Cannabis Shop, Coffee Shop and Social Club , on the surface the only difference that comes to mind is their name , but in reality they are three radically different activities. Starting from the basic idea and ending with the implementation, they are expressions of two different and, in some respects, opposite philosophies.
Spain and the Netherlands are the only two European states where it is legal to purchase and consume cannabis. Two profoundly different models, united by the fact that they move within an ill-defined legal framework.
In the Netherlands, Coffee shops have been under attack for some time, have decreased in number, but continue to operate and sell cannabis to tourists from all over the world; in Spain, Social Clubs are still a reality in the process of consolidation and divided between those faithful to the original spirit (without any commercial purpose and attentive to the quality of the product and the sociability of the experience) and those advertised with flyers on the Ramblas, where there is no problem buying a few grams even for those who have just arrived in town from abroad.
THE PIONEERING EXPERIENCE OF DUTCH COFFEE SHOPS.
In 1976, while all over the world drug policies were tightening and the UN Convention defined the use of all substances as a social scourge to be eliminated, in Holland a resounding countercultural path was chosen: coffee shops were born.
Places where anyone can enter, buy and consume certain drugs (first and foremost marijuana but also other substances such as hallucinogenic mushrooms). A choice born as an attempt to combat the spread of heroin that was affecting Amsterdam as well as all European cities in those years.
Cannabis is not technically legalized. Production remained-and still remains today-illegal and even sale remains technically a crime. But municipalities are precisely given the option of allowing Coffee Shops to open on their territory, with certain rules: maximum 5 grams per person; no minors; no advertising; maximum 500 grams present in the store.
These requirements have been joined in recent years in a great many municipalities by a ban on the presence of Coffee Shops within 250 meters of schools.
The result has been a drastic decrease in the number of Coffee Shops; in Amsterdam today there are about 160, half as many as a decade ago. A decrease that has brought some negative consequences, measurable in the overcrowding of the remaining shops, price increases and often a decrease in the quality of cannabis sold.
The lack of regulations on production also makes some criteria uncontrollable, such as the presence or absence of pesticides and denies the approval of quality standards.
Moreover, it is a fact that since 40 years the Coffee Shop system has been effectively funding criminal structures, as production remains illegal and it continues in the paradox that cannabis becomes legal only the moment it passes through the Coffee Shop warehouse door. An issue widely known as the “backdoor problem” and which remains the greatest paradox of the Dutch model
THE SPANISH CANNABIS SOCIAL CLUB MODEL
The genesis of the Spanish Cannabis Social Clubs (CSCs) was very different. First of all, they did not originate as an experiment on the part of the government, but were born from below, in open defiance of national laws and exploiting their weaknesses.
In fact, Spanish law does not punish cannabis cultivation for personal use and prohibits cannabis consumption in public, but not cannabis consumption in private places. Hence the intuition: if a group of consumers associate and found a club where entry is allowed only to the members themselves it means that cultivation remains for personal use (each plant is for one member) and the club remains a private place where consumption is not punishable.
The first experiments in this direction are now more than a decade old, and they were born with strict self-regulatory criteria: no profit; clubs to be understood as places where culture and information can be made and not just consumption; prices at a minimum and quality at the highest possible level.
The turning point was a few years ago: many people began to sniff out the business and starting in Barcelona (but not only there) clubs began to spring up like mushrooms, remaining nonprofit only on paper, while in reality they distributed advertising flyers to tourists, reaching as many as five thousand members each.
In 2014 there were about 400 clubs in Catalonia alone, and an estimated half a million members in the country. A situation that prompted the Catalan government first to block the opening of new clubs for a year and then to pass final regulations governing their activities.
A genetic modification of the phenomenon that ended up making the two models look very similar, albeit born under opposite auspices.
The difference remains in the fact that in Spain also cultivation is in fact legal, and managed by clubs rather than illegal organizations, and the quality is somewhat safer. Although access is often not easy, and getting accepted by a club (or even just finding a club) can take many vicissitudes.
What about Cannabis Shops in Italy ?
There are no coffee shops or social clubs in Italy, partly because the marijuana they typically sell would have too high a THC content
What we do have, however, are cannabis shops where one can find the full range of marijuana products and derivatives, strictly with THC content in accordance with the law. You cannot have the same experiences as a
old-fashioned coffee shop, but all the other benefits of cannabis, particularly those related to CBD, are within the reach of Italians in our Cannabis Shops . Of course, cannabis shops exist physically as well as online, such as CBD Therapy .
