Cannabis clubs plug a gap in Spanish drugs laws
Member-only clubs spring up as smokers exploit law allowing consumption of
cannabis in private
Giles Tremlett in Paracuellos de Jarama
The Guardian
Tuesday 28 December 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/28/cannabis-clubs-spanish-drug-laws

The sign on the door says it all, but the acrid smell and smoke wafting
across the Private Cannabis Club in the Madrid dormitory town of Paraceullos
de Jarama are proof that it lives up to its name. "This is the one place we
can smoke in peace," said a punter at the bar, mixing tobacco and dried,
shredded cannabis leaf in a long rolling paper.

The Private Cannabis Club, with its palmate green leaves stencilled on the
walls and the club's name etched on to smoked windowpanes, is at the
vanguard of a new movement of pro-cannabis campaigners in Spain. The members
spotted a gap in Spain's drugs laws which, they say, makes the activities of
private clubs like these entirely legal.

The spacious Paracuellos de Jarama club, in a former restaurant in a town
overlooking Madrid's Barajas airport, is equipped with a bar, kitchen,
billiard tables and TV screens. It is the most sophisticated of up to 40
cannabis clubs that have sprung up in garages and back rooms around Spain
since campaigners worked out that laws making it illegal to consume in
public did not apply to private, member-only, clubs.

"We've been open for two months and we already have 125 members," said the
association's president, Pedro Ãlvaro Zamora. Those members pay 120 a year
to belong and Zamora and his companions follow rules that seem similar to
those of exclusive Mayfair clubs. A sign by the doorbell warns that only
members are admitted and a committee vets new applicants, blackballing some.
Alicia MÃndez, a club official, said: "Potential members are interviewed and
we do not accept everyone. Our members have to be responsible people, have
the right profile."

Zamora said: "This is not Amsterdam, this is not a coffee shop. This is our
association's club house and it is a private place. It is not open for
everyone."

Spain does not have a law banning consumption in private and members claim
it is safer to use the club than go out to parks and smoke in public. Zamora
said: "The club recognises that cannabis is not good for everyone. We
propose a responsible form of consumption. Not everyone should smoke. We
know there are risks." Club members can bring their own cannabis or share in
the club's own stock. They can even take some away as long as they sign for
it and the cannabis is for personal consumption.

Although the club house, which is registered with the local authorities, is
left alone by police, members can get into trouble if caught carrying
cannabis. "It is illegal to buy, sell or transport, so you can be fined if
caught with it on you." The club offers legal help to fined members.

Supplying the club is another problem, as dealing in cannabis is illegal.

"We are fighting for the legal right to grow it," said Zamora. The club
applied for a medical licence to cultivate cannabis but was turned down.
Then police raided its secret plantation and destroyed the plants. Zamora
said they would challenge in court the right to destroy a plantation devoted
to supplying a private club: "We are people who work and pay taxes. We are
not delinquents."

Some judges have ordered police to give confiscated cannabis back to clubs.
"They have told them to return it on the basis that there is no threat to
public health."

Zamora stressed that the club's suppliers did not belong to the drugs
underworld: "We don't go to the black market to buy. We know farmers who
cultivate cannabis and can provide us."

The club also campaigns on laws. "Prohibition does not work. Cannabis has
been consumed for centuries and will continue to be - for centuries.
Prohibition creates an illegal market and all that brings with it. It's
better to educate people than spend money on prohibition that fails."
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