Legalise it... just not like this!
Germany just ended its ban on the sale of cannabis. But there are serious doubts about whether the law is ambitious enough to beat the black market.
Dear Reader,
There is no cogent argument left to be made against the legalisation of cannabis.
That is not because the stoners have been right all along about it just being a harmless weed. On the contrary, it should be legalised because cannabis - and the gangs that control it - are becoming ever more dangerous.
Prohibition has been an unmitigated failure in Germany, as the following examples illustrate:
Crime syndicates have taken over the parks of Berlin and other cities, where their foot soldiers lurk around entrances and pester passers by with whispers of “hey man, weed, weed.”
Cannabis consumption has gone up in recent years, with the number of people who say they’ve tried the drug higher than in Portugal or Belgium, where it is decriminalised.
The potency of hashish in an unregulated market has more than doubled since 2008. This partly explains why the number of people landing in psychiatric wards due to cannabis-induced psychosis has risen sixfold since the start of the millennium.
Even Germany’s police have given up on prohibition.
In a statement on why the ban should be lifted, the Association of German Police Detectives said that “one undesirable side effect of law enforcement is the development of new, more potent and more dangerous drugs.”
The more the police go after criminal cannabis suppliers, the more they innovate by creating synthetic cannabinoids in liquid form. This liquid cannabis is stronger and harder to correctly dose.
Whatever the cynics say, legalisation will change all this.
Creating profit-seeking companies is the only way to establish a lobby with enough of a vested interest in quashing the illegal trade. One would think this is a lesson that was learned from the calamitous prohibition of alcohol in the US a century ago.
The moral crusade fought against cannabis in recent decades has patently failed. Poorly funded police are losing the war against the drug gangs. Who should be surprised? A third of Germans admit to having smoked pot at least once in their lives. This crusade has no societal acceptance. At most, a few symbolic raids are carried out to keep the conservative press happy.
A multi-billion euro industry on the other hand isn’t just interested in the odd positive headline. Fighting black market competitors is in their existential interest. Meanwhile, a state that stands to earn billions in new tax revenues will suddenly have a real incentive to go after the gangs.
Sceptics who say that legal cannabis can never compete with the illegal stuff on price should ask why black market cigarettes have failed to flourish despite the ever higher taxes on shop tobacco.
And those who worry that legalisation will automatically lead to more teenagers lighting up joints should ask why ever fewer members of Gen Z are drinking, while cannabis use is on the rise.
So we should be celebrating the fact that the German parliament just partially legalised weed. On Friday, the Bundestag voted with a comfortable majority for the first move towards legalisation in close to a century.
Starting in April, people will be able to grow their own plants and join cannabis clubs, where they can smoke with fellow enthusiasts.
Except, what we were promised was something much more ambitious - something that would have used the power of markets to stamp out illegal production.
What we got was a fudge that stopped short of allowing commercial sales in order to avoid a legal battle with the EU.
Back in 2022, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach set out plans to allow the sale of cannabis in licenced shops and pharmacies, much like the successful model pursued in Canada since 2017.
Lauterbach said at the time that his plans would “dry out the black market.” And he was probably right. Canada’s decision to legalise has already pulled the rug out from under the criminal underworld. Around three quarters of cannabis users there now buy their weed legally, up from 40 percent in 2019.
But, somewhat embarrassingly, Germany’s health minister didn’t appear to have read up on European law before he announced his proposals. The plan was privately shredded by the European Commission, which pointed out that Germany had signed up to a 2004 Schengen treaty that bans the trade in narcotics including cannabis.
After months of silence, in which rumours swirled that the law had been ditched all together, Lauterbach finally put forward a detailed response to the EU’s concerns last April.
In order to prevent the whole reform being challenged in the courts, he decided to split the controversial aspect off into a separate piece of legislation.
The less controversial part, Pillar 1, is what was voted through the Bundestag on Friday. While hailed as legalisation, it only allows people to grow a maximum of three plants at home or become members of cannabis clubs where they can receive a ration of 50 grams a month.
For those who have championed legalisation, the law is a major disappointment.
The Association of Cannabis Clubs has pointed out that casual smokers are unlikely to make the effort of joining a cannabis club, meaning that they will still head to a street corner supplier. Meanwhile, heavy smokers may find that the ration of 50 grams doesn’t get them through the month.
The reform might even help small-time dealers by making it harder for the police to confiscate small quantities that they are carrying around.
The Association of German Police Detectives, who came out in support of legal weed back in 2018, said that the reform will make their lives harder as it will be impossible for officers to “distinguish between legally grown cannabis and illegal cannabis.”
Industry lobbyists have stressed that the government now needs to push ahead with plans for commercial sales.
“The federal government should now immediately start work on Pillar 2… this is absolutely essential in order to achieve a real reduction in the black market in the medium term,” said Dirk Heitepriem of the Cannabis Industry Association.
But Pillar 2 of Lauterbach’s law is the tricky part.
It is still unclear when it will be put to a vote in parliament. If it does go through, it will entail years of trials before any national law could come into effect.
Initially, full legalisation will be trialed over a five-year period in a few test regions where cannabis will be grown and sold under the watchful eye of a group of social scientists. Their studies will look at what effect commercial sale has on young people’s mental health and on the black market.
Even if those studies are positive, that doesn’t automatically mean that cannabis sales will be made legal nationwide.
Before that happens Germany will need to push for a change to EU law. A future (probably conservative) government will have to have the will to persuade the EU’s other Schengen members to agree to a treaty change.
In other words, the prospect of Pillar 2 ever becoming law seems more daunting than the idea of getting up to go to the fridge after smoking one joint too many.
“I can’t guarantee that things will progress further than Pillar 1 of the reform,” was Lauterbach’s sober assessment last week.
The opposition CDU, who are well ahead in polling, have said they will retract the law as one of their first acts in power.
With little in their locker other than the debunked claim that legalisation increases use, the CDU presumably want Germany to go the way of Sweden, the only EU country that has stuck to a highly restrictive drug policy.
That is the same Sweden where criminal gangs are fighting bloody turf wars on the streets of Stockholm and Malmö… the same Sweden that doesn’t just have the highest level of gun deaths in the EU, but also the highest levels of drug-related deaths.
We could go that way.
Or we could learn a lesson that has been obvious for a century. Prohibition doesn’t work.