Is the illegal drug most widely used, a consumption that does not go down after a century of prohibition and has led to several countries to regulate it
Spain enters the debate of the legalization in his own way, starting in two, but this time, no left-wing nor right-wing: we Can and Citizens to please. PSOE and PP in against
The therapeutic use of cannabis: “do Not lay claim to that approves of smoking joints”
Legalizing cannabis would control the substance, reduce the damage, would weaken the black market, lower crime, raise 3.312 million euros in taxes, would create jobs, eliminate the stigma, relieve thousands of sufferers and would guarantee civil rights and individual freedom… What say doctors, pharmacists, biologists, psychologists, jurists, sociologists, economists, patients. What say the liberals and some leftists.
Legalizing cannabis would be psychotic outbreaks, cancer, and cardiovascular pathologies; it would increase exponentially the public health problems, violence and accidents; do not offset the health costs that produces your addiction with the collection of taxes; banalizaría and would raise consumption, feed the ambitions commercialization of private sectors, lower school performance, would not protect the young and it would be unconstitutional… What say doctors, pharmacists, psychologists, biologists, jurists and economists. What say some right and others left.
Legalize cannabis, to choose between these two phrases: “The mafia is more damaging to society than cannabis” versus “Legalize cannabis is a fallacy casposa: cannabis does not cure”.
Legalize cannabis divided the country, engendering the debate, we are party to half… Again the two Spains. But this time it didn’t come with flags, nor do they carry the ideology put: we Can and Citizens to please. PSOE and PP in against.
Francisco Igea, a doctor and spokesman for Citizens in the Health Committee of the Congress: “Spain living in the worst of worlds: the prohibition does not lower the consumption, or the perception of the risk; here is how to take a cane. We cannot continue with this lack of freedom. It is important not to trivialize, because it is a drug. You must analyze their medical impact, but you have to treat it like alcohol or tobacco. You can reach an agreement with we Can if the proposal is serious; we agree on many things, although I have little hope to succeed by the pact between the conservatives of the PP and the PSOE”.
Spain lives in the worst of worlds: the prohibition on non-low-consumption, here is like taking a cane and treat it like alcohol or tobacco
Miguel Vila, deputy and promoter of the law presented, we Can in 2019: “we Want a antitrust regulation, that generate social benefits for all. Legalization would benefit the public health because it would ensure the quality of the product, you would end up with the drug trade, bring revenues to the State, would create jobs and reduce crime.”
Jesus Aguirre, a medical doctor and spokesman of the PP in the Joint Congress-Senate Committee for the Study of Drugs: “cannabis affects cognitive development, and produces neurological disorders. 40% of the emergency drug corresponds to consumers of cannabis. The more trivialization and accessibility, more consumption. Legalize it is a fallacy to casposa: a joint is not a cure. In the 20% of the deaths due to traffic there was THC in the blood. Increases the aggression of gender and sex. It is not alcohol or tobacco, because cannabis alters your personality. The pigtails says that Andalusia can be the breadbasket of cannabis in Europe. Why don’t we plant poppies and we are the breadbasket of heroin in the world?”.
Maria Aurora Florez, philologist and spokesman of the PSOE in the Mixed Commission on Drugs: “Talk about therapeutic use is a dangerous message feeds into the low perception of risk. There is to learn about it more. The consumption of cannabis is associated with tobacco, which is a synergy to be dangerous. For us, there is a predominant health staff, and public. And cannabis is a toxic substance”.
we May be up against one of the few issues that separates the same and that unites the various, a discussion cross-sectional, almost apolitical, a matter of steaming and alive: more than two million people in Spain have smoked marijuana or hashish in the last month.
