- Starting from April 1, German adults can legally possess a certain amount of weed (25 grams on the move, 50 grams at home), and they may consume it unless they are within 100 meters of a school or kindergarten.
- This is just the first stage of that law, where the only way to actually obtain weed (other than for medical purposes) is to grow it yourself, or to form a collective of growers. Either way, the maximum number of plants per person is three. Commercially trade of weed is planned for later, as a second stage of the law.
- While this law legalizes weed for adults, it further prevents access for minors. The law raises the penalty for selling weed to minors to a minimum of two years in prison, and people that grow their own plants must ensure that minors cannot access them. People aged between 18 and 21 are only allowed access to weed with a THC content of less than 10%. The reasoning behind all this is that weed severely impairs the brain development of young people.
- Driving while under the influence is still a crime.
- The stated goal of this law is to eliminate the black market and to stop the growing trend of minors smoking weed. A review is scheduled in 18 months, determine whether the law in the current form achieves that goal or whether it has to be tweaked further.
This law is obviously a compromise between all the parties of the German government, EU law, scientific consensus, and practicability. What I like about the law is how carefully it weighs health issues and individual liberty. All the limits (legal age, grams of possession) have a solid scientific basis.
These sound like eminently reasonable restrictions, I can't imagine that many people will have a problem with them, beyond "drugs are bad mmkay". Well done, Germany, I hope it sticks.
I think keeping the sell illegal is not helping, it makes it look paradoxical: so what, I can own it but no one can sell it to me? Great.
Second side effect I see is that people which are occasional users (once a week, once a month) will end up having to invest in plants or membership in a club to be able to legally consume it, and that’s obviously driving higher consumption… it’s just a theory but it seems stupid to push occasional users to become regular users.
The answer is "they don't. It's illegal to buy". It was illegal to buy before, it was illegal to buy now. One can't argue that this law is worse because it legalizes only one of the two aspects.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. Now you can legally carry 25 grams of weed (or 50 grams at home) while there is no legal way to obtain it. The only way is to grow your own with up to three plants (that must be kept in a closet so that kids don't have access). Or some cannabis social club that is burdened with a lot of bureaucracy.
The pronounced aim to curb the black market can't be achieved because obviously for most people the black market is still the best way to get their weed.
(In earlier drafts of the law there was a way to buy weed through channels such as pharmacies but this is not possible due to EU legislation, so it got removed from the law).
I think it makes a lot of sense. It's a first step towards a broader legalization. Consumers of cannabis will be less stigmatized, which will lead to a more open, honest discussion. I believe the social clubs will work, and bureaucracy will improve over time.
That's the way it's been in a few parts of the US for a couple of years now and it works OK for the actual community. People who want to purchase it can do so with a little bit of digging to find out where to obtain it, but there's no stores, signs, or advertising making it obvious. Prices are lower and availability is higher than before it was legalized. Police pretty much don't make any effort to stop public consumption, which is still illegal.
This happened because of the inability of legislators to agree on how to implement a retail framework. They had enough agreement to legalize but can't agree on how much to tax it, how many stores to allow, how to decide who gets to run the stores, and whether or not large corporations should be allowed to participate. So for the time being the state loses out on tax revenue, but pretty much everyone is fine with the law being illogical because the users can use without fear, and the non-users don't see it.
I think it’s wonderful it didn't go the way of only allowing big-pharma and special pharmacies to distribute it, making big players pocket all the money.
I think self-growing is an excellent way of obtaining it. Social clubs to distribute is also great, let’s see just how much bureaucracy will be involved.
The fact it’s not a commercial legalisation is excellent – it means there are no agents with extreme financial interest hurrying to make a big buck from promoting it in dishonest ways, making it ubituqios, push it on kids etc. etc. etc.
"Big pharma is recognising medicinal marijuana's potential, with the global medicinal cannabis market estimated to reach nearly $24 billion". I think there are many countries where it is already touching it.
They almost certainly would. There's plenty of scummy ways to do business, my guess is they'd produce blister packs of gel capsules filled with THC oil at 480% markup and then fight tooth and nail to recriminalise all other methods of intake.
German here. Very true, it's weird. But after all these years, it's a big step.
Social clubs work well in other countries, we'll get it working here too.
Also, I hope medical weed is easier to get prescribed now, it has very good infrastructure. As in, you see which pharmacy has which strain online in many cases, etc.
I for one hope that a few lawsuits and stuff will make this much less bureaucratic, but whatever.
It is pretty unlikely that this will stay. The next federal elections are almost exactly one year from now and the opposition parties are by and large against the law.
Also, as the article says the law mandates a re-evaluation after 18 months, so even in the unlikely event that the current government continues it is far from certain, that this law survives.
Don’t underestimate the power of status quo. Also, how unpopular it is to criminalize things.
Also, Germany has coalition governments. As long as there is no CDU/CSU and AfD coalition (and then Germany would have worse problems than recreational marijuana) at least one of the currently governing parties will be part of the next coalition.
Given that together with how hard the status quo is to change I’m relatively optimistic. Even though the conservative highly irrational, science and fact denying course is deeply worrying. So they might be ready to govern with fascists. But then, as I said, recreational marijuana is not my most pressing worry.
That is very true but I am still doubtful for the future of this law even in the light of a new coalition, because the support for this law specifically or legalization in general or both in the current one is already weak.
I was taking the train south to north through Switzerland about 20 years ago (back when they still had smoking cars) and the kids in the Abteil in front of me were smoking some kind of funny smelling cigarettes that didn't stay lit.
