ON April 12 2023 German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced the proposed plan for Germany’s cannabis legalisation. A two-stage process was laid out with immediate plans for the decriminalisation of cannabis for recreational use and the rollout of state-regulated not-for-profit cannabis social clubs where members will be able to buy cannabis for personal use. The law is currently still in its draft form and may be altered before it is voted through.

Germany’s club system would be like fellow EU member Malta, which passed legislation to decriminalise cannabis in 2021 and started accepting license applications for the clubs earlier this year.

The second stage of Germany’s plan is short on details but will involve a limited five-year pilot exploring the possibilities for a recreational consumer market in an EU country. However, at this time little information has been released to say how and where this will happen.

Despite a recreational cannabis market being a key pillar of their post-election governing manifesto the German health minister, a member of Germany’s left-leaning “traffic light coalition” had previously warned that Germany “would not develop any draft law” on cannabis legalisation if the EU Commission disapproved.

The original proposals envisaged a regulated recreational market with all over 18s able to purchase cannabis (with some limits on potency for those under 21). It would have been the most liberal cannabis laws in Europe and would have made Germany the world’s biggest legal recreational cannabis market, overtaking Canada and California. The market aspect of the plan has been removed entirely from the first stage of the plan.

Under the scaled-back proposals Germans will be allowed to: Possess up to 25g of cannabis; Cultivate three flower-producing female plants; Be members of not-for-profit cannabis social clubs of up to 500 registered members; Purchase up to 25g of cannabis per day and 50g a month for personal consumption from a club where they’re a registered member — and they can also buy up to seven cannabis seeds or five cuttings a month for home cultivation.

One reasonable limitation is that public consumption of cannabis won’t be allowed near schools or nurseries or in pedestrian zones of towns until 8pm.

Consumption of cannabis will also be forbidden on cannabis club property, nor can the clubs advertise themselves. They will also be required to appoint youth protection, addiction, and prevention officers. Membership in more than one club will be prohibited.

Club members younger than 21 will only be able to buy 30g of cannabis a month with a limit on THC, the psychoactive substance in cannabis that induces intoxication. Previously the proposed THC level was set at 10 per cent. For reference, estimates vary but the British average for THC content in cannabis consumed is about 15 per cent.

David Nutt, remowned neuropsychopharmacologist and drugs campaigner, advises in his book on cannabis, and in an interview last year with the Morning Star, that governments should limit cannabis to 10 per cent THC or less for all consumers. Limiting THC decreases the amount imbibed by consumers and increases the amount of CBD in the plant which appears to have a neuroprotective effect mitigating risks associated with cannabis particularly related to mental health and addiction potential.

In his speech, Karl Lauterbach reiterated statements he made last year that Germany doesn’t want to emulate the famous “coffee shop” model of the neighbouring Netherlands, where cannabis production remains in the black market allowing for little market regulation and the continued financial benefit of organised crime.

However, the Netherlands has long been prevented from implementing a more rational system for the production and sale of cannabis by EU law due to the risk of punitive action from the European Commission.

Fundamentally, the EU’s key concern is drug trafficking and how cannabis can be controlled in EU countries which haven’t legalised it. For many years, it’s been Germany that has most vocally expressed these concerns. More recently Francois Braun the French health minister raised concerns about Germany’s plants and told the news site Euractiv France: “France will closely monitor the evolution of the German legislative framework, especially with regard to its potential impact on cross-border regions.”

The European legal system has proven inflexible, despite public support for cannabis in many member countries. In 2005 a ban was put on tourists being allowed to purchase cannabis from coffee shops in Maastricht near the borders of Belgium and Germany. Coffee shops were made to register their customers to ensure they were citizens. Registration raised concerns, as cannabis, though tolerated, is still not legal.

The owner of Easy Going, a Maastricht-based coffee shop, challenged the ban on the basis that it violated the principles of the EU’s single market, which gives EU citizens equal rights to goods and services.

He was ruled against by the European Court of Justice because of the grey legal area Dutch cannabis inhabits. The push to maintain the coffee shop system in the face of the EU’s inflexibility has kept cannabis production and large-scale supply in Holland in the hands of organised crime.

In a fully legal recreational market, it would be far more difficult to enact “tourist bans,” hence the EU’s resistance to a market system for cannabis and the pressure that puts on EU members to adopt non-market models of decriminalisation. Given Germany’s centrality to Europe and the fact it borders eight countries in the visa-free Schengen zone, the issue has come into particular focus.

The second stage of the German plan is to have a five-year regional pilot project of commercial cannabis sales which could be taxed, unlike the social clubs. Though lacking in details, it appears similar to a Dutch scheme due to start later in 2023 called the “controlled cannabis supply chain experiment.”

In selected premises, in smaller Dutch cities, the entire supply chain of cannabis from growing to the point of sale will be licenced, regulated and consumption patterns monitored. These experiments seem to exploit a loophole in EU law by which illicit drugs can be produced as part of a scientific study.

Germany’s health minister plans to use the five years of Germany’s pilot to push for a more liberal approach to cannabis EU-wide. He stated: “[The pilot] will be accompanied by a concerted effort by the German government to find supporters in Europe for this progressive, prevention-oriented cannabis policy.”

From a socialist perspective, these studies could be seen as introducing cannabis markets, and the pressures that markets bring, by the back door and potentially outside of democratic scrutiny. We should certainly be suspicious of any claims that market forces can be contained in laboratory conditions.

Parallels could be drawn to the US where medical cannabis, particularly in California, with cartoonishly low barriers to getting prescriptions, was used as a trojan horse to create a consumer market despite legislation against it. This eventually reached critical mass and led to legalisation.

Legalisation there allowed people increased access to a drug they enjoyed recreationally as well as for its medicinal uses. However, it also led to the obliteration of rural communities in places like Humboldt County, which had championed and cultivated the plant for decades, due to collapsing prices and stifling regulations shaped by big business against small producers. The conditions in Europe differ but the key lesson is the same: an unrestrained free market for cannabis does not lead to the most equitable outcome.

Almost by accident, the EU has kept recreational cannabis, the world’s most valuable cash crop, out of the hands of multinational companies on the continent. As cannabis increasingly gains inroads into Europe the calls to marketise and deregulate will grow with it. Socialists should remain aware of how this situation develops and push for a settlement which champions work conditions and public health over unrestrained profits.