About 700,000 are smoking dope today.
the debate on the regulation of cannabis for therapeutic use and recreational visit to the society from time to time. But now it seems that she is serious.It has come to the Congress. Last Thursday, in the room Ernest Lluch, the socialist murdered by ETA that it was a historic minister of Health, we Can spread for five hours a handful of arguments with experts of many branches to ask for the legalization. And the next march will present a proposal of law to which Spain seems to nine states in the u.s., Uruguay, and to Canada and to become the first country in Europe to regulate the world of cannabis, that old companion of the Story.
they say that the sails of the caravels of Christopher Columbus were made with hemp, that the chinese emperor Shen Nung was in his pharmacopoeia derived from the plant that occupies us, that humanity takes 10,000 years living with the cannabis… “I smoke because I like the taste and the smell; I’ve never had an overdose, because it is impossible. Hangover, yes. I have had two commas, ethyl, and since I don’t drink. But by smoking I have not done anything. The regulation would give security, fund legal and jobs,” said Alvaro Zamora while you mess up another ration of hashish to the door Leaf, Life, a distributor of wholesale products for the cultivation and consumption of cannabis of which he is manager. If a police officer was passing by here, multaría: is smoking in public.
ILLUSTRATION: AKIRANT
More than two million people in Spain have smoked marijuana or hashish in the last month. Some 700,000 are smoking dope today
let’s Put the matter: in Spain it is allowed for own consumption and possession of marijuana but only at home, because in the street it means log or a fine: 360.000 per year, 1,000 per day, according to Constanza Sánchez, phd in Public International Law from the University Pompeu Fabra. You are not penalized autocultivo for their own consumption, but it is prohibited if the plant is in the public thoroughfare or is visible from the street. It is illegal to plant to sell or trafficking. It is legal to plant for medicinal use but if the consumption is produce outside of Spain. And there’s a drug (Sativex) derivative cannábicos that is approved by the Drug Agency.
Despite the ban, the consumption grows. According to the survey AGES (Ministry of Health), if, in 1995, did you smoke daily, 0.7% Spanish, in 2015 was 2.1%. Nine out of 10 consumers mixed the cannabis with tobacco. The average of two joints a day. And the problem drug use affects about 560.000 people. Cannabis is the fourth most used drug after alcohol, tobacco, and hipnosedantes.
A survey of 2016 of the Foundation of Help against drug Addiction (FAD) shows that 60% of young people are in favour of the regulation, the majority thought that it would increase the consumption but not the problems and that 81% say they do not would smoke more of what you smoke because it is legal. A more recent study (2018) Electomanía account that supporters of legalization are the 68% (77% among voters of Citizens and 69% among voters of the PSOE).
One of the big questions of the debate is whether the legalization would increase the consumption. The state of Colorado (USA), regulated cannabis in 2014. That is, who has four years of experience to compare. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) shows that if in the general population the consumption has gone up a point from 2013 (15%) and 2016 (16%), among young people there has been a continuing decline: from 12% in 2013 to 9% in 2016. Another study by the Washington University School of Medicine measured that between 2002 and 2013, a period during which 13 states legalized the therapeutic use and some of the ludic, consumption dropped by 10%.
But not everyone believes in those figures. “The reports on legalization are contradictory; there is something for everyone. There is No scientific evidence,” says Eulalia Alemany, technical director of FAD. “In two years of legalization is passed from 9% to 18% in rates of addicts. The legalization multiplies the addiction and triggers psychotic outbreaks, and cardiovascular problems,” says the popular Aguirre.
The report The effect of medical marijuana laws on crime in the united states, published this year in The Economic Journal, estimated that in the states bordering Mexico crime dropped 13 percent between 1992 and 2012: “The local farmers grow marijuana to sell to dispensaries legally. The posters sell less and compete with each other”.
Cannabis and money. Drug and black market in the countries prohibitionist. Marijuana and taxes on the legalizadores. The case of Colorado is so graphic that in the official website of the state be reflecting month-to-month collection sales in stores and taxes. Updated to October of this year, from 2014 Colorado has raised $ 5.516 billion dollars in sales (1.022 between January and August of 2018). And by taxes, in 2017, raised $ 247 million, and between January and September of this year is 200.
I smoke because I like the taste and the smell; I’ve never had an overdose. I have had two commas, ethyl, and since I don’t drink, but for smoking I have not gone anything
What would happen in Spain? What’s most striking signs of this same month, a Unit study of Drug Policy in the Service of Psychology and Logopedics of the Faculty of Psychology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. According to this work, Spain was going to enter 3.312 million euros annually in taxes and Social Security contributions. Is regularizarían 101.569 jobs. Weaken the criminal networks, as its market share would be reduced up to 15% of the total.
