SOCIEDAD - El cannabis vive su edad de oro - ESPAÑA

 

·         Irún acoge la primera edición de la feria del cáñamo Expogrow.

·         Se trata de una muestra más del auge por el que pasa la industria legal de la marihuana en España, que extiende su cultura a clubes sociales o museos.

El cannabis gana terreno industrial, comercial y lúdico en España en lo que parece ser un sector que se expande ajeno a la crisis. Aumentan las ferias en torno al cáñamo. Un claro ejemplo llega este viernes al recinto ferial Ficoba de Irún (el País Vasco) con la primera edición de Expogrow. El certamen nace con un triple objetivo: reunir una feria de muestras, un festival musical y un foro internacional. Además cede su espacio a más de 200 expositores y exhibiciones de deporte extremo y arte urbano.

Las ferias cannábicas son un fenómeno presente en España desde hace ocho años. La ubicación de Expogrow en Irún no es fruto de la casualidad. Responde a que, en 2011, el Gobierno vasco planteó la regulación del cannabis para el uso personal mediante clubes sociales. El Parlamento vasco anunció que estudiará durante un año, en una ponencia específica, la regulación del sector y la creación de un código de buenas prácticas.

Mueve millones de euros

A nivel económico, la cultura cannábica es un negocio con una buena cuota de mercado. En España hay unas 850 tiendas de productos relacionados con el cultivo de la planta de marihuana (grow shops). "Se generan millones de euros", afirma el catalán Sergio González, responsable de Expogrow y especialista de esta industria.

González recuerda que el sector se mueve por "autorregulación" debido a que no existe legislación específica. Recuerda que los clubes cannábicos (una cuarentena en 2011) están tipificados como clubes gastronómicos y las tiendas de semillas abren como establecimientos de venta de artículos de jardinería.

Solo el Movimiento Asociativo Cannábico de Autoconsumo (Maca) de Barcelona agrupa a 580 miembros, unos movidos por el consumo terapéutico, otros, por el consumo lúdico. Y todos mayores de edad. Según Spannabis, la empresa que organiza ferias en Barcelona, Madrid y Málaga, en 2010 había un millar de empresas españolas dedicadas al negocio del autocultivo, con una facturación de 50 millones de euros anuales. Personas que se han quedado en el paro se han aventurado a entrar en este sector como pymes y lo han engordado.

Quien vende vino probablemente lo consume, pero no por eso ha de ser alcohólico No son un reducto de porreros. Estos locales de venta y autoconsumo los compara el director de Expogrow con una bodega de vinos: "Quienes los venden seguramente los consumen, pero por ello no han de ser alcohólicos".

Respecto al modelo holandés de coffee shops, recientemente modificado (se ha vetado el acceso a los no residentes para evitar el turismo de drogadicción), el sector tiene sus dudas. "Tiene sus defectos. Si el caso holandés se pudiera instaurar a nivel mundial, se eliminarían sus problemas", opina González. En Barcelona abrió el pasado mes de mayo el Hemp Museum, una extensión del Hash Marihuana Hemp Museum de Ámsterdam, promovido por el coleccionista Ben Dronkers. Se exponen pinturas y grabados sobre el uso del cannabis a lo largo de la historia, así como antigüedades, herramientas e instrumentos.

 

Más que sonido rastafari

La banda sonora cannábica es eminentemente hippie y reggae. Pero hay más, aparte de Lennon y de Bob Marley y sus pupilos rastafaris. Existen multitud de letras alusivas.

Expogrow incorpora en su programa los directos de algunos grupos y artistas que pueden considerarse amigos de la cultura cannábica. Es el caso de Marea y de B-Real de Cypress Hill. La banda ha hecho público en numerosas ocasiones su compromiso con la legalización de la marihuana.

El hasta ahora rapero Snoop Dogg (se ha cambiado el nombre por el de Snoop Lion) bautizó uno de sus temas Smokin Smokin Weed (Hierba para fumar); Manu Chao creó el Marihuana Boogie.

Filmes de culto

Las películas sobre marihuana (stoner movies) vienen de antiguo. Marihuana data de 1935. Una de las cintas consideradas de culto del género es de 1936: Reefer Madness. En Marijuana (1968), el cantante Sonny Bono pronuncia un alegato contra su consumo. Grass (1999) se enmarca en los documentales sobre la legalización.

Más contemporánea es la película El jardín de la alegría, de 2000, en la que sus protagonistas cultivan marihuana para pagar deudas. Homegrown (Cosecha propia), de 1998, refleja a unos traficantes torpes. Mr. Nice (2012) es el biopic sobre el traficante internacional de los setenta y ochenta Howard Marks. Referencias al porro aparecen desde Easy Rider (1969)hasta El Gran Lebowski (1998).

