This Wednesday, journalist Fátima Llambrich’s book Brots de narcosocietat, a rigorous journalistic work on the marijuana boom and its consequences, went on sale. The publisher could not choose the best day for the release. Two police operations, one by the Mossos d’Esquadra and another by the Civil Guard, once again had marijuana as the protagonist.

In the case of the Catalan police, the investigators have dismantled a family business, Mas Rom 2018, established three years ago by two men aged 33 and 37, of Spanish nationality, which was dedicated to selling marijuana and hashish in vending machines which distributed in colmados, bars and tobacconists.

The police work, by the drugs unit of the criminal investigation area of ??the northern metropolitan police region, began in March last year, after the complaint of a truck driver who approached a police station for report that he suspected that one of the packages he had to deliver to a company in Canet de Mar contained marijuana.

And so it was. The researchers pulled the thread from the package documentation and reached the company Mas Rom 2018, which marketed its products under the name Green Paradise. This thread brought up to two vending machines, like the ones for tobacco, but in this case they offered small cardboard boxes that inside kept a product that they advertised as CBD, but actually had percentages of THC that made sale illegal. The price could range between 6 and 10 euros for two grams of substance.

CBD (short for cannabidiol) is one of the components present in the cannabis plant, it does not produce any psychoactive effects and is legal as long as the percentage of THC does not exceed 0.2%.

The box announced that the product inside could neither be smoked nor inhaled nor vaped. So what was it for? According to the harmless advertising outside, the buds were merely “decorative”.

A ridiculousness that tried unsuccessfully to pass the filters of administrative and police inspections. In recent months, the officers of the administrative police, together with the narcotics officers, carried out inspections in supermarkets and bars where they were aware of the presence of the machines that the company rented out to businesses. It is estimated that the traders, who claimed they did not know they were selling a banned substance, took a percentage of 15% of the profits from the sale. Do the math. The Mossos calculate that the detainees could have an income of around 4,000 euros per month and that they traded approximately one kilo of marijuana and hashish per month.

The company had recently replaced the vending machines with cardboard displays, after the Mossos sealed those they located after analyzing the samples in the laboratory and verifying their illegality.

Yesterday’s operation ended with three detainees, two of whom will be brought before the court in Sabadell, the two managers of the company; while 14 more managers of businesses where the illegal packages were sold will be summoned to testify as investigated.

During the presentation of the investigation, Mossos officials recalled that CBD in bud or resin form is a prohibited substance in Catalonia, whether it exceeds 0.2% of THC or not.