A small farming community in northeastern Spain cannot create a cannabis plantation to help pay off its €1.3 million ($2.1 million) municipal debt, a judge has ruled.
Spain permits private consumption and cultivation of cannabis, which is used for medicinal purposes by some who suffer from chronic pain.
Officials in Rasquera, a town of fewer than 1,000 people, adopted the cannabis-growing plan in February 2012.
The initiative called for creating a municipal enterprise to forge a partnership with the Barcelona Association for Personal Consumption of Cannabis to grow pot, a project Rasquera's administration expected to create 40 jobs and generate €1.33 million over two years. But Government lawyers challenged the plan.
"The economic interest and the grave economic situation of a municipal administration cannot be included in the concept of public interest," Judge Rosa Maria Munoz Rodon said in quashing the initiative.
