UK: Café boss banned from giving children Cannabis soft drink

Uproar over the controversial soft drink 'Cannabis' being given to local school children at a leisure centre café in West Wales is a "fuss about nothing", says the drink's importer John Edwards.Sold throughout Europe and the USA, the privately run café was ordered to remove the drink by officials at Ceredigon County Council after providing it free of charge to 200 children attending a local cycle network event."Clearly this isn't the image we want to give our school children," says Mark Elliott executive assistant at the county council."A can is being analysed and we're awaiting the results, we're not expecting to find anything from that, but we were obviously concerned with the packaging."According to Leisure Centre Café boss, Dave Reese who has since been banned by the council from stocking Cannabis, he was told by police it is unethical to sell such a drink."What do you call unethical? Isn't selling fake cigarettes in sweet shop unethical? Where do you draw the line?," he said.Imported into the UK from Switzerland, Cannabis is apparently a lemonade drink with some hemp seed extract, but says Edwards, who began importing the drink after spotting it while on holiday two years ago, the can clearly displays that THC has been removed so there are no hallucinating effects."It is a very nice, refreshing drink and tastes very much like pink grapefruit and is proving to be very popular," said Edwards.Cannabis will no longer be seen on the shelves at Plascrug Leisure Centre Café, but can be seen in outlets throughout the UK, retailing at 89p.Sarah Diston