 Good evening, I'm Peter Szaroszy and you are watching Drug Reporter Cafe, our online talk show in which we discuss interesting new developments in drug policy reform. Today, we will speak about the historic decision of the new German government to end cannabis prohibition and create a system of legal distribution of cannabis. We have a guest today, Gerhard Wurth, the chairman of the German Cannabis Association, who will explain us the details. Hello, Gerhard. Hi. So, last time we interviewed you on Drug Reporter, it was 2016, and you said that you have been working for cannabis reform for like 20 years, and you expected that you should not wait another 20 years to see cannabis legalized, and now we can see that it is happening. So, how do you feel? Yeah, great. I hope that's happening. I have experienced now that it's not a certain point, a certain day when it's all finished. It's a very big milestone that we have it in this contract of the coalition of the new government. But we had it also in Luxembourg, for example, and after three years, they said, well, we won't legalize, we just decriminalize home grow, which is also fine. But that's an example that it's not safe now, and then it's the right point to make this party, even the Bundestag, our main parliament, made the decision, or is it the right time when the second parliament of the areas, the local government, the federal parliament, also says yes to the new law, or is it when the president signed it? I don't know. So there is no certain day to make the big party. But still, it's great to be at this point now. And it's, for example, it's the first time since 25 years now that the government is not the problem and not the enemy we have to fight against. But the possible solution we have to work with that makes a completely different kind of working. And also the details we are facing now. That was my last date today with my team to discuss certain details, what is important for us in the coming discussions, what are the most important issues we want to bring into this discussion, and what is, well, also something we have to say something about, but it's not so important. You lose yourself in details at that point, which is also good. We are close to the goal. Yeah. Before going into the details of the new cannabis law or bill or whatever you will have, let's speak a bit about the current situation and what was the process that was leading to this day or to this reform. So as far as I know, you had initiatives to legalize cannabis before in the city level. Can you talk about those local initiatives? All right. Yes, that's something we have in Germany, but also in some neighboring countries. It's like building up pressure from the lower levels if the federal parliament is not ready for it. We have that in Switzerland with these model projects and several cities now on the way to be starting next year. We have the project in the Netherlands and some cities to produce for the coffee shops first time legally. And in Denmark, Copenhagen also already made four attempts to make such a project, a scientific project to give out cannabis legally and make research how it works and if it's good against the gangsters there. And Switzerland needed some time to get the permission from the government. They were faster than we were. No German city got this permission, but there were several attempts and tries. And in Denmark, four times no letting it through from the government. It's all pressure from below, like in the United States where one state after the other legalized cannabis, but not on the federal level. So that was the first movement to get majorities in parliaments. And when you started, you probably also a long, long ago, you started the fight. There was no majority in the parliament on the horizon. We were probably end of the 90s, 10% of the population for legalization. The Green Party was in the boat already that time. 2005, the Left Party came in, and I mean, 2018, it was the Liberals. And the Social Democrats had a very long way to the point to say, let's decriminalize people just a little fine, like a parking for small amounts and make more projects. So we had three and a half big parties in the parliament now and already a majority to decriminalize and to make these model projects. It was only the Christian Democrats who stopped the whole game, the whole show because they were in the coalition with the Social Democrats and could force them not to vote with the opposition. And that's why nothing happened already. And maybe that's also the reason why now we make a big step and not some small steps before. So I suppose that the country itself, because it's a big country with kind of like a divided political landscape. You have the Eastern Bundeslands, which are more socially conservative or the Southern Bayern. So do you expect some resistance from these more conservative parts of Germany when it will come to the effective debates and legalization of cannabis in the parliament? Yes, I do. I always started. Many of those conservative politicians from the area's presidents of Bundesländer already said, well, this is all a big failure and a threat and a risk for young people and so on, the usual stuff they tell all the time. But now they are not in power anymore on the federal level. But still, they are in the majority of the regional governments. And so they can stop the whole, the complete legalization probably in our second parliament, which is a big problem. It's not really completely 100% that they can stop it. I'm not really 100% sure. I'm no lawyer or something. But it seems to be clear that full legalization has to be, has to get also majority in the second parliament. But decriminalization probably not. And that's the thing we should anyway do first, which goes much faster than discussing all the details of a full blown regulation. So this is not bad for the timing. They could do it in a half a year or something without the