The Court of Barcelona has given good news to Albert B., 47 years old: after a year and a half accused of drug trafficking, with fear in his body, the case is open against him and several of his partners as owners of a plantation of 10,000 industrial hemp plants, including their buds, in Viladecans (Barcelona) has been archived. The court is categorical: “With the procedures carried out, there are not enough indications of criminality due to the lack of minimal psychoactivity in the substances seized.” The remains of what were once plants hang from the ceiling of the two naves that Albert B. owns. They are dry. “They are worthless. They have ruined me ”, he laments. This material already had a buyer, an Austrian company with which they had signed a prior commitment: 300 euros per kilo of biomass. In total, 475,200 euros for more than 1,500 kilos lost. A money that Albert B. and his partners will now claim from the Justice.
In plots between roads and plastic warehouses the terrain appears. “I bought it specifically for this,” says the man, who two years ago decided to jump into the void, quit his job as a bricklayer and try his luck with hemp. “A friend knew some Austrians who were going to buy the crop from us,” he explains, referring to the company Allpot Trading GmbH.
Before getting down to it, he consulted a lawyer to make sure he was following the rules to the letter. With a letter of intent to purchase and a legally constituted company for the cultivation of hemp, they processed all the necessary authorizations. The order of the Sixth Section of the Court of Barcelona that orders the dismissal of the investigation against him specifies them: they informed the Department of Agriculture, the Viladecans City Council and the National Police, and presented the invoice with the acquisition of some certified seeds.
They also informed the Mossos d’Esquadra of the area, which, according to Albert B., went to the warehouses on more than one occasion to take samples. They informed everyone except the Civil Guard, who one day knocked on the door. “It was a Tuesday, when we already had everything ready, because on Friday they were already taking them to Austria”, recalls the man with resignation. The guard, seeing the flowering plants, told him: “You know you can’t do it.” He did not arrest Albert B., but he sealed off the plantation (which continues with the seals despite the judicial file).
The sinkholes, known as buds, have become the main target of all the police. The Prosecutor’s Office issued an instruction in 2021 in which it considered that all buds are drugs, regardless of the levels of psychoactivity —which differentiates marijuana from hemp. Since then, police operations against this type of crops have been constant. “Hemp is a cover for drug trafficking,” said the chief anti-drug prosecutor, Rosa Ana Morán, in statements to this newspaper four months ago.
But the order of the Court of Barcelona demolishes that thesis. “It is very relevant, because it considers that the bud is not directly a drug. Psychoactivity must be determined”, summarizes the lawyer Martí Cànaves, from the DMT Advocats firm, who celebrates that in this way the court applies the doctrine of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). “Right now not everyone interprets it that way, despite the fact that the EU ruling is mandatory,” he insists. The Prosecutor’s Office itself “goes against the criteria of the CJEU”, Cànaves complains, That relieves the police of responsibility. The Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) also considers that “the flowering tops, that is, the buds of these crops, are narcotic” and cannot be used “for any purpose” without their authorization.
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another interpretation
But, again, the Court of Barcelona – whose decision is firm – does not see it the same. In his order, he emphasizes that the Albert B. plantation is registered as industrial hemp, without the investigation deducing that its purpose is another, even if it contains buds.
The man repeats that he does not touch the plant or extract the flowers. He sells everything together. For the Civil Guard, however, there is no doubt that the final buyers wanted only the buds, not all the biomass, to be smoked afterwards. They deduce it from the website of the buying company, from the security measures that Albert B. had — cameras, alarms and the last 15 days some guards to prevent theft — and from the lack of authorization from the AEMPS. The court affirms that the conclusion of the Civil Guard only looking at the buyers’ website is “unfounded”, since it contains “very little information”, and that security is justified by the almost half a million of the transaction that was at stake. And he stresses that the investigation “does not provide any indication” that the crop requires authorization from the Spanish Medicines Agency.
The sun’s rays that filter through the plastic roof of Albert B.’s greenhouse cause stifling heat in the middle of March. “I set it up,” he says, while turning on the fans in the largest ship, measuring 4,000 square meters; the other is 1,300. When the Civil Guard entered, they still held out the hope of clarifying the situation in a few weeks: that is why you can see some cloth covering the already dry logs. “We thought we would save it,” he says.
In total, about 100,000 euros have been left with the investment. Out of his own pocket, he will now have to pay for a truck that will take away all the plant corpses, which he himself cultivated “from sunrise to sunset”, sleeping in a caravan placed in front of the ship, together with two partners, when the harvest time was approaching, to avoid theft. His intention is to plant again, but he admits that the whole situation has generated insecurity: “And if the Civil Guard returns again?”
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