WE’VE NOT MADE A HASH OF IT
Accies chief defends selling the stadium’s naming rights to a cannabis oil firm
Hamilton Accies chief executive Colin Mcgowan this week hit back at critics over the decision to accept stadium sponsorship from a cannabis oil firm.
The deal represents a five-figure sum of money for the Premiership club, alongside profits from sales of HOPECBD.
Critics have labelled the decision ‘regrettable’, while some of the club’s supporters say it’s an embarrassment.
However, anti-drugs campaigner Mcgowan (left) says he would never allow the club to be associated with any form of mind-altering substance, and said there’s nothing wrong with HOPECBD.
Colin said: “I totally and absolutely condemn the use of mind-altering substances. The damage that cocaine, heroin and skunk and psychoactive products are doing to our youth is an absolute disgrace — HOPECBD doesn’t fall into that category.”
Hamilton Accies chief executive Colin Mcgowan this week defended the club’s decision to strike a deal with a cannabis oil company as their stadium sponsor.
The decision to rename New Douglas Park the HOPECBD Stadium has been met with backlash from some quarters, with Professor Neil Mckegane, a research director at the Glasgow Centre of Substance Use, labelling it ‘regrettable’.
Hamilton supporters have also been up in arms over the renaming, saying it makes the club a ‘joke’.
Anti-drugs campaigner Mcgowan insists he has the full backing of the Hamilton Accies board, stressing that he would never allow the club to be associated with anything that
promotes the use of drugs or mind-altering substances.
The deal brings in a fivefigure sum to the Premiership club, with a percentage of profits from the sale of HOPECBD.
Mcgowan (63) says he got involved with HOPECBD because his wife Helen suffers from fibromyalgia, and he says if people believe it can help with ailments, they should be allowed to do use it.
He said: “People who use HOPECBD say it’s a food supplement and I honestly believe that the pharmaceutical companies are quite fearful that the rumours are true.
“We can never make a medical claim, but you only have to search the web, go into the shop and ask people what they’re using it for.
“I got into this because my wife Helen has a chronic pain called fibromyalgia and I’ve tried for 20 years to find anything that helps.
“To help my wife I would go to the end of the world to find something.
“I believe that people take this product because they hope. I totally and absolutely condemn the use of mindaltering substances – absolutely. The damage that cocaine, heroin and skunk and psychoactive products are doing to our youth is an absolute disgrace – CBD doesn’t fall into that category.
“CBD is from the hemp plant which is coincidentally part of the cannabis family.
“It goes through a Co2 extraction process and is then further distilled to remove the THC, which is the psychoactive part which produces the so-called high. You can align it with alcoholfree lager.”
Mcgowan added: “I have an obligation to this football club to raise finance, I have an obligation to look after it morally as well.
“People may believe that it’s morally wrong to align yourself with a cannabisbased product, but Alexander Fleming at one point in time had a fungus that became penicillin and if people had stopped him, where would we be today?
“I am a director of the football club, I don’t do anything by myself. I speak to the board, I have complete board approval, and we did this with our eyes open, knowing there’s bound to be a wee bit of negativity about it.
“See the people who are running about trying to find the negative? Tell them to look at themselves in the
mirror and ask what they’re all about. To sit and snipe at a football club that’s lost £1million, that has seen its main sponsor go skint, that has managed to convince a bank to lend it money because of the social conscience of this club... the board should be praised and applauded, they have achieved miracles.
“For this club still to be here after what it has gone through is miraculous.”
I have complete board approval Colin Mcgowan