Situation of CSCs in Spain during the Covid19 health crisis. Cannabis users during confinement in Spain.
The situation of private associations of cannabis users during these months of health crisis due to the Covid19 pandemic was very diverse and even critical depending on the autonomous community in which they are located.
When the "State of Alarm" restrictions began in March 2020, cannabis user associations tried to follow all the prevention recommendations issued by the Spanish government. On 15 March, the associations were already closed and, although they informed their members through their contact formulas, very few were able to stock up to get through the confinement, which was initially thought to last 15 days. The different federations of associations issued communiqués recommending closure for those days.
Quite a few associations remained open in different localities, but they were soon intervened by the police and closed down.
Most members had not stocked up, but those who were most affected from the beginning of the quarantine were those who use medical cannabis for different pathologies and who obtained their treatments through these associations or in other places such as CBD product shops. Cannabis users, as the days and weeks went by, found various ways to get cannabis, either from someone they knew, a neighbour or even from various "delivery services" that emerged during the confinement. In certain cities some of these "services" were carried out by couriers or by "riders" from "food delivery" companies, which led to the intervention of the police who started to stop couriers and find cannabis and other drugs that some of them were transporting.
Across Spain there are some 1900 associations, which must mean a figure of around 800,000 registered users. If we add to this the estimated 200,000 medical cannabis users, we could say that during the confinement there would be at least around 1,000,000 people at some point looking for alternatives to their usual ways of obtaining cannabis, to which we would also have to add the hundreds of thousands of users who are not part of any association and who already normally use these alternatives, "contraband".
We would think that those who have had the least problems have been cannabis users who grow their own crops at home and consume them personally, but on the contrary, during the confinement and the months that followed, there has been an increase in the persecution and intervention of crops, which in recent months has escalated in the intervention of Grow Shops as well, trying to link them to some of the large crops that have been intervened.
Between May and June several organisations (OEDCM, Union de Pacientes, FedCac, Círculo Cannábico...) began to ask the State and the different public administrations to take into account the situation that had been created with medical cannabis users, as they had no possibility of obtaining their treatments or were getting them through "smuggling" without any security of traceability or quality of the product, among other inconveniences.
Several user associations also asked their respective regional administrations to consider their activity as essential during the state of alarm. These requests were made with the advice of DMT Advocats and accompanied by a scientific publication by ICEERS and a technical report by the coordinator of the Drug Policy Unit of the UAB.
None of these complaints were answered by the administration, so all cannabis users continued to rely on help from relatives or "smuggling" and waiting for the government's phased de-escalation plan to open the associations.
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