Interview Martín Barriuso 2016 Part 1/3

Transcription of the Interview with Martin Barriuso 2016 Part 1/3

Tell us a little bit about yourself, how did you start with cannabis activism and what makes you fight for marijuana?
Well, and starting from the last question, it all started as a matter of rights and freedoms.

I started working with the Bizitzeka association, which was a platform for the legalization of drugs which was created in Bilbao in 1991, I think.

I started collaborating with them at a time when I wasn’t even a cannabis user, I was very young and had only smoked joints 2-3 times, and never had a positive experience with it but what worried me was heroin in my neighbourhood, a drug that almost erased a whole generation, right?

So I started reading things from an anti-prohibitionist point of view, which claimed that the problem was not in heroin, but in prohibition adulteration and prices.

It all started to make sense, it was logical and true that the actual problem was the way in which drugs were adulterated, the ways of consumption, the context, etc. So I met cannabis users and started using cannabis myself and it was like “hey, this is nice, I feel really good with this”, so I started thinking that perhaps we shouldn’t make theoretical claims speeches and slogans anymore…what we had to do was start acting.

We knew about ARSEC in Barcelona, which started all this a little earlier, so we thought that we should do the same and start a cannabis crop. And that’s how it all started.

The first new about this on the media was on Makoki – headed by Felipe Borrallo – which published a press release in which we presented the creation of an association in Barcelona founded by people from the underground movement and the world of comic books (people from Makoki, el Víbora and all that).

Today, my main activity is to get money to pay lawyers, ask for support from different institutions, campaign for our rights and, from time to time, to collaborate with some TV show, not only here but also in other places. 

They are accused of drug trafficking, an association with more than 100 members who use cannabis to relieve pains from diseases like cancer. We have been with its president, Martín Barriuso, who has been recently set free after being ordered into pre-trial detention for 3 days.

What is a cannabis social club, and why did you create PANNAGH? You have already told us about its origins but, what about your motivation? How has the situation evolved since you first started heading this association? 

Well, PANNAGH is the heir of BANG, another association born in Portugalete that is still operating and from which we splitted, which in turn was created from Kalamudia Kalamudia was born in 1997 as an association for the study of cannabis, and while we were not allowed to do it we performed the first public cannabis crop in Euskadi in 1997, soon after its creation.

Thus, all cannabis activists from Euskadi were involved in this movement. It was a large association, with sections in Bilbao
and Vitoria, and thanks to it we could organize the first cannabis cups…

Being part of all this movement had to be wonderful…

Yes, because after the third successful public crop of PANNAGH, sorry, of Kalamudia, we understood that we were allowed to do it
it all seemed legal, so we moved to the second stage, creating smaller associations closer to the users, so we could start producing marijuana for our own supply not as mere reivindication but practically, right? 1…2…at least 6 or 7 associations were born from Kalamudia 6 or 7 clubs let’s say, so different groups were created from a parent association, but which was the aim?

To grow our own pot and stay away from the black market. The first crops were kind of a legal test I mean, if I could use and grow cannabis for my own supply at home – since to use and, supposedly, to grow cannabis for our own supply is not penalized in Spain - then the logical question is the same one that our folks from ARSEC already asked in 1991 and 1992: Can a group of persons grow marijuana collectively if I can do it individually?

Yes, following the same rules, I understand…

With the same proportion. Instead of a single person growing his/her plants, 20 or 50 people join forces to reduce production costs efforts and, of course, stay away from the black market. And from this point we planned our practical actions, right?

How to organize this, paperwork, which paper should be signed by the people, how to plan a crop transportation, storage…We were only seven people when we started…

Sure, you had to improvise a little bit, there were no precedents before you…

We had to start from scratch, and in some cases consulting institutions, the Treasury Department, Social Security…Hey, and how should we do this?

Oh, sure, we never had such problem, we’ll have to think about it…

But, we could solve all the problems, we were included in the Social Security, we payed our taxes…

I think this point is especially interesting, few pople talk about it and I believe it is very important to highlight that you’ve always fought for transparency and for acting under the law.

It has always been clear to us, and I’ve always defended anywhere that we would always be transparent that is to say, when the police comes and says “hi” and raid your club, you are going to be completely exposed so you must act according to the idea that, someday, you’ll have to give explanations about what you’re doing, so it is better to give explanations from the very beginning, so everything is transparent…you know?

Actually, if we were acquitted during our trial at the Provincial Courts of Vizcaya it was precisely because PANNAGH had everything properly documented.

We had everything registered: who was withdrawing weed, which amount, which strain, how much did the member pay…all this data was reflected in the accounting, and in addition all the money was deposited in the bank every movement was registered in the bank, we had invoices, payments were made through card so we could monitor our expenditures presenting all this data to the court wasn’t hard since we already had it prepared.

We had everything under control, right? All members had their sheet, all workers had Social Security and contract we payed the corporate tax, VAT, IRPF just the same as any other company. We had to evolve on our own but we achieved the same degree of sophistication and normalization of any other company.

Actually, everywhere we arrived we acted like this, as an association, just as the hundreds we can find, right?

You have workers, you have a space, etc. We were treated as any other association, until the Supreme Court issue.
Yes, every association has its own subject, but associatioms are nothing new. 

No, not at all, and, as in our previous cases, the cannabis plants were seized, although they later returned them and the cases were dismissed. These cases had great public profile and almost everyone was aware of the situation they were not surprised at that moment, you just went to the Treasury Department and told them “hey, look, we are sharing marijuana and we’d like to know which taxes should we pay” and it was like “oh, you are those guys, we’ve heard about you…”.

Well, it has been wonderful but at the end we have encountered difficulties from the retrograde right so all the work has vanished because there are political interests behind all this issue.