Spain: Senate votes against regulating Cannabis Clubs

Last Wednesday, the Spanish Senate voted against the passage of a law proposed by the Confederal Left to regulate cannabis clubs throughout the country, heralding a future still a little more complicated for Cannabis Clubs Spain.

The vast majority, made up of the conservative PP party, the socialist PSOE party and the ultra-conservative VOX party, voted against the proposal.

On the other hand, the left-wing parties Geroa Bai, ERC, EH Bildu, as well as the Catalan party JxCAT and the liberal party Ciudadanos, voted in favor. Abstentions came from the Basque PNV and the Aragonese PAR.

The bill, the first on cannabis to be debated in the plenary session of one of Spain's two chambers, would authorize a maximum of 4m² of indoor cultivation per person and 8 plants outdoors, with a maximum quantity to be consumed of 10 grams. per person per day. In addition, it stipulated that both private users and associations should join a register set up in each autonomous community to ensure compliance with the established rules, and that Clubs should be the guarantors of responsible consumption.

Geroa Bai's Navarre senator, Koldo Martínez, rapporteur and defender of the initiative, said that the aim was not to «simply legalize» the consumption or self-cultivation of cannabis «as if it were an open bar», but to set limits by legislating in a strict and consistent manner, and thus be able to differentiate Clubs from the illegal market.

The Navarre senator also stated that there is a global trend in favor of legalization, with more and more countries choosing to legislate on everything to do with the plant. The senator regretted the absence of «a clear, current and coherent regulatory framework in line with constitutional principles», which leads to «undesirable physical and legal insecurity» for consumers and organizations.

In Spain, there are currently around 1,500 cannabis consumption clubs, said the senator, who recalled that in Navarre, Catalonia, the Basque Country and the Balearic Islands, they are regulated, as well as in many municipalities that have approved ordinances to organize their activity.

Arguments that didn't convince the Socialists, whose spokeswoman Patricia Abascal denied that the current rules in Spain «are obsolete» and opted to start regulating the medicinal use of cannabis, which «opens a door to continue moving forward», but always bearing in mind that it is a drug and its consumption has many harmful effects on public health.