Nieves Albarracín and Miriam Mejías |
Madrid (EFE).- The Chief Anti-Drug Prosecutor, Rosa Ana Morán, is against legalizing the recreational use of cannabis because experience shows that this increases consumption and trivializes the risk of an increasingly harmful drug due to the high concentrations of its main psychoactive component, THC, through genetic manipulation.
On the other hand, he is in favor of regularizing its use for therapeutic purposes, as is the case with other substances such as opium, the plant from which heroin is extracted, but also morphine, used for years for medicinal purposes in Health Spanish.
In this sense, he welcomes the announcement made by the Minister of Health, José Manuel Miñones, that a regulation for the medicinal use of cannabis will be prepared before the summer, as he explained in an interview with EFE when he was one year old. Anti-drug front, being the first woman to lead a Specialized Prosecutor’s Office.
against legalization
“The legalization of recreational use does not seem good to me, but it is not that it does not seem good to me, it does not seem good to doctors, it does not seem good to psychiatrists and it does not seem good to INCB, the International Board of Narcotics, which this year in its report has warned about the trivialization of the use of cannabis, and has stated that legalization, where it has occurred, leads to greater consumption and minimization of the perception of risk”.
This body, he adds, has also alerted the enormous extension and diffusion of this substance, which, Morán warns, is presenting, due to “genetic modifications”, very high THC concentrations of 20%, when what is allowed for For example, hemp production is 0.3%”.
“To think that someone could be smoking cannabis with a concentration of 20% THC and that it is a 14, 15, 16-year-old boy, I think it is very worrying for public health and for the health of those people”, regarding which Psychiatric interventions have increased, especially in young people, he has observed.
Given this circumstance, the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office has raised in its annual report whether it would not be necessary to study “if this substance, which is classified as not causing serious harm to health, in the concentrations in which it is being produced does cause it.”
Spain, the first cannabis producer in the EU
The Chief Anti-Drug Prosecutor focuses on the “trivialization” of the effects of a drug of which Spain has become the main producer in the European Union.
“It is a business and it is closely linked to organized crime and international gangs are setting up here for the production of cannabis with ‘overturns’, with significant violence and possession of weapons”, he explained, noting that it has been identified that Behind those crops are international gangs of Chinese, Albanian and other nationals.
And it is that, “it is no longer a national production, but those who come to produce here are international organized crime gangs, who are looking to benefit financially from a substance that in the general belief seems not to be so harmful ”, he lamented.
Regarding his relations with Morocco, the main producer of cannabis introduced into Spain, Morán, who before coming to Anti-Drug was a prosecutor in the International Cooperation Chamber, has assured that they are good and that in fact he is directing a “twinning” between the State Attorney General and the Moroccan.
However, it has considered that this relationship “can be improved in the research part”, and has revealed that Morocco has a “very important regulation of cannabis production” and even has a national agency in this matter. “What they want is a regulated export of what is allowed,” she has observed.
His intention now, he has indicated, is to create a working group with Morocco to achieve greater collaboration in controlling the departure of hashish destined for the Spanish coasts, mainly through Algeciras (Cádiz), although police pressure and judicial system in that area has caused the mafias to divert to other points such as Huelva, or the Guadalquivir and even the Ebro Delta.
