Albert Tió’s Imprisonment Highlights the Crackdown on Cannabis Associations in Spain

In the early hours of Wednesday 4 November 2020, as well as choosing a president, Americans voted to legalise recreational cannabis in Arizona, New Jersey, Mississippi, Montana and South Dakota, joining the many US states where cannabis use has been normalised for years. This is just one of the latest victories for cannabis regulation, in a period when countries such as Canada, most of the United States, Uruguay, Colombia, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Argentina, Italy, Lebanon and Ecuador, among many others, have moved towards normalising the plant, whether for medical or recreational use.

An unstoppable wave of regulation

We are therefore in an international context of cannabis regulation and major progress in the rights and freedoms of cannabis users, with more countries every day joining a promising market that financial consultancies value at billions of euros. The most optimistic forecasts predict the beginning of the end of the black market, an end to suffering for patients with no access to medical cannabis, thousands of new jobs from a new industry, and millions of euros in tax revenue for national economies. One might expect Spain to join this new wave of legislative normalisation: it has ideal conditions for growing cannabis, more than 4 million regular users, large rural areas in need of a new green industry, and it was one of the pioneers of so-called ‘cannabis associations‘. Yet while the rest of the world takes the lead, Spain has chosen to lag behind, passing up the social and economic opportunity that cannabis regulation offers. In recent years the authorities have launched an incomprehensible crackdown on cannabis associations (non-profit organisations that supply their own members, so they do not have to turn to the illicit market), reminiscent of the absurd raids of the Prohibition era in the United States. News of police raids on a cannabis association or grow in Spain appears in the press almost every day. Look at the online headlines and ‘raid’, ‘dismantled’, ‘seizure’ and ‘arrests’ are the words most often linked to cannabis news.

Albert Tió, cannabis activist

One of the best-known cases in Catalonia and Spain is that of Albert Tió, a leading activist in the associations movement and president of the Federation of Self-Regulated Cannabis Associations of Catalonia (FedCAC). Together with the Catalan Federation of Cannabis Associations (CatFAC), FedCAC promoted the cannabis clubs law passed by Catalonia in 2017, later struck down by the Constitutional Court. The cannabis association ‘AIRAM‘, on whose board Albert sat, was raided and the police seized the crop that supplied its members. He was later convicted by the Barcelona Provincial Court, and the judgment was upheld by the Supreme Court, making the conviction final for him and other AIRAM members for unlawful association and offences against public health.

On 18 November Tió, father of two boys aged four and five and a sixteen-year-old daughter, entered Lledoners prison. He faces a five-year sentence while he awaits the Spanish Government’s answer to his request for a pardon and the application his defence is preparing for the European Court of Human Rights. If the application is admitted, it will be a crucial decision and the last hope of the cannabis associations movement to have the highest court legitimise the shared consumption doctrine and the right of members of cannabis associations and clubs to manage their own cannabis use. “In the end they’ve lumped us in with traffickers, ignoring the fact that we were growing for a closed circuit, for personal use, in a place that didn’t advertise, where minors weren’t allowed in, and where there were doctors and psychologists to monitor risky use,” Tió told the newspaper Público in one of his last interviews. “We’re seeing that associations are being persecuted, and whenever they get the chance to raid one, charge it and then convict it, they do. And now seed banks too. What’s next? Grow shops?” the activist asked indignantly. On 10 November the campaign Consumo con Derechos (Consumption with Rights) held a press conference with the activist and the other convicted AIRAM members to call for a pardon, denounce the growing criminalisation of the cannabis associations movement in recent years and demand comprehensive regulation of cannabis use.

The persecution of cannabis associations

One of the regions where this persecution has been felt most strongly is the Balearic Islands. With the spread of these organisations on the islands and the lack of legal certainty, the Public Prosecutor’s Office launched a campaign that has led to more than 25 raids on cannabis clubs in Mallorca and over 50 arrests in the last four years. This persecution of cannabis associations and clubs is nothing new, however. From August 2013 they became a target of the Attorney General’s Office, and from 2015 the Supreme Court issued its first rulings, restrictive, prohibitionist and out of step with social reality, in cases such as ‘Ebers‘ in Bilbao, ‘Three Monkeys‘ in Barcelona and ‘Pannagh‘, the association of veteran activist Martín Barriuso, also in Bilbao.

The Supreme Court’s rulings against these associations, initially convictions, became acquittals on the grounds of unavoidable mistake of law after Constitutional Court appeals, but the courts’ clear position did not change one bit: the activity of cannabis clubs and associations is not shared consumption and is not lawful. These raids have spread the idea that the authorities are trying to make an example of them, to slow down regulation and sow confusion among users, activists and cannabis associations. The problem, however, goes beyond individual rights and freedoms. More recently, during the Covid-19 lockdown, the Spanish Medical Cannabis Observatory (OEDCM) called for a solution for the medical users of cannabis associations so they could access the cannabis these patients need as an essential good in their daily lives. Because these organisations are not regulated, patients were unable to obtain cannabis during the state of emergency, and those who managed to did so at greater risk and at a much higher cost for treatments they need. In addition, many of the worker-members of these clubs and associations, being in an irregular and unprotected situation, have had no access to any state aid or furlough scheme (ERTE) since the pandemic began.

When will real regulation arrive?

Despite the motions, non-legislative proposals and popular legislative initiatives put forward by organisations such as Regulación Responsable, the Spanish Medical Cannabis Observatory and the Confederation of Cannabis Associations, among others, calling for legal progress on cannabis regulation, no initiative has yet come to fruition or brought about any real change. Cannabis associations and clubs remain in a very difficult legal position, with time not on their side, waiting for long-awaited and fair regulation while more and more countries write into law what is already a social reality.

Recently, Unidas Podemos announced that it was working on a bill to regulate cannabis comprehensively in Spain. According to Lucía Muñoz, the party’s spokesperson on the Joint Committee for the Study of Addiction Problems, in an interview published in El Confidencial, the future law aims to give a greater role to cannabis associations and to the groups that have worked on self-regulation for years. The main points of the bill would include recreational and medical use, home growing and market regulation through licences and points of sale. Meanwhile Albert Tió awaits these developments in prison with a constructive and admirable attitude, convinced that his terrible situation will help the goals of the cannabis movement: comprehensive cannabis regulation that is fair to users and society as a whole, protects minors and creates wealth and jobs across Spain. Given how complex the situation is, with almost everything against them, the companies, activists, users and organisations that make up the cannabis activism ecosystem must reflect and face this titanic task together. #UnionCannabica at every level is more necessary than ever, so that the machinery of repression does not end up destroying a sector we thought was established.

A big hug and lots of strength to Albert and to everyone at risk of going to prison while awaiting trial for cannabis.

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