Cannabis Social Club
Symposia during the times (and with the participation of) Socrates and Alcibiades were a good example of functioning autonomous control via a common drug culture. In a common drug culture everything has its specific time (during Socrates' days it used to be from 9 p.m. onwards). One meets at a special place (the "andron") and surrounds oneself with pleasurable objects and instruments. Things have a beginning and an end, and they develop according to an inner order that has evolved over time out of experience. Experience turns into ceremony, ritual, and rule. This internal order and its outer form, the ritual, inform about the right use of drugs, and prevent misfortune and destructiveness. In a beneficial common drug culture like that in ancient Greece - and in the cannabis social clubs of the times of Baudelaire in Paris or of today in Madrid or Montevideo - it is the right and obligation of the knowledgeable to guide the novice into the new terrain. The right use of drugs is a part of culture, because it expresses a careful, skilled, and cautious behavior with relation to something elementary, fundamental, and venturous (cf. Marzahn 1983).
Today the symposia of ancient Greece seem to return in the form of the so-called cannabis social clubs. This concept that dates back to the pan-European non-governmental organization ENCOD (European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies). In 2005, this organization proposed social clubs as a way to enable legal production and distribution of cannabis for adults. Cannabis Social Clubs are non-commercial organizations which organize the professional, collective cultivation of very limited amounts of cannabis, just enough to cover the personal needs of their club members.
Cultivation, transport, distribution and consumption are subject to security and quality checks, and are done without publicity or advertisement of any kind. The members finance the system by subscriptions, according to their needs. Each member gets a value card with units, according to his credit, with a maximum limit per month and per year. The members are prohibited from reselling any cannabis purchased, and are required to ensure that it is not consumed by minors. Cannabis Social Clubs, which - in contrast to the Cannabis Buyers Club - are not limited to medical marihuana use only, exist in 8 central and western European countries.