Gary Youds has spent nearly 20 years opening cannabis cafes in Liverpool, getting raided, getting jailed, and refusing to stop.
Gary Youds is best known as the UK’s “cannabis martyr.” That’s because he has continually sacrificed himself for the cause of cannabis legalization. He is currently spending his sixth stint in jail for operating an illegal cannabis cafe in Liverpool.
In February, the crusader was arrested and remanded in His Majesty’s Prison Liverpool for defiantly allowing his patrons to congregate at the Chillin’ Rooms in Holt Road, near Liverpool Football Club’s Anfield stadium.
Police raided the premises and seized “cannabis in various forms, including cannabis brownies, cookies and sweets” along with Chillin’ Rooms branded merchandise. Youds, 56, was charged with possession with intent to supply cannabis, and permitting use of premises for smoking cannabis, which is a class B drug in the UK.
The second charge was later dropped, but Youds will be sentenced on the remaining charge on 28 April at Liverpool Crown Court.
From prison, speaking through his sister, he told High Times: “I’m fighting for freedom for all.”
For Youds, who has racked up countless convictions and more than two years cumulatively behind bars, incarceration seems like little more than an occupational hazard in his quest to free the weed.
“The revolution will be cultivated,” he told High Times in an interview prior to his arrest. “I’m here to set the standard and when everyone comes up we’ll have an amazing industry. I’m ready to roll out my self-seeding business model nationwide, and literally grow the economy.”
His sister Paula Youds said “Gary is not a criminal” but simply a man relentlessly following “his dream” regardless of the consequences. “I hope in my brothers’ lifetime things change,” she told High Times. “A safe place like the Chillin’ Rooms should be left alone. Alcohol causes more trouble.
“I miss him and his mum needs him as Gary is her main carer and she had to go into a care home as there is no-one to look after her now.”
Prior to his latest arrest, Youds’ civil disobedience-meets-entrepreneurial-activist campaign had only been going from strength to strength, after attracting attention from the BBC and VICE. “I’ll need a bigger premises soon,” he said, explaining that the cafe fits around 120 people and that his daily open mic nights are becoming increasingly popular. “We’re almost at capacity some nights.”
Cannabis is illegal for recreational purposes in the UK, but it was legalized for medical use in 2018 and flower can be procured legally at reasonable prices for conditions like anxiety. Youds says that legalizing cannabis could reduce use of addictive Class A and pharmaceutical drugs and save ailing UK high streets. “We’re going to eradicate crime and give people purpose,” he said.
Youds smokes about two grams of home grown cannabis a day, which eases his arthritis and soothes the symptoms of mental health issues. “After all that I’ve been through it helps me get uninterrupted sleep,” he said. “I just get on with my life.”
The scouser’s (that’s the word for people from Liverpool, like the members of the Beatles) quest began in 2002 when he applied to the local council for permission to turn a former taxi office into a members club for stoners. They denied his request, so Youds went and opened a Barcelona-style cannabis social club anyway in 2005. A sign indoors read: “Stay medicated and live the dream.”
But following a series of police raids despite his calls for clemency, “We are doing nothing wrong, all we want is tolerance,” Youds told the Liverpool Echo newspaper, he was sentenced to a year in prison in 2006 after a case in which a judge gave him his nickname “the cannabis martyr.”
Youds kept a low profile for a number of years after his release, but stateside legalization inspired him to relaunch the cafe in 2015. He enjoyed extended stretches of successfully operating the cafe, but his exploits still led to dozens of arrests following raids, another two jail sentences, including one for supplying cannabis freely to a man with terminal cancer, and two probation violation recalls.
“I’ve given people jobs and reduced crime,” he said in an interview with the La Vida Liverpool blog. “Why make me an evil person in the eyes of the law when I work hard and enjoy a smoke. I am a good person in society. It is ridiculous, unfair and illogical to demonise cannabis.”
Since his release from prison in 2024, he threw himself back into running the cafe with gusto. But he claimed he had run into financial difficulties. “I’ve got an interest-only mortgage that was supposed to have been paid back in 2020 but no one will give me another mortgage because of my criminal record,” he said, adding that it was not feasible to sleep at the cafe. “I might be homeless soon. I need an investor desperately.”
Still, you can be sure that Youds will be back. The last post on his Facebook reads: “Putting the high back on the High St.”
