Purple haze all in my brain

Paul Stewart, who opened the Purple Haze Cafe in Leith earlier this year says he is fed up with the backwards cannabis laws in Scotland and is shutting down the business and moving to Amsterdam to work in a cannabis cafe there.

Although business was initially booming due to extraordinary media coverage in the beginning, after weeks of police harassment and his subsequent arrest for allowing his patrons to consume the herb on premises, he is now broke and barely able to pay the token fine handed down by the courts. He is currently trying to sell the remainder of his eight year lease.

Meanwhile publisher and author Kevin Williamson, the Scottish Socialist Party’s drugs spokesman and founder of the Scottish Cannabis Coffeeshops Movement announced today that he will be opening a similar cafe in the center of Edinburgh. Saying the £500 fine was a "token slap on the wrist" demonstrating what a waste of police time and court time this was he advised that supporters will get together and discuss ways to open another establishment. Williamson notes, "Our ultimate aim is to get cannabis out of the black market and what we are doing is morally right."