Last May a court case involving the biggest quantity of non-legal marijuana in Spanish history was brought to a close; a judge approved 22kg of marijuana for personal use. The growers not only managed to prove that it was for personal use, they also managed to get away scot free.
The Italian growers were arrested on the island of Fuerteventura (The Canary Islands) due to complaints made by various neighbors about the smell and the high quantity of people coming and going from the house.
This caused the police to investigate prior to arresting them, and after a few weeks of constant watching and waiting, the police couldn’t prove that the suspects were receiving a suspicious number of visitors. A number of people were searched after leaving the house and were found with nothing on them, so the authorities couldn’t prove that the house was being used to sell product. This made the case go a lot smoother, as the complaints made by neighbors began to lose credibility.
After a few weeks of investigative work, the police decided to search the houses in question where they found 12.7kg in one and 9.7kg in another, but they didn’t find any distribution devices like weighing scales or baggies.
Both suspects claimed to be regular consumers for medicinal purposes and they both presented documents from their country in which medicinal use was recommended. This served as crucial evidence to close the case; one of the suspects said he consumes 10g a day, and the other said he consumes an average of 20g a day. If you add both quantities up and multiply it by the days in a year, you’ll get a lower quantity than the amount found. The suspects also said that it’s quite a reasonable quantity to consume over an entire year due to the fact that a lot of weight is lost after doing the necessary medicinal extractions.
Thanks to a good defense and the amount of evidence in their favor, the judge had to accept the quantity as viable to be for private use and let both growers go. This entices growers to grow the quantity that they actually need instead of growing less due to fear of being caught, which is what usually happens with a lot of self-growers.
Translation: Ciara Murphy
