the use of and proposed cannabis under a favorable perspective".

Declaration of Oliver Dupuis and Gianfranco Dell'Alba, MEPs:

"We have already been interrogated ourselves for some civil disobedience actions, for which we are waiting to be tried, we feel that it is our duty to support the CIRC initiative as well as all those that through civil disobedience want to raise the question of the obsolescence and ineffectiveness of the drug laws to public authorities and politicians.

After 40 years of political prohibition, during which France has played a major role, we must realize the complete failure of this hypocrite war on drugs that only makes narco-mafias prosper and the 'bon pensant' condemning dozens of thousands of people to illegality all over the world. This trial can become even more symbolic if we consider the fact that it regards a crime of opinion perpetrated in a country in which Human Rights are 'normally' respected. As the French justice knows, we have rendered ourselves culpable in many different occasions of the same crime on the French ground. We are waiting, with hope, that the French justice will proceed against us in the same rigorous way.

Radical Party

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