The six rules of marijuana clubs: "All users must be addicted"

If self-use of marijuana is not a crime, what prevents setting up an association in which dozens of people can purchase and smoke this drug together?. Unity is strength or, at least, lowers costs, and that is the logic on which the hundreds of cannabis clubs that operate in Spain revolve: take advantage of the legal vacuum, set up a smoking room and leave the Police at the door.. Impunity seems clear, but the Supreme Court has just recalled the limits of “shared consumption” in a recent ruling.

The magistrates explain that the Penal Code excludes the consumption of marijuana in itself, but this does not mean that any action “aimed at promoting, favoring or facilitating it” should be prosecuted and punished.. If this reasoning is extended to “shared consumption”, then cannabis associations appear, but also “very strict conditions” to prevent their conversion into points of sale. The Supreme specifically points to six rules.

In the first place, “consumers must all be addicts to exclude the reprehensible purpose of disclosing consumption”. Secondly, “the community that participates in this consumption must be made up of a small number of people that allows us to consider that we are dealing with an intimate act without public significance”. And, thirdly, “consumers must be specifically identified”, both to guarantee the first rule —”their personal conditions”— and the second —”properly control the number”—.

Having clarified who, the court affects three other rules on how: “Consumption must take place in a closed place or, at least, hidden from the contemplation of third parties, to avoid, with that example, the disclosure of such a harmful practice” ; “the amount must be small or insignificant or, at least, minimal and adequate for consumption in a single session or meeting”, and “it must be immediate consumption”.

According to the Supreme Court, the possibility of extending this doctrine of “shared consumption” to associations that last over time “are very rare” and, despite what some of its promoters defend, in no case does it lead to proclaiming “the legality current (!) of cannabis clubs”. The exclamation marks in the quote are harvested by the magistrates themselves.

A practical example

The Supreme Court reviews these rules by confirming the sentence of four people in charge of a cannabis association in Catalonia called Green Shark. In December 2019, the Provincial Court of Barcelona imposed sentences of between three and four years in prison for a crime against public health and another for illegal association, but they appealed pointing to shared consumption. “Neither in its foundation nor in its detailed requirements can this coverage doctrine be used for associative initiatives for the distribution of cannabis,” warns the Supreme Court.

His sentence explains that shared consumption cannot be extrapolated to a “methodical, institutionalized structure, with a vocation of permanence and open to the successive integration” of new members, but must be understood as a “shared consumption between friends or acquaintances” in which “one is in charge of obtaining the drug with the contribution of all”. Therefore, there is no room for the professionalization of shared consumption, regardless of whether it is for profit or simply for free dissemination: as long as it implies a “risk to public health”, it will be prosecuted.

In practice, this doctrine corners many of the cannabis clubs in Spain, where the number of members exceeds a hundred and the purchase of different varieties of marijuana is allowed: you choose, pay and take it with you at the moment. The Police are aware of this, but the main problem they face lies precisely in their aforementioned professionalism, in the difficulty of demonstrating what happens inside these premises.. That is where strategies such as standing guard in front of the clubs come in, which consists of catching enough people leaving the place with marijuana to later request an entry and search warrant..

“Alerted by the constant movement of people entering and leaving the premises, the Local Police carried out surveillance, identification and seizure of substances from the people who entered and left the premises during the month of May 2017”, explains the sentence on what happened with the association of Catalonia. Between the 15th and 17th of that month, four people were “apprehended” for marijuana or hashish, highlighting that one was a minor and two others did not show “any membership card.”. Once the Mossos d'Esquadra was informed, the duty court authorized entry in a matter of hours.

“In the registry, marijuana with a total gross weight of 483 grams (four hundred eighty-three grams) was intervened, divided into various containers,” explains the sentence.. “Since its foundation, the referrals sold marijuana and hashish indiscriminately to consumers of such a substance, who went there to provide themselves”. As soon as they passed the doors of the premises, the club and its managers were doomed to condemnation.

The defenses later tried to annul the search warrant, but the Supreme Court considers that there were sufficient reasons: “People leaving the cannabis premises (one of them, a minor), neighborhood complaints and the result of surveillance”. It also recalls that the requirements to authorize a search in “a place open to the public” and “home of a legal person” are less than those that must come together “to invade the home of an individual”. In these cases, the associations cannot hold on to the same “intimacy and privacy” arguments.