German here. Very true, it's weird. But after all these years, it's a big step.

Social clubs work well in other countries, we'll get it working here too.

Also, I hope medical weed is easier to get prescribed now, it has very good infrastructure. As in, you see which pharmacy has which strain online in many cases, etc.

I for one hope that a few lawsuits and stuff will make this much less bureaucratic, but whatever.

This is a huge step in the right direction.

Another German here. Small “Vereine” are the backbone of our love for bureaucracy and order.

The goal is to stop locking up users.

Nobody cares if dealers get jailed.

I think it’s wonderful it didn't go the way of only allowing big-pharma and special pharmacies to distribute it, making big players pocket all the money.

I think self-growing is an excellent way of obtaining it. Social clubs to distribute is also great, let’s see just how much bureaucracy will be involved.

The fact it’s not a commercial legalisation is excellent – it means there are no agents with extreme financial interest hurrying to make a big buck from promoting it in dishonest ways, making it ubituqios, push it on kids etc. etc. etc.

I dont think big pharma would touch it, same reason cc's dont touch porn.

Big pharma sells weed in pharmacies, here in germany, right now.

"Big pharma is recognising medicinal marijuana's potential, with the global medicinal cannabis market estimated to reach nearly $24 billion". I think there are many countries where it is already touching it.

They almost certainly would. There's plenty of scummy ways to do business, my guess is they'd produce blister packs of gel capsules filled with THC oil at 480% markup and then fight tooth and nail to recriminalise all other methods of intake.

In a sense this already happened nearly 40 years ago, with a drug branded as ‘Marinol’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dronabinol

Big pharma already sells synthetic cannabinoids and direct delta-9 THC analogues and have for a couple decades, almost.

> This doesn't make a lot of sense.

I think it makes a lot of sense. It's a first step towards a broader legalization. Consumers of cannabis will be less stigmatized, which will lead to a more open, honest discussion. I believe the social clubs will work, and bureaucracy will improve over time.

That's the way it's been in a few parts of the US for a couple of years now and it works OK for the actual community. People who want to purchase it can do so with a little bit of digging to find out where to obtain it, but there's no stores, signs, or advertising making it obvious. Prices are lower and availability is higher than before it was legalized. Police pretty much don't make any effort to stop public consumption, which is still illegal.

This happened because of the inability of legislators to agree on how to implement a retail framework. They had enough agreement to legalize but can't agree on how much to tax it, how many stores to allow, how to decide who gets to run the stores, and whether or not large corporations should be allowed to participate. So for the time being the state loses out on tax revenue, but pretty much everyone is fine with the law being illogical because the users can use without fear, and the non-users don't see it.