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German Cannabis Club Distributes First Legal Marijuana To Members As Officials Announce Broader Pilot Program For Sales

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Just a few months after German officials began approving marijuana social clubs, which cultivate cannabis on behalf of enrolled members, the first of the groups has announced its initial distribution of marijuana.

Meanwhile the city of Frankfurt is moving forward with a five-year pilot program that will make cannabis products available to adults more broadly, with the city of Hanford also pursuing a similar plan.

It became legal in Germany in April for adults to possess and cultivate marijuana for personal use, but until now there’s been no other legal means of obtaining the substance.

At Cannabis Social Club Ganderkesee, in the municipality of Ganderkesee, member Michael Jaskulewicz was the first member to receive a few grams of marijuana, according to a report in Weser Kurier over the weekend.

“Being here and picking it up was an absolutely awesome feeling,” he said, according to a translation. Jaskulewicz said he’d purchased on the illegal market decades ago but stopped after receiving contaminated cannabis. “After that I felt very dirty and I thought [I] wouldn’t do that anymore.”

The social club was allowed to begin cultivating marijuana for members in July, following the award of a permit by Lower Saxony Minister of Agriculture Miriam Staudte.

Staudte said at the time that the issuance represented a “historic step for consumer protection and controlled cannabis cultivation in Germany.”

Social clubs are limited to having 500 members each and selling up to 50 grams of marijuana per member each month.

A spokesperson for Germany’s federal drug commissioner said officials are unaware of any club that began harvesting marijuana before Cannabis Social Club Ganderkesee, according to the new Weser Kurier report, but added that the office also doesn’t have formal information about individual clubs’ harvests.

Daniel Keune, chairman of the club, told the publication that its members “come from the middle of society” and range in ages from 18 to 70.

Carmen Wegge, a lawmaker with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) said earlier this year that the cannabis social clubs “are an important part of the fight against the black market.”

“If you don’t have a particularly green thumb,” she said, “a [cannabis social club] is certainly a good alternative.”

Separately, plans for a new pilot program in Frankfurt would make cannabis available for commercial purchase to a select group of “several thousand people,” according to a report in Frankfurter Rundschau. People would be able to buy up to 25 grams per day but no more than 50 grams per month from four stores across the city, and program participants would need to agree to participate in surveys and examinations overseen by medical specialists.

“We’re ready,” said Frankfurt Social and Health Department Minister Elke Voitl, a member of The Greens party, who late last month signed a letter of intent with the head of the city’s drug department, F. Artur Schroers.

Frankfurter Rundschau reports that it’s still unclear where in the German government the city’s application must go for approval.

People with mental health conditions, those pregnant or nursing as well as minors will be barred from the program, which would last five years.

The project reportedly has support from the Institute for Addiction Research of the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.

The Frankfurter Rundschau article notes that a local investigation found that the majority of marijuana on the illicit market is contaminated, including with pesticides, bacteria or feces.

“It needs legal sources of supply,” Voitl said, “because otherwise people buy illegally.”

The goal of the program is to price legal marijuana competitively compared to the illegal market, where organizers say prices run between €8 and €10 per gram.

In the city of Hanover, meanwhile, another five-year pilot program would make marijuana available through pharmacies to an estimated 4,000 people, according to a report in the publication The Local.

Hanover Mayor Belit Onay said the program is intended to acknowledge “social realities” around cannabis use already happening in the city and risks related to the illicit market.

Cannabis would be available through the planned program sometime next year, The Local reported.

Officials told the publication they’re interested in how the program can help ensure the discussion around marijuana is based on facts.

“Our main interest is the scientific findings,” said the head of Hanover’s social affairs department, Sylvia Bruns. “We want to move away from assumptions and ideological debates.”

“The data from this study could form an important basis for shaping a future-oriented drug policy in the future,” added Professor Kirsten Müller-Vahl of the Hannover Medical School.

Personal use, cultivation and limited availability through cannabis social clubs is just the first of a two-part legalization plan in Germany. Advocates and stakeholders are still awaiting details on the government’s plan for the second pillar of the law that is expected to provide for a broader commercial sales model.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who has led the government’s cannabis legalization efforts, told members of the Bundestag last December that “we are currently examining” the commercial sales plan as part of the second pillar. But with legalization in effect, there has been increased pressure to expedite that process.

In June, meanwhile, German lawmakers approved a series of changes to the country’s marijuana legalization law, imposing restrictions related to impaired driving and giving states more authority to set limits on cannabis cultivation within their borders. The amendments were the result of an earlier agreement between the federal government and legislators that was made in order to avoid a months-long delay in the implementation of the legalization law.

One of the changes gives states greater flexibility to set restrictions on cultivation at cooperatives that are now able to start dispensing cannabis to members. The regional governments will be able to impose limits on the size of the cooperative’s canopies.

A separate measure that federal lawmakers adopted set a per se THC limit for impaired driving. The legislation—which has proved more controversial given a lack of scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of such policies—makes it so drivers would be considered impaired if they have more than 3.5 ng/ml of THC in their blood. The amendment also bans driving if a person has used both marijuana and alcohol, regardless of the amount.

The Federal Council representing individual states previously tried to block the now-enacted legalization legislation last September but ultimately failed.

While Germany’s Federal Cabinet approved the initial framework for a legalization measure in late 2022, the government also said it wanted to get signoff from the European Union to ensure that implementing the reform wouldn’t put them in violation of their international obligations.

German officials took a first step toward legalization in 2022, kicking off a series of hearings meant to help inform legislation to end prohibition in the country.

Government officials from several countries, including the U.S., also met in Germany last November to discuss international marijuana policy issues  as the host nation works to enact legalization.

A group of German lawmakers, as well as Narcotics Drugs Commissioner Burkhard Blienert, separately visited the US and toured California cannabis businesses in 2022 to inform their country’s approach to legalization.

The visit came after top officials from Germany, Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands held a first-of-its-kind meeting to discuss plans and challenges associated with recreational marijuana legalization.

Leaders of the coalition government said in 2021 that they had reached an agreement to end cannabis prohibition and enact regulations for a legal industry, and they first previewed certain details of that plan in 2022.

A novel international survey released in 2022 found majority support for legalization in several key European countries, including Germany.

Meanwhile, the United Nations (UN) drug control body recently reiterated that it considers legalizing marijuana for non-medical or scientific purposes a violation of international treaties, though it also said it appreciates that Germany’s government scaled back its cannabis plan ahead of the recent vote.

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Ben Adlin, a senior editor at Marijuana Moment, has been covering cannabis and other drug policy issues professionally since 2011. He was previously a senior news editor at Leafly, an associate editor at the Los Angeles Daily Journal and a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. He lives in Washington State.

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