CANNABIS SOCIAL CLUBS
In addition to Spain, where several associations operate in a similar way as Pannagh, other countries where these initiatives could start already are Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands. In those countries, cultivation of cannabis for personal consumption is not prosecuted, although the exact legislation remains unclear. In the Netherlands, elements of this model could be used as a definitive solution to the ‘backdoor’ dilemma of the coffeeshops. But also in other countries, people could elaborate their own version. With the help of good lawyers and/or local authorities, this could become a way to undermine the prohibition of cannabis, and, in the long term, of other drugs as well.
Promoting the general idea of Cannabis Social Clubs will be one of ENCODs priorities in the coming months. A group of members is currently preparing a detailed proposal on how these clubs could function, on the website that has been created for this purpose (www.cannabis-clubs.eu). The proposal will be presented at the Conference that ENCOD will co-organise in the European Parliament in Brussels on 6 and 7 November. In Belgium, Draw Up Your Plant, a local association of cannabis consumers, will start its collective plantation in the beginning of October.
Cannabis is the weakest link in international drug policies. It has become part of day to day reality and the remaining problems that are related to it can only be solved after prohibition is removed. More and more people, including many outside the drug world, draw this conclusion, even if they are not always in favour of it themselves. In the German magazine “Der Spiegel” of 17 August, Karl Heinz Florenz (a Member of European Parliament for the German Christian Democrats) blamed the Dutch government for the fact that the large scale cultivation of cannabis for the coffeeshops is now also organised from Germany. And indeed it has been precisely the repressive operations of the Dutch police against growers in the Netherlands that have created the expansion of the phenomenon to Germany and Belgium.
