Press Release 08 December 2016 – No embargo 
 

Bring 1930s Anti-Prohibition Car to Bristol

Photo and Interview Opportunity

What: This week is the anniversary of the end of US alcohol Prohibition. Bereaved Parents will call for drug legalisation because Prohibition still doesn’t work. They will protest using a 1930s car like one used in US anti-alcohol Prohibition campaigns, but with anti-drug Prohibition slogans

When: Friday 9th December, 2016 at 11.30am

Where: 9-10 King Street Bristol BS1 4EQ (opposite the Old Vic)

1930s Anti-Prohibition Campaign which protesters will recreate

Just as families and mothers played a lead role in repealing alcohol Prohibition in the 1930s, the Anyone’s Child project is leading the charge to end the failed drug war. The project unites parents from across the UK and world whose lives have been wrecked as a result of the prohibition of drugs, and are calling for them to be legally regulated instead.

Cara Lavan from Bristol said: “Everyone knows alcohol Prohibition led to poisonous moonshine, Al Capone and corrupt police, but didn’t stop people drinking. Now modern-day drug prohibition is doing the same all over again.  I lost my partner, and my son lost his father, because he could not get the help he needed. As a heroin addict, he was criminalised and stigmatised. He could not access the health-care he needed and had no idea what was in the drugs he was taking. Instead he had to tap into a criminal underworld – which ultimately cost him his life.  If he had been been able to access prescribed heroin, he would not have overdosed. He would be here watching his child grow up.”

Ray Lakeman said: “Prohibition still doesn’t work. 50 families a week in the UK are bereaved because of our drug laws. I lost both my sons, Jacques and Torin, to accidental ecstasy overdoses on the same night. They wanted to get high, but they didn’t want, and didn’t need to die. Our government’s approach to drugs is not protecting our children, it is destroying families like mine every day. We urgently need to end the drug war.”

UK representatives from the Anyone’s Child campaign will be available for interview http://anyoneschild.org/stories/

Contact

Jane Slater, Anyone’s Child, jane@tdpf.org.uk 07921 886769

Martin Powell, Transform Drug Policy Foundation, martin@tdpf.org.uk  07875 679301

Notes

  1. ‘Anyone’s Child: Families for Safer Drug Control’ is a network of families whose lives have been wrecked by our drug laws and are now campaigning to change them. https://anyoneschild.org

  2. On 5th December 1933 the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, (repealing the 18th Amendment) bringing an end to the national prohibition of alcohol in America.