Germany scales back plans to allow cannabis sale in shops and pharmacies

[Simple Jack]

Germany scales back plans to allow cannabis sale in shops and pharmacies

Health minister says adults will be allowed to grow and consume limited amounts privately or at members’ clubs by end of year

Adults in Germany will be able to grow and consume recreational cannabis privately or through non-profit members’ clubs by the end of the year, the country’s health minister announced on Wednesday, scaling back previous plans to make the drug distributable in shops or pharmacies nationwide.

“The previous cannabis policy has failed,” said the health minister, Karl Lauterbach, as he presented the German government’s new two-phase approach to legalising cannabis at a press conference in Berlin. “Now we have to go new ways.”

Following a model pioneered in Spain, the initial phase foresees the establishment of “cannabis social clubs”, which are each limited to 500 members and are exclusive to those living in Germany.

Members aged 21 or above will be able legally to obtain up to 25g of cannabis in a day from these clubs, up to 50g a month. For those aged 18-21, the monthly allowance is limited to 30g. Consuming the herb on the clubs’ premises will be forbidden.

Under the German government’s proposals, it would also no longer be illegal for adults to cultivate recreational cannabis in their own home, with the home-growing of up to three female flowering plants allowed.

A second phase, limited to five years, will allow a number of cities and municipalities across Germany to license “specialist shops” to sell recreational cannabis as part of a pilot programme similar to those in some US states and Canada.

Lauterbach said the second phase would be tackled after the summer recess but did not specify a start date or name cities that would take part in the scheme.

The agriculture minister, Cem Özdemir of the Green party, said the second phase of the legalisation scheme was designed to sound out supply chains that could later be scaled up for a wider legalisation of cannabis across Germany.

“The people who won’t be happy about today’s news, that’s the illegal ones, the criminal dealers,” Özdemir said. “In the future, no one should buy from a dealer without knowing what they are getting”.

Wednesday’s announcement represents a considerable watering-down of the ambitious plans for a nationwide legalisation Germany presented in a cornerstone paper last October, which Lauterbach had hailed as “a model for Europe”.

After that announcement, the health minister submitted an outline of his plans to the European Commission to seek an opinion, fearful of a repeat of Germany’s autobahn toll debacle. Angela Merkel’s fourth term as chancellor saw a humiliating U-turn on plans to introduce a German road toll that would disproportionately affect foreign-registered cars, after it was ruled in violation of anti-discrimination law by the European court of justice.

While the European Commission has not outright criticised Germany’s original plans for legalising cannabis, the Guardian understands its feedback was critical enough to force Lauterbach’s department into a rethink, resulting in today’s more cautious two-phase approach.

A Council of the European Union framework decision from 2004 requires member states to ensure that the sale of drugs, including cannabis, is “punishable by effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal penalties”.

The Schengen agreement also obliges signees to curtail the illegal export, sale and supply of “narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, including cannabis”. However, EU law allows member states to come up with their own regulations as long as the drug is made available strictly for personal consumption.

As in many other European countries, the use of cannabis in certain medical contexts has been legal since 2017.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/12/germany-scales-back-plans-to-allow-cannabis-sale-in-shops-and-pharmacies

[soto]

To be honest, I don't think there's any surprise that the EU is taking a more cautious approach than the US.

Hopefully politics in Germany won't shift too far to the right by the time second phase kicks in.

[redbeard]

Everyone should be happy with this as most are against legalization anyway cannabis clubs, and being able to grow a few plants keeps it in the hands of the small man and provides a legal outlet.

Even in Malta where they did fully legalize this the way they are going.

[twigs]

i don’t think they can afford the electric now for big industrial grows  

[stu914]

Love to know how they intend to police the "only 3 plants at home" rule.

Same goes for these ridiculous restrictions on amounts someone can buy/possess.

The old "I can smell weed" excuse for taking the door off or stop and search can no longer be valid.

Just let everyone get on with what they want to do or leave things as they are and stop tinkering about with this nonsense.

[ratdog]

1 hour ago, stu914 said:

Love to know how they intend to police the "only 3 plants at home" rule.

 

 

this is the perfect opportunity to bring this shit into force here, there's a perfect excuse to snoop on anyone stupid enough to register the fact they are growing in their home, the cctv nation that is the UK would be all over this i would assume

[Simple Jack]

 

On 14/04/2023 at 5:43 AM, soto said:

To be honest, I don't think there's any surprise that the EU is taking a more cautious approach than the US.

 

The two situations are slightly different. The US government makes law at a national level; until 1970, cannabis policy was decided at the state level, then Nixon made prohibition a nationwide law. When Colorado voted to legalise, the Obama administration looked the other way and in doing so handed drug policy back to the states. The EU Commission is a bureaucracy tasked with enforcing compliance to a mutually agreed set of international standards. States are free to set their own policy, there is no overarching thou shalt not, but until fairly recently, prohibition was a given.

 

Both bodies have resisted the normalisation of cannabis by clinging to the criminalisation of cannabis as the default position at the national/supernational level. This prevents trade in recreational use cannabis between states that have individually decided to legalise it. The war on drugs has it's roots in supressing  trade, and that is where the legislation is the most enduring.

 

Quote

While the European Commission has not outright criticised Germany’s original plans for legalising cannabis, the Guardian understands its feedback was critical enough to force Lauterbach’s department into a rethink, resulting in today’s more cautious two-phase approach.

 

You have to wonder how this "feedback" was forceful enough to persuade the biggest member of the EU to alter course. There are no explicit directives against the legalisation of cannabis - there didn't have to be because at the time of its formation, cannabis was already illegal in all the states because of existing international treaties. It's good to see that obligations to UN directives are not being cited as a relevant consideration.