If the legalization would allow the autocultivo (tax free), the social clubs cannabis (tributarían their workers), and the free market (subject to tax), the total business volume would be of 8.514 billion euros per year. Is recaudarían 1.021 million in VAT, 486 million from the special taxes, 371 income taxes, 1.407 in personal income TAX and Social Security contributions and 26 in taxes from the export.
An estimate of the economic impact of the regulation prepared by Ivan Ayala, a phd in Economics by the Complutense university, specialist in taxation and an economic advisor to Can, indicates that, with a 51% indirect taxes (at an average price of 10 euros per gram), the State would enter 1,481 million euros per year. That’s not counting license revenue, direct taxes, cannabis, therapeutic, exports and by-products. “If Spain would regulate the cannabis morning, the next year we would have about 1,400 million more”.
The liberal economist Juan Ramón Rallo, director of the Instituto Juan de Mariana, suggests that the economic point of view is “interesting to study”, but that the fundamental argument for the decriminalization of marijuana is “an elemental respect for the individual freedom of each one: in my body I control it and not the State”.
When he was director of the National Plan on Drugs, the doctor Francisco de Asis Babín participated in the International conference on Cannabis was held in Catoira (Pontevedra) in November of 2017. There he argued that the legalization responds to an “ambition mercantilist” which facilitates the consumption and expand a market that would bring “immense benefits to the one who would lead”. She claimed that in Colorado has increased the black market, and that in Spain have detected connections between clubs cannábicos and criminal networks. “The market would increase the risk for health personal and collective, would decrease school performance and increase the violence”. And establishing an argument novel: “the Constitution enshrines The right to the protection of the health and requires to be incorporated into the legal order International Treaties. A state regulation would be in itself unconstitutional”.
Hector Brotons, director of the Legal Study Brotsanbert, specialized in public health and policy of cannabis, says that the regulation is a matter of “civil rights”. “The ban violates the dignity, because it’s not about consumers as free people. Contrary to the respect for private life. And does not lower the consumption. It is capricious: there are acquittals with 10 kilos of hashish and convictions with 10 grams. Legalization takes the money to the State and not to the mafia. And it is not unconstitutional, because the public health is not a fundamental right, but a guiding principle. The State should promote health, but not above the personal development and dignity. That is to say, there is a right to have bad health”.
the more commonplace and accessibility, more consumption. Legalize it is a fallacy to casposa: a joint is not a cure
The psychologist and the doctor Farmacology José Carlos Bouso is not to deny the risks of cannabis, but it becomes a question: “what Are more controllable by regulating or increase when there is stigma? In 40% of the revenue in the emergency drug there is a presence of cannabis, but the income is not for cannabis. It is not how it affects the cannabis to the consumer, but to society. Regular protects. Even at the lowest. The business is best in the hands of the society that the organized crime. The mafia is more damaging to society than cannabis”.
To the professor of Criminal Law and former judge of the National court and the former director of the National Plan on Drugs, Araceli Manjón, the ban “combat the offer, and despises the reduction of the damage.” “There must be a distinct regulation of the cannabis therapeutic, based on a right to health and dignity, and the other for the recreation, based on freedom and security”.
Carola Perez takes 13 operations back. He spends most of the day upside down since I broke the coccyx. Is physician of all medicable and found in the derivatives of cannabis a remedy for the pain. “But it is very discreet that the camel will come to your office.” Is the president of the Observatory of Medicinal Cannabis. “There are 120,000 patients who use cannabis in a insecurity health and legal stressful”.
From the FAD, Eulalia Alemany bet for a policy “in favor of the public’s health.” And cannabis “is a drug that alters perception and has effects on the physical and mental health”. “In Spain is already decriminalized the consumption, and if banalizamos the issue, we repeat the problem that we have with alcohol. The legalization is not what is good for us. And I don’t think that will protect adolescents.”
As chairman of the European monitoring centre on Cultivation and Consumption of Cannabis, Hugo Wood has met with politicians from the major parties. Note that there are more bet for legalization in a low voice that in public statements. And he has it clear: “The prohibition has not improved anything. Legalization would provide the State money, would target drug trafficking and would eliminate the risks of acquiring a substance that is adulterated on the black market”.
it’s Been 100 centuries and we are still here, belching smoke.
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