A big legal vacuum regarding cannabis exists in Spanish politics
Spain is home to one of the best cannabis communities on the planet. Anyone who has visited Spain as a tourist, as well as the lucky ones who live there, will tell you that Spain has some of the best cannabis on the planet. This is especially true for the hashish.
Cannabis clubs are common in Spain, with hundreds of them spread across the country. In Barcelona alone there are around 200 cannabis clubs. Many of these clubs look like Amsterdam's famous cannabis cafes, and they are very popular for obvious reasons.
Despite Spain's flourishing cannabis scene, the country lags behind when it comes to medical cannabis policy. While many other countries have completely legalized cannabis for medical use and created a regulated industry, Spain has been slow to follow suit, which is unfortunate for patients on medical cannabis.
Spain has a strange cannabis policy, as it allows the commercial cultivation of medical cannabis, but this cannabis is not intended for domestic patients. Instead, all but one cultivation license is for export only, and the remaining license is for medical cannabis used for research purposes only.
Unregulated cannabis is abundant and relatively easy to acquire in Spain, so access is not a problem for many medical cannabis patients, but it is not as optimal as a fully legalized industry.
Formation of a medical cannabis committee
This month-ci, the Spanish Congress adopted a measure to create a sub-committee to study medical cannabis policy. The main stated objective of the newly approved committee is "to analyze the experiences of regulating cannabis for medical use".
Part of this goal will be to look at the experiences of other countries that have regulated their medical cannabis industry. The committee will also look at the growing scientific research concerning medical cannabis.
If the commission does its job properly, it will no doubt find that the experiences of other countries are favorable and that the scientific evidence supporting cannabis as a medicine is overwhelming.
Hopefully this will lead to the creation of a nationally regulated medical cannabis industry in Spain, which will result in safer products, increased access and encourage the medical community to treat cannabis as a real medicine.