The conductor came stamping down the aisle, with a grim look upon his face, and started to chew the kids out. They apologised, and he left, whereupon they continued to kiff but promptly put newspapers down on the seats across, protecting them from their shoes while they had their feet up...
Obviously the re-evaluation will show no positive effects on the black market because there's no legal way to buy your drugs (aside from home-grown or cannabis social clubs).
That is not true, support in the current coalition is already weak. There is a reason why this law took almost until the end of the election period to come to pass.
Especially our current health minister, who is responsible for the law, is well know for being against legalization. He only bowed to the pressure of the coalition.
It's also far less dangerous for general health than sugar, which is ubiquitous and fed to children with no restraints. There is no argument for health to restrict cannabis for adults, the risks are well-known, and people are engaging in it, particularly in abuse, with full knowledge. Even the dangers of sugar are still not so well-known, as supermarket shelves demonstrate.
THC is a hallucinogen. It can trigger psychosis. I know a person who committed suicide because of this. I know more people who kinda threw their lives away and became total slackers, because they were high all the time in their late teens.
A single dose is probably irrelevant for health. But I’d argue that (mental) health would suffer way more than compared to all health effects of sugar.
I’m not against legalizing cannabis, but the cannabis community downplays the risks of regular consumption a lot.
> But I’d argue that (mental) health would suffer way more than compared to all health effects of sugar.
Have you seen the mental health statistics? What they all have in common in having been raised, and living on, refined sugar (and other foods unsuitable for human consumption), not cannabis.
I'm not saying cannabis is a always a good idea, but even so mainly because it's often in the context of having already frail health, and combination, oftentimes with literal poisons like alcohol.
There's a huge hypocrisy around it being a question of public health; it's not, if it were, sugar would be highly taxed and regulated (esp. not being marketed to children), alcohol would be banned, etc. It still surprises me this hasn't permeated yet, as the information is now widely available.
I've always been puzzled by the argument that, since cannabis is less dangerous than alcohol, we should therefore remove legal disincentives for cannabis consumption rather than the seemingly more logical conclusion we should try to disincentivize alcohol consumption. If it is a matter of harm, you don't remove disincentives on less harmful things simply because there are less/no disincentives on more harmful things.
Of course, if we're instead making an argument about liberty, matters are different.
It makes sense if you care about both harm and liberty though.
We've already decided alcohol is fine from a liberty perspective, so if the argument against cannabis is from a harm perspective, and cannabis is less harmful than alcohol, then cannabis should be fine too.
I'm not sure that we (in the US) decided alcohol was fine from a liberty perspective, I think it was more the social consequences of Prohibition appeared to some to outweigh the evils it was fighting and to be somewhat ineffective to boot. For something as socially acceptable as drinking, it probably would have been better to take the sort of tack that was taken against cigarettes: increasingly high taxation, relentless educational campaigns beginning in childhood, advertising bans, regulation, bans on flavors etc., culminating decades later in total bans like what is now planned in some countries.
A society determines which harmful substances (and its effects on the individual and the society) it tolerates and how. Alcohol is in Germany tolerated (more than in the US) and it is also a huge legal business.
I'm for tolerating both alcohol and cannabis, but without mass marketing (ads, ...).
One struggle we face is the large inflow of other drugs, the resulting damage (for example from crack) currently from south America, the import of crime from there and the use of the drug business of legal cannabis business to expand their other drug business.
Overconsumption is very dangerous for some, look up cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. It can be a help, but tolerance creeps quickly and encourages ever higher doses.
My (US) colleagues were bitterly disappointed that although the tracks on DTH's 1998 christmas album are available via YouTube, they were missing out on the liner note recipe for Christstollen nach Alice B. Toklas'r Art: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wir_warten_auf’s_Christkind#Ar... ; don't germans have at least a half century experience with cannabis v. alcohol by now?
I ask because here in the USA most people say leglized when it's simply decriminalized in some states. Weed is still illegal at the federal level and because of that there are numerous behind the scenes issue. For example, banks won't accept deposits from weed businesses.
There are age restrictions similar to alcohol consumption, and there are areal restrictions around schools and similar facilities, sporting sites etc, where minors gather.
Unlike moonshining, in Germany it will be legal to grow your own pot.
- Starting from April 1, German adults can legally possess a certain amount of weed (25 grams on the move, 50 grams at home), and they may consume it unless they are within 100 meters of a school or kindergarten.
- This is just the first stage of that law, where the only way to actually obtain weed (other than for medical purposes) is to grow it yourself, or to form a collective of growers. Either way, the maximum number of plants per person is three. Commercially trade of weed is planned for later, as a second stage of the law.
- While this law legalizes weed for adults, it further prevents access for minors. The law raises the penalty for selling weed to minors to a minimum of two years in prison, and people that grow their own plants must ensure that minors cannot access them. People aged between 18 and 21 are only allowed access to weed with a THC content of less than 10%. The reasoning behind all this is that weed severely impairs the brain development of young people.
- Driving while under the influence is still a crime.
- The stated goal of this law is to eliminate the black market and to stop the growing trend of minors smoking weed. A review is scheduled in 18 months, determine whether the law in the current form achieves that goal or whether it has to be tweaked further.
This law is obviously a compromise between all the parties of the German government, EU law, scientific consensus, and practicability. What I like about the law is how carefully it weighs health issues and individual liberty. All the limits (legal age, grams of possession) have a solid scientific basis.