European cannabis legalisation moves into the slow-dopey lane

Cannabis is easily the most popular illicit drug in Europe. About 28% of adult Europeans have taken a toke during their lifetime; the French top the league of stoners, at almost 45%. Moreover, attitudes towards the drug’s use are changing rapidly. In Germany, for example, support for legalisation has moved from 30% in favour in 2014 to 61% last year.

Yet Germany’s plans to move to full legalisation of consumption and sales came to an abrupt halt last month. Until recently, Germany’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, had been upbeat about the prospects for radical change. But following talks with the European Commission the plan has gone up in a cloud of smoke, like the comedians Cheech and Chong’s famous van made of weed. Shorn of a German impetus, Europe-wide cannabis reform now looks unlikely any time soon.

Under Germany’s revised strategy, adults will be allowed to grow cannabis in their own home and to form “cannabis social clubs”. These are non-profit associations within which the growth and distribution of cannabis is permitted, though the product cannot be sold to anyone else. Rather than blazing a trail in Europe, then, the Germans are following a highly limited strategy that even strict countries such as Spain and Malta have already adopted.

Nobody is entirely clear why the Germans watered down their plans, says Dorien Rookmaker, a Dutch MEP who is involved in a cross-party European Parliament group on the legalisation of cannabis for personal use. But Martin Jelsma of the Transnational Institute, a Dutch-founded think-tank, thinks the reason is that the proposals are not in compliance with an EU Council framework decision on drugs in 2004, nor with three relevant UN treaties. The EU’s framework agreement harmonised minimum sentences for drug-trafficking offences in the bloc, but it left the EU’s member states some legal discretion when it comes to personal use, social clubs and the possession of weed.

Germany is also now planning for a second phase that involves pilot projects in which local sales will be allowed. Details of these schemes have not yet been announced. Will they actually happen? Possibly. The Netherlands is planning to launch just such a scheme, known as the wietexperiment, or “weed experiment”, by the end of 2023 in ten municipalities (Amsterdam’s “coffee shops” are an exemption carved out before the 2004 framework came into effect). The Czech Republic, also gung-ho on the liberalisation of cannabis laws, seems likely to follow.

The legal status of these pilot schemes for sales is grey. Mr Jelsma says it would be helpful if the commission were to give some indication as to what its position is on the question. On the face of it the schemes do breach EU laws. But as they are not on a national scale, and are time-limited, the commission may not want to start an infringement procedure.

The shift in German policy represents a kicking of the can on the full European legalisation of cannabis. One factor may well be that no one has the appetite for such regulatory aggravation right now, with a war in Ukraine and high inflation to contend with. Still, Ms Rookmaker thinks further shifts are still possible if enough countries keep pushing. ■