Biggest thing is that you can now at least legally possess it. They never cared where it came from before either. Smoking it isn't illegal, just somehow buying it and having it. Truly an insane situation. Now at least you can own a reasonable amount of weed without being in this absurd limbo.

Possession has been tolerated for a long time now. You can’t walk through a city and not smell weed. AFAIK the tolerable limit was 5g, a person should seek help if they need more than that on them.

Why, you also only ever buy one liter of milk, and otherwise should seek counsel? Orn lets make it less abstract and say one sixpack of beer?

That very much depends on the Bundesland where that city is located. Good luck doing that in Munich. Personally I got prosecuted for (ordering!) 3g of weed, although later that got folded. Still trouble, though. Also I can still get problems with my driving license for that same amount (even though that alleged possession was in no way connected with driving any vehicle).

The amount used to depend on the state, in Berlin up to 16g was considered a small amount for personal consumption.

Depends on the location, don’t try that in Bavaria

an ounce is about 14 grams. 5 is slightly more than an eighth. if you don’t live near the dispensary and want some for a month or a few months an eighth is not really that much. i don’t think seeking help is an appropriate response here.

An ounce is 28 grams. But your point stands.

yeah i see ads for 14g all the time and for some reason that stuck in my head as an ounce but 3.5 grams is an eighth of an ounce so 5 is slightly more than that. either way more than 5g is a reasonable amount to have on you if you are going to buy it for a longer timeframe.

An ounce is 28 grams, 5g isn’t that much flower at all in the grand scheme of things.

I presume it’s an attempt at stopping dealing, maybe to minors? But it feels asinine to have such a limit. Like another poster says, should this extend to a single crate of beer? One bottle of spirits? One pouch of tobacco?

Having a 5g limit just means I’m going to make more frequent trips to the shop to purchase more cannabis, just let me buy a pound and leave me to it.

> Having a 5g limit just means I’m going to make more frequent trips to the shop to purchase more cannabis

That and possibly seeking out cannabis with a higher THC concentration.

True, as much as that’s not quite what I’d do because I like to just maintain a high, I’m sure a lot of folks would. Hell, on the weekend I’d switch it up to the higher %s to be fair.

NL has this same rule of no more than around 5g, I’m not 100% how much the exact limit is but it’s nearby 5g.

That's a few joints as best, are we really declaring people as hopeless addicts for having more than a handful of joints on them? This seems similar to saying someone should never be allowed to have more than an 1/8th of alcohol on them at any time. Seems silly when put in perspective of what drugs are quantities are already legal.

5g is way more than a few joints.

I smoke weed frequently (daily user).

I go through 5g in maybe two weeks.

I use frequently as well, you must roll shorties. (Non-infused) pre rolls are typically sold with 1g each for reference.

Absolutely I do!

My point is if you are going through 5g in a matter of days, you probably have a problem usage!

I guess my point is we allow people to buy handles of alcohol (a much more problematic and harmful drug) at a time, even though consumption at that rate is also problematic. So why should we treat marijuana differently?

What is this "a city"? Berlin? Definitely not in Bavaria.

> Biggest thing is that you can now at least legally possess it.

I really want this to be true for a lot of drugs and even other criminal activities. Not because I necessarily support these things, but because we've seen that when we don't do this, prosecutors put far more of their time and energy into going after the users because they are much easier to go after. But if we do consider these things problems, we need to go after those distributing and manufacturing. It's like trying to put out a fire by removing all things that are flammable. Sure, it can work, but you're going to have a hard time doing this if you're in the woods. Main focus should be on the fire.

but manufacturer and distribution is just filling a need the market. without the demand for the product, it won't sell, so what's really needed are better social services so addicts can get off their addictions. jobs, housing, counseling, hope.

saying it should be legal to have it and then go after the manufacturer instead is also treating the symptom, sucking out the smoke without addressing the fire.

Sure, I took Econ 101 too. But the problem is that that's 101. Once you get to a more advanced level you find more complexity. It is completely possible to generate demand. In some sense this should be obvious as there was no demand for smartphones 50 years ago. You might say some of the ideas were there and thus that's demand, so that could be fair. But certainly not if we go back 500 where even many of these concepts did not exist and the demand would be for easier communication, a much more abstract idea. I mean in Econ 101 you learn about the Efficient Market Hypothesis too, but no economist actually believes it to be true.