 

 

Ni publicidad ni tampoco lucro

No existe una regulación específica relativa a los clubes sociales de cannabis. La Federación de Asociaciones Cannábicas (FAC), entidad a nivel estatal, aconseja desde su web cómo crear uno de estos clubes. Recomienda que no se haga propaganda ni que haya lucro, pues son locales de consumo privado, algunos con bar y restaurante integrados. Tienen sus propias plantaciones y los socios dejan constancia de sus consumos para demostrar que en su interior no se trafica

CULTURE - SOUTH AFRICA

Biopic: The best of Bob Marley

 

 

No stone is left unturned in this biopic on the reggae star, but his private life remains elusive.

Football fan: Bob Marley practises his ball skills in Paris in 1977. (AP)

Watching Marley, all two-and-a-half hours of it, is like diving into a bath of reggae — or taking a hit on a bong — and coming up with your eyes all bloodshot.
It starts at the very beginning and as the camera tracks over the impossibly green hills of Nine Mile, St Anne, Jamaica, a very elderly Mrs James, Marley’s first teacher, remembers that he used to love singing and she recites in a querulous voice a song she taught the class, about a little donkey.
There is a shot of his early childhood home — a corrugated iron house at the top of a hill — untouched, it seems, since then.
Only one photograph — a torn black-and-white one — is known to exist of his father. He is on a horse, his hat at an angle, with a short tie.
Cedella Marley Booker, Marley’s mother, met “Captain” Norval Marley, who was white, when she was 16.     

He was in the British army, but there is no evidence to suggest he ever rose above the rank of private. Cedella and Bob saw Norval only “a handful of times”.

According to Neville “Bunny” ­Livingston, who later played in the Wailers, Bob did not have an easy time being “mixed”. Livingston remembers Marley being rejected and that he was made to take on extra work by his uncles.

There are precious few interviews with Marley himself. In one, he says: “My father is a white and my mother black. Now them call me half-caste or whatever. Well, me don’t deh pon nobody’s side. Me don’t deh pon the black man’s side nor the white man’s side. Me deh pon God’s side. The man who create me. Who cause me to come from black and white.”

Director Kevin Macdonald, who also made The Last King of Scotland, told the New York Times he had set out to interview “everyone who is alive and was intimate with Bob”.

Sense of reservation
There are many, many interviews with family members, friends and musicians, but Marley’s private life still seems opaque. This is perhaps because he died more than 30 years ago, or about not speaking ill of the dead, so the film seems more of a celebration than a critique.

Cedella moved to Trenchtown, Jamaica, when Marley was 12 and it was here, perhaps, that he saw a way out of poverty through his guitar. Here, remembers Marley, the police would ask you where you were from and if you answered “Trenchtown”, you would be arrested. He often went hungry and, as the saying went, “you drink some water and go to bed”.

Marley “was learning a trade [welding] and I meet some guys who can sing and one of them was Desmond Dekker”. Dekker took him to Beverley’s Records, where he recorded the ska-inflected Judge Not in 1962. He was 16. After the recording, there was talk of changing Marley’s name. According to Livingston, Robert Marley “didn’t sound so catchy and easy and it was thought that Adam Marley would be better. In any event, the recording didn’t sell.”

They decided to put a group together and Peter Tosh joined on guitar. They called themselves the Juveniles, but as Livingston remembers, someone said: “You come from a wailing environment. People are always bawling; you should be called the Wailers.”

Producer Joe Higgs then took up the group “as a project”. They rehearsed for two years, with Higgs keeping an eye on them so that success did not go to their heads. They played in the parks for Rastas and in the May Pen cemetery for the “duppy [ghost] dem”.

Aston “Family Man” Barrett, later bass player for the Wailers, remembers they were “at a bar one evening, and one of the guys said ‘listen to this group’ and they punched the juke box and the song was called Simmer Down and no more other tune play on that box the whole time we were there”. Bob Marley and the Wailers was launched.

Around this time, Marley and Rita noticed one another. She remembers him as “very reserved, a shy guy” and others remarked on their “love and admiration, with a deep and underlying tension … music was the glue”.

This was also the time when Marley was drawn to Rastafarian preacher Mortimer Planno.
Black-and-white footage shows him holding forth at a meeting, puffing on giant joints.
According to Rita, partaking of the herb was “not just to get high”. It made them feel peaceful and put them in an inspirational mood.

In a revealing moment, Marley’s daughter Cedella says she did not have an idyllic childhood, remembering that no one wanted their children to play with the Marley kids because all their parents did “is smoke weed and play music”.

Marley apparently told his children that they did not need friends as they had brothers and sisters.
What is astonishing, though, is how many great songs he wrote. There is amazing live footage from concerts in London, Kingston and in the United States, which is perhaps this film’s greatest triumph. It is as though you are in the front row.