With several European countries on the cusp of legalizing recreational or medical marijuana, industry stakeholders, and activists are gearing up to embrace new cannabis opportunities on the horizon.
German plans to enact policy reform may be pushed further into 2025 due to delays in submitting a draft law to legalize recreational cannabis to the European Commission.
On October, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach presented a plan to Chancellor Olaf Scholz's cabinet, calling it the most liberal legalization of cannabis in Europe, which will result in the most regulated market in the EU.
According to Lauterbach, the German government intends to tackle the cannabis illicit market, which seems to be large given that there are approximately 4 million adults who use marijuana nationwide.
The initiative would allow people 18 and older to have 20 to 30 grams of homegrown plants, and increase the number of homegrown plants to three from two. There will be no cap on THC concentration in products sold to people over 21.
The draft law is expected to be completed by spring 2023.
Czech Republic To Move This Spring As Well As This Spring
A new piece of legislation - set to regulate another emerging European market - is expected to be ready by March.
A group of experts in Czechia laid out their plan for regulating the marijuana market to the Government Office last week, according to Expats.cz. The group has been talking about the issue for months and plans to meet on February 2.
The bill calls for setting up a program that would include registered users, home growers and hemp associations. It will oversee the issuance of licenses for production, distribution and dispensing.
According to the Czech government's website, "we propose taxing cannabis and collecting funds for licensing," said Jind ich Vobo il, a national anti-drug coordinator. We have a lot of income for the state budget. I hope that we will agree with the government on some allocation of funds for prevention. UK Official Says Pot Is Harmful As Heroin
In the UK, a move to classify cannabis from Class B to Class A and create stricter penalties for those who possess and sell it has recently been criticised.
Police and crime commissioners argued that the Conservative Party's classification of cannabis is not appropriate, given new data showing it is more harmful than previously thought. They want to re-schedule cannabis as a Class A drug, raising penalties for those who possess and sell it.
Prof. David Nutt, a drug expert, said the move would represent a failure to learn the lessons of history. Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist specializing in drug research, touted the push as politically motivated as well as destructive and damaging, according to BBC.
He said that these changes are being proposed despite it being almost unavoidable that cannabis will be legalized in the future.
Mark Shelford, PCC for Avon and Somerset, are openly opposed to policy reform and support stricter penalties.
He said that cannabis is as harmful as crack cocaine or heroin and that reclassifying would open doors to treatment where the focus is on drugs like heroin. Source: Benzinga Edit, Source: Courtesy of Esteban Lopez and KOBU Agency on Unsplash