 

My guess is France. Only France has the clout; probably backed by Poland and Sweden.

[BluePeter]

At least it’s going on the right direction, unlike this shithole island 

[Simple Jack]

Quote

INTERVIEW: 'This is the year of cannabis legalisation in Germany'

Germany's plans to create a regulated market for cannabis are rapidly taking shape - with legal joints likely to become a reality by the end of the year. The Local spoke to German SPD MP Carmen Wegge, a rapporteur on the cannabis bill, to find out what's in the pipeline.

It was a slightly jarring sight, but a highly revelatory one: Christian Linder, the sharp-suited, number-crunching Finance Minister, tweeting a word like "Bubatz".

The slang term for cannabis - similar to "ganja" in English - was long the sole property of teenagers smoking weed in skateparks, but if the German government has its way, it could soon take on a veneer of respectability.

When Lindner used it back in May 2022, it was to announce that legalisation of weed - a key pledge of the liberal traffic-light coalition - would be happening "soon". And in recent weeks, the plans have been taking shape. 

Speaking to The Local's Germany in Focus podcast, SPD MP Carmen Wegge - one of the rapporteurs working on the cannabis bill - described Germany's move to legalise cannabis as a "revolution" and struck an optimistic tone about the timeline for legalisation.

"This is the question everyone has been asking me for one and a half years, and now we are coming to an end I hope," she said. "We will have the first draft finalised in September or October and in September or October it will go to parliament - so this year will be the year of the cannabis legalisation in Germany."

According to Wegge, the first phase of the government's plans will see the possession of weed decriminalised (at least up to 25g) and will also allow people to grow up to three weed plants of their own at home.

It will also permit people to establish heavily regulated, non-profit members' clubs that grow and sell marijuana to their members. This phase could come into force between September and December, the SPD politician predicts. 

In a second - arguably much bolder - phase, the government plans to set up so-called "model cities" that will pilot the sale of weed in licensed shops - potentially as soon as 2024.

So far, Cologne, Hamburg, Leipzig and some districts of Berlin have expressed interest in participating in the pilot scheme, and Wegge says that as long as areas meet all the criteria, there won't be an upper limit on who can join. 

"Next year we will have the draft and it will pass the parliament and then we have to see how many cities want to be a model region, if they find producers soon enough and stuff like that, but if everything goes great, we will have it (in place) next year," she added. 

Tackling the black market

Of course, not everyone is in favour of moves to decriminalise drugs: in fact, in a recent poll, 49 percent of respondents said they were against legalisation compared to 46 percent in favour.

The plans have been criticised both by the centre-right CDU and CSU parties, who argue that the safety of minors will be endangered by more readily available weed. But Wegge says the idea is simply to create safe channels for a drug that people are consuming anyway.

"In Germany we have a lot of people consuming cannabis, and these people are consuming cannabis from the black market," she said. "In the last few years, the quality of the cannabis on the black market is getting worse and worse with synthetic cannabinoids and stuff like that, so a lot of people who are consuming cannabis - and it doesn’t matter if it’s legal or illegal - are consuming cannabis in a bad way."

Instead, the government hopes that legalisation will allow them to better monitor cannabis use and put child protection and prevention measures in place. For example, minors caught with marijuana could have to attend compulsory addiction prevention courses, and drug awareness classes will be taught in schools.

When weed is sold in shops under the new pilot project next year, Germany is also keen to avoid the mistakes made by its Dutch neighbours when it comes to decriminalising the drug.

"In Amsterdam, you have organised crime right up to the backdoor of the coffee shop, and that’s something we don't want," she explained, referring to the fact that Amsterdam's coffee shops are generally supplied by black-market dealers.

"So, when you are in a model region, and have, let’s call it a coffee shop, then the cannabis is planted and grown in a state-regulated area. We know what’s inside, what percentage of THC and stuff like that."

Rather than Germany following the Netherlands, it could in fact be the other way around: Wegge says the Netherlands is now looking at moving away from coffee shops and trialling its own model cities. 

Shifting gears in Europe 

But as Germany looks ahead to a much more liberal future, the elephant in the room is that the country is still restricted in what it can do.

That's because the European Union's Narcotics Act generally insists that activities involving the trafficking, procurement or sale of drugs like cannabis are punishable under national law. 

In light of this EU legislation, the government has already watered down its original plans significantly - opting for members' clubs and home-grown cannabis and limiting the wider sale of cannabis to highly regulated shops within its model cities project. 

However, according to Wegge, this doesn't mean the government has given up on its original plans: in fact, it has broadened its horizons beyond Germany and is now hoping to overturn the status quo on a European level.

"We want to legalise cannabis in the way we wanted to do it before, so it will be our aim to change the European law so that every state in the EU can legalise cannabis in this way," she said. "For now we just want to go the safe way, so we’ve changed the way we are legalising cannabis, but it will be our aim or goal to do it in a full version."

In its hopes for its future cannabis market, Germany is looking to some US states - and especially Canada - for inspiration. 

"In Canada, the black market has reduced from 100 percent to 50 percent (of the total market share) in four years," Wegge said. "It’s right that the black market won’t vanish in one day when we legalise cannabis, but we can say there’s a big impact on the black market and it will reduce."

In Europe, however, Germany wants to lead the way.

"I’m working on the next steps, I’m in contact with members of the European parliament to change the European law," said Wegge. "So it’s not the end: I would say it’s the big beginning in Germany and maybe for the EU."

 

https://www.thelocal.de/20230616/interview-this-is-the-year-of-cannabis-legalisation-in-germany

[twigs]