second chamber. Then discuss two years and maybe in that time we convince the conservatives or we get rid of them in the governments with the next local elections. So the new federal government is called the Traffic Lights Coalition with the liberals, the social democrats and the greens. And these parties usually don't agree in all kind of social and economic issues or they have lots of differences. So do we see that these parties have also different visions about how to reform drug laws and especially how to regulate cannabis? Yes, there are differences. The social democrats didn't want legalization at all on the first and they just wanted to check it out with little small projects. And for me, the most important difference is home grow. The greens wanted the liberals don't and social democrats don't also. So this is not in the contract. We have still to fight for it. Probably that it's not in shows us that they discussed about it and didn't get an agreement about it. Same for traffic problems or drug license problems. We have very harsh regulations with one nanogram THC per milliliter blood zero. To look to the zero is something special in Germany. The others look to full blood. However, it makes it even more restrictive and one nanogram is still very low anyway. And because cannabis goes down in a flat curve at the end and not like alcohol straight down. Many people have those one or two or three nanograms sometimes days after consumption still in their blood and so they lose driver's licenses. Although they haven't been driving under the influence. That's a big problem in Germany for many consumers. It's a bigger problem than the whole law punishing small amounts. And so this is still a big issue for us to fight for. There's also some smaller differences or how you decide yourself if it's small or not. The liberals, for example, want also to allow genetically modified cannabis on the market and the Greens don't. Of course, these kind of details is not in the contract. We don't know any details. They probably themselves don't know any details. It's just written down. You want to legalize cannabis and sell it in licensed shops for adults. That's everything there is up to now and no further comment on it by anybody in the new government. That also means no pharmacies. What was the big discussion before? Letting they do the job, then do the job. That's good. I don't think that's a good idea to let pharmacists sell recreational drugs. But it also doesn't say special shops like the American dispensaries. What is our model? We would prefer. So maybe they are selling it in supermarkets. I don't know if they have a license. That's some of the odd things we have to discuss now. We don't really know if there is any bill or text, like a new text or any draft law in circulation among the political parties. The Green Party made such a draft in 2015 and brought it into the parliament. It was denied, of course. They were in the opposition. And in the last legislature period or how it's called, they put it again on the table and were unsuccessful. But it is the most detailed concept we have in Germany by far. It's about 70 pages and concrete paragraphs of laws, of several laws, tobacco tax law and driver's license law and drug law and lots of things and very, very many details. So that's a good blueprint to start with. Canada also watched it and made some very similar regulations. So our Green Party is a little bit like a mother of Canadian legalization details. But still, they won't just take that concept and hammer it through the parliament. They will start discussing it the whole thing over and over, I fear, or maybe it's necessary and it will take a while. I think it's two years or something, time to discuss. Like in the States, when the polls or when the people made this decision in these, how is it called, people's decision-making poll thing, then decriminalization goes fast immediately, more or less. People can carry something around and grow something, but the shops take two years around that more or less. And I think it's the same in Germany. The video you are watching now is produced by the Rights Reporter Foundation, a non-profit organization which is not supported by any governments or political parties. If you like this show, please support our work on our website, thedrugreporter.net. Make a donation today and become our supporting member. It makes a difference. Thank you. Are the civil society organizations involved in any way in these discussions, such as your association, so do you have a dialogue with political parties? I'm sure that will come, but it didn't start already. Last week, they installed a new government and voted for Mr. Scholz as our new chancellor. And then he said, well, here are my ministers and the rest of the year will be corona and Christmas. And then in January, we will see what happens. For example, we don't have a drug store on the federal level in the government and also the fractions of the parties in the parliament didn't decide for their drug policy speakers already. It all has to happen now and then they will start to discuss the details. You mentioned the Canadian legislation and that it is quite similar to the one proposed by the Greens back in 2015. But the Canadian model was also criticized a lot because the criticism said that it is too much over-regulating the market and it prefers the big companies over the small producers. So what do you think about those criticisms? And here, yeah, in all the details I was talking about, they are good parts of the law and they are bad parts. And the bad parts are not from the German Greens. For example, that advertisement is allowed. I'm not really sure if it is in Canada, do you know? In America, the States, there is an easy allowed and it's very commercial and millions of dollars spent for advertisement and I think that's a good idea. It's also no good idea for alcohol and tobacco and also not for any drug. And