In Spain, it is not illegal to grow cannabis for personal and shared use.
Hence, the 960 villagers of Rasquera in Barcelona wanted to exploit this legal loophole to grow cannabis in large volumes and sell the product to repay it huge debt as reported in BBC of 10th April 2012.
Rasquera is famous for growing grapes and olives and the village council wanted to lease a 7-hectare plot to ABCDA, which is an association of drug users in Barcelona for growing cannabis.
The earnings would have been in the region of $1.7-million which would have been sufficient to square off the outstanding debt apart from adding at least 40 new jobs.
But the proposal has fallen through – it could not garner the 75% votes necessary to implement it. The voting was only 56% in favor.
The National Drug Plan of Spain has stepped in and put its foot down – it has said that it would challenge the decision, in case the village went ahead with the plan and approved the project.