 Can you define what is a cannabis social club in one or two sentences? Yes, a cannabis social club is an association without profit of members which are more than 18 years old and they sign an agreement that they don't want to keep buying the weed or the cannabis in the black market so that's why they do this contract and they say each one writes the amount of grams that he needs to consume every month and with the addition of all these numbers we calculate how many plans we need to provide the cannabis for the members so they don't go to the black market and they just produce for the people that is member of the club and there are some restrictions for example most of the clubs don't allow you to get more than 3 grams every day you go there this is not comparable to the coffee shop because it's more closed, it's more controlled and there's no kind of advertisement of clubs, it's forbidden the seat of the cannabis clubs was planned in Catalonia in 1992 it has been done just by activists and civil society organised and just recently I would say maybe the last two years the government has begun to dedicate attention to the phenomena because the phenomena was so big after 20 years that they could not keep looking to the other side and nowadays we have a huge reality of cannabis clubs nearly 200 in Barcelona, nearly 300, 350 in Catalonia but in whole Spain there are between 800 and 1000 clubs Is it in line with the Spanish law? What does the Spanish law say about cannabis use? Cannabis law is very particular, not just cannabis also because a lot of drugs because consumption has been always decriminalised since the beginning of democracy this is one of the facts that allows these cannabis clubs but the point is that this model has emerged in a grey zone of law so there's no specific law regarding cannabis clubs nowadays they are beginning to discuss it and depending on the level of the government you go there's a more open point of view or a more close point of view in fact from the central government they are completely against cannabis clubs so nowadays there's a discussion of what will happen if they will go back to flandestinity or they will be regulated How did the police react to the creation of cannabis clubs? Yeah, the most weak point of cannabis clubs is where the clubs are and the clubs are not normally in the same shop or place where the cannabis club is so imagine if you want to do a club you would rent a place in Barcelona but then out of Barcelona you rent another place and you decide if you do outdoors or indoors the place in the city is not a huge problem not for members, not for family because inside there's small amounts of cannabis so it makes no sense to go with 100 policemen there because at the end it's a few amount what is more in risk is the crops, the plantations and in that sense the members have to keep it absolutely off the record and if the police detects the plantation they go, they cut the plants and then it's a judge that decides what happens if this is traffic or not traffic until this moment we had had more than 100 cases in trials no one has been charged with penalties or whatever because they belong to a cannabis club Do you think this can be like an alternative model for regulating the cannabis market compared to what's happening in the US where it's mostly commercialized? Absolutely, I think this is maybe not the model but one model we can learn a lot it's a very nice experience One of the fears that we face when we talk about legalization is companies that they want to make profit will advertise this to everybody and minors and these issues so with cannabis clubs maybe it's a good transitional model to learn how we can implement these kind of regulatory systems so I think this should be more studied Recently you can read some criticisms that say that now it's too commercial in Barcelona that people just see the business and not this kind of social entrepreneurship but what it was before Yes, bad practices had happened but this is not because of, I think, not because of the bad behavior of people this is because of the lack of regulation some of them were more, his objective was more to get profit so they opened the doors, they invited more detourists this has happened but most of these clubs had been shut down last summer because the city hall was concerned about this image that Barcelona became the new Amsterdam How do you see the future? In September we will have regional elections and this will be also another very important point because it's not just about cannabis we are discussing about regenerating democracy and changing phases and changing many things so this can be very important for the future not just of cannabis clubs also because of the freedom of Catalonia you know these regional tensions that we have and at the end, in November, December, there are national elections and the government that is nowadays in Madrid it's absolutely against cannabis clubs so if they change, this is good for the health of the model if they win again, it will be very bad