also the provinces in Canada had very much influence on how to deal with the issue. Many of them didn't have one single shop in the first one or two years and just allowed online selling of cannabis. And that's something we won't have here. It will be the same all over Germany. And that made the fact that it took a long time to push back the black market and they needed two and a half years or something after the first shops opened to have more than half of the market away from the black market and in regulated structures. Which still is a big success. In Germany, many of our enemies said that's a bad system and there is still a black market. That was no solution. But then I say every single percent away from the black market into regulation systems is good percent. And it's better than before. And so more than half and two and a half years, I think that's still not bad. Of course, it's not going in one day like you turn out the light on and off. There are thousands of people selling cannabis making billions of dollars or euros in our country. Hundreds of tons of cannabis products on the market and they don't throw this all away. On the first day, legalization is in charge and the shops open. So which is very important is the level of taxes on cannabis. If it's too high, it's too expensive. The black market will still be there. If the price is OK, maybe even a little bit more than on the black market, but not too much, then people will love to accept that and prefer to go in a nice shop with a big variety of products and good people behind the bar who can tell the consumers something about several products. People who love that, I'm sure. I just read a report that said that there is an estimated like 4.6 million cannabis users in Germany and they consume like an estimated 500 tons of cannabis every year. And that's quite a big amount. So it will be a challenge to produce as much legal cannabis in Germany. So probably you will need some import cannabis from Canada or from other countries. How do you see that situation will be solved? That's something I'm telling journalists since many years. Don't forget the traditional countries producing cannabis when we come to the day to legalize. They have been forced by the Western industrialized countries, especially the United States, to forbid cannabis. On the whole world at the end was economical and military power, putting countries with legal sales on blacklists and don't support them anymore and so on. End of the 90s they had it done and the whole world was in the contracts to forbid a sample of diverse drugs and others not by whatever reason. And then it seemed like game over and now we see the whole system imploding. But we see also, especially those countries regulate first United States, that came from the whole problem and the whole prohibition and now they produce themselves and their own cannabis, make the money, get the money into the country and push off out the imports. In the States, it's from Mexico for example, or in Germany it would be Morocco mainly. And especially for the hush market, I must admit that changed a lot in Europe, but another issue. I think it's not a good idea now to only produce like an island every country on its own. But international trade would make necessary that there is an international law. Regulating this, I think it's not possible at the moment, or at least not legal, to sell recreational cannabis on an international level. As far as I know, even the United States, the single states are not allowed to trade between each other where it's legalized and so it's in the whole world and the traditional producers like Morocco and Nepal and Lebanon and so on don't have legal markets. I'm sure they will, if they are consumer land countries legalizing, they will follow and they will want to have a part of the cake and I would say give it to them. But until that point, we have to produce the whole amount ourselves. There is no other way up here and it's possible. I don't see a problem with this. You don't need hundreds of thousands of hectares to grow those amounts. So you already mentioned the international dimensions of this reform. And some people are now saying that maybe we would need a new international treaty on cannabis regulation replacing the single convention and the other UN conventions on narcotic drugs. So do you think that that can be possible after now that even more European countries are taking the lead in cannabis legalization? Good point. When I said before international trade is not possible, well also legalization in one single country is not possible in theory because it's a violation of these international treaties where our countries are part of. So is it more successful to try to change those contracts? I don't think so when I saw the last 20 years and attempts and tries to do that all the time and it takes five years until one proposal is discussed to the end and then it's just a very little outcome. We need it more than 20 years now to let the UN accept the medical possibilities of cannabis that was the decision from last year somewhere and I don't see on that speed so the United States have seen them taking cannabis out of the contracts in the next 20 years. So it seems to be more probably that those contracts will lose any meaning. Like for Canada they made it they showed us how it goes just ignored and that's it. The formal correct way we saw in Bolivia for coca leaves also thousands of years of tradition using it and they left the contracts and went in again with one single outtake or something I would call it and that's possible that's legally correct. And they said well we accept all the regulations but not for coca leaves and we come back into the contract. That's another possibility to to deal with the problem but we will get it done I think if Uruguay can do it well Germany should also. Yeah there is this long debate on whether it is a good idea to ignore international drug