Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Eric Clapton rethinks playing 'Cocaine'

Eric Clapton is playing "Cocaine" in concert again. The recovering drug addict and alcoholic, who founded the Crossroads Centre addiction recovery center on the Caribbean island of Antigua, stopped performing the song written by J.J. Cale when he first got sober.

"I thought that it might be giving the wrong message to people who were in the same boat as me," Clapton recently told The Associated Press.

"But further investigation proved ... the song, if anything, if it's not even ambivalent, it's an anti-drug song. And so I thought that might be a better way to do it, to approach it from a more positive point of view. And carry on performing it as not a pro-drug song, but just as a reality check about what it does." Clapton's band shouts out "dirty cocaine" during the song.

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'And where do you keep the wafers?'

A Norfolk Christian bookshop will be one of only two in Britain to continue the 300-year-old practice of selling Communion wine following the change in licensing laws.

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Antigua government considers legalizing marijuana in religious rites

Carribean Net News reports (6 March 2005) that the Antigua government is considering pushing legislation to allow the use of marijuana or cannabis sativa by Rastafarians for religious purposes. Find the full story here.

Rastafarians present marijuana petition to Antigua PM

Carribean Net News reported in December 2004 that the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda had accepted a petition of over 1500 signatures from members of the Rastafarian community calling for the decriminalisation of marijuana. The Prime Minister, in accepting the petition, agreed to discuss the matter further with members of the Rastafarian community. Find the full story here.

Antigua & Barbuda agree not to hand over U.S. nationals to ICC

Carribean Net News reports (2 March 2005) that the government of Antigua and Barbuda have given in to a US request and agreed not to hand over US nationals accused of war crimes to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Antigua and Barbuda officials agreed formally to instead transfer such persons to the US for investigation and prosecution - as part of an official agreement between the two countries. The US Congress previously passed a law that prohibited the US government from providing military assistance to countries which did not sign the Article 98 Agreements. Prime Minister Lester Bird commented that "US support to our coast guard...is crucial both to search and rescue operations and to the interdiction of drug trafficking. The loss of this support has seen a significant increase in the amount of cocaine entering our territory and, in turn, this has spawned criminal activity." Find the full story here.