With drugs I think this is a bit more apparent because there is addiction. It is well known that a common strategy is getting users hooked. Either by offering some initially for free or at a reduced price, or by increasing the addictive qualities of the product. In fact, we even see similar phenomena in the white market. Starbucks coffee has about twice as much caffeine as a standard cup[0] and this certainly creates a higher demand for their coffee. But I don't think many are aware of this.

Also consider there are different ways of "legal." Some places have "decriminalized" drugs, which would be in line with this idea. For example, the state of Oregon in the US did this. Many people portray this as legality, but it isn't. If you are found with drugs there they will still be confiscated AND you pay a $100 fine and the court will give you information about addiction treatment centers. So not really legal, but not a major criminal offense. That seems like a fair way to put pressure towards manufacturing and distribution if you don't want to just legalize possession (which would always be limited in quantities).

I also just don't buy your analogy in any way. We reduce things that have demand all the time through market regulations. Anything that is illegal to sell or produce is something that there is demand for somewhere. There's a HUGE demand for slave labor, but we've regulated that away (demand is for cheap labor, and slave labor is towards the cheapest one can get if not THE cheapest). The reason to go after manufacturers and distributors is because network effects. When you cut off a dealer you cut off all the people who got their drugs through them. Of course another dealer can take their place, but the effect is still real and far more disruptive than going after tree nodes. You are cutting off branches and the new dealer is like trying to reorganize those orphaned nodes. It's harder. The manufacturers are nodes much closer to the root and so have much greater disruption downstream. You're right that there are orphaned nodes, but it isn't uncommon for people to get off drugs after their supply runs dry. You've essentially forced them.

TLDR: focus on the choke points in a network.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-caf...

In the end this is more of a compromise that was still politically feasible. Depending on who governs in the future this will likely be either expanded or rolled back. Parts of this also depend on some EU regulations that might have to be changed for full legalization to be possible.

The EU regulation was the central obstacle. It does not allow for commercial legalization of Cannabis beyond small trial projects. Originally, commercial legalization was the core of the German proposal, but it had to be revamped to only private and non-profit legalization because of legal concerns connected with EU law.

I am not a legal expert but I read that the case of the Netherlands proves this to be at least partially wrong. Retail sale is legal. Some municipalities have legalized supply chains.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-11/the-nethe...

Likely true, and reminds me of an amusing and revealing story. There was a craft brewery that started to become popular and had to hire a relatively large number of employees to run the operation. Word got out that nearly everyone who worked there used cannabis, so police got an investigator to spy by getting hired to work in the brewery. They repeatedly asked other employees if they could buy cannabis from them, but every time the employees responded by freely sharing cannabis.

Much cannabis culture is not strongly commercial. People grow and share. Maybe there is something in that which software developers could learn from.

Maybe a bit more GPL use would help here. :)

I mean even a small operation can grow more than one person can ever smoke in their lifetime in short order.

Any other commercial crop that we grow at scale is sold in the dollars per ton range. Outside of a few special cultivars there is no practical reason said drug is expensive and easily shareable for nearly free.

> People grow and share. Maybe there is something in that which software developers could learn from.

The main problem with most SW developers is that they never learn. That's why we have CADT, Windows 10 and 11, Android, Systemd, Wayland, UEFI etc.

And they'll probably tax the shit out of it #germany

The tax revenue from commerical sales was one of the big pro arguments before they had to cancel/deley those plans due to EU/international laws.

Ah great addition thank you for your comment. I love your name by the way. I wonder what EU/international laws prevent that

It's basically one of the UN treaties and Schengen ones that potentially clash, but that's debated as seen here https://eucrim.eu/articles/legalize-it-opportunities-and-cha...

Thanks

There is actually no tax on it (… in the current law)

(You obviously still need to manage VAT if your business exceeds 22'000€/50'000€ per year.)

So no tax except 19% VAT and about 30% corporate income tax...

no, it's not allowed to sell it commercially, so no VAT. You can only obtain it through clubs for a fee to cover the production cost.

Oh OK. So it's not fully legalised then...

Possession is not illegal anymore. My understanding is, that police now cannot use mere possession as a pretense for searches of your car or home. If true, this is great progress from a civil liberties perspective.

Don't forget about your phone. /s