German officials have said that after talking with European Union officials, they are changing their plan to legalize cannabis.
The new plan is to make it legal to have up to 25 grams of cannabis and to set up non-profit “cannabis clubs” where registered members 18 and older can go to buy the plant for fun. Each club will only be able to have 500 members, and a person won’t be able to join more than one cannabis club. The story said adults will also be able to grow up to three plants at home. The clubs will be in charge of growing and processing the cannabis for their members.
Cem Ozdemir, the minister of agriculture, said that the new plan will be finished by the end of this month and should be in place by the end of the year.
The lower house of the German government will have to agree with the plans, but officials say the upper house is not needed. This chamber is made up of the 16 state governments of Germany, many of which are part of the main center-right opposition group in the country.
The bloc has been against making cannabis rules less strict. One official from a conservative area went to Brussels to try to stop Lauterbach’s first plan.
Tino Sorge, a health policy spokesman for the center-right, told the Funke newspaper group that the government was moving forward with legalizing a risky drug “despite European legal hurdles, clear expert opinions, and bad experiences from other countries.” He said that Lauterbach put the wrong things first.
The minister of health said that Germany’s current measures haven’t worked. He said that the government’s goal is to make things safer, protect people from contaminated and dangerous goods, and cut down on crimes related to drugs.
