Can Germany go it alone in legalising cannabis?

Editorial word: Can Germany go it alone on legalising cannabis?

On Monday (1 April), Germany became the biggest EU country to legalise the recreational use of cannabis. People aged 18 or over can now possess up to 25 grams of the drug for personal use.

Germany’s example remains rather rare in Europe: Only Malta and Luxembourg have also legalised cannabis, while other countries such as Portugal and the Netherlands have preferred to decriminalise it.

France, on the other hand, chose to go for a particularly repressive policy, and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin regularly increases the number of police officers deployed to combat drug trafficking, traffickers, and consumers.

But while the rules of the EU’s internal market advocate the free movement of goods and services, is it realistic to believe that each country can apply its own legislation without consequences for other countries?

No, according to the ecologist mayor of the cross-border city of Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, who was interviewed on Franceinfo on Tuesday (2 April). She would like to “make a local experiment” and “enable all or some of the measures that apply in Germany” to be applied in her city, in France.

According to her, Strasbourg’s proximity to Germany calls for realism, especially as Germany wants to limit recreational tourism: People seeking to buy cannabis will have to prove that they have been living in Germany for at least six months.

In Europe, the French are the biggest cannabis consumers after the Greeks, according to the French Drugs Observatory’s figures published in 2021.

MP Brigitte Klinkert (Renaissance) told Euractiv that the German law will have major repercussions for France, and the region of Alsace in particular. “It raises concerns about safety, public health and police cooperation between our two countries,” she said.

Barseghian, the Strasbourg mayor, said there are “thousands of people crossing the Rhine every day. There are also 3,000 French people living in Kehl, the neighbouring German town. So this is primarily an experiment that I’m asking for on a pragmatic basis”.

“I can’t decide this myself at local level but I want to start thinking about it with the French government and the Regional Health Agency,” she concluded.

What about the European level? Legalising cannabis, and drug use in general, brings together two challenges: safety and health.

On the security side, in January 2024, the European Ports Alliance was set up in Antwerp, the Belgian port dubbed “Europe’s cocaine capital”, to harmonise security measures against drug trafficking and combat criminal networks.

“It’s obvious that we can’t make efforts in just one port, otherwise the criminals will immediately move on to another”, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson told AFP.

On the health front, there is no such harmony.

A non-biding 2019 resolution from the European Parliament stated that “legal rules would help to control points of sale and limit recourse to the black market. They would also help prevent substance abuse and addiction among minors and vulnerable groups”.

Portugal, which has decriminalised all drugs, has one of the lowest levels of cannabis use among 15-34 year-olds, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

By Clara Bauer-Babef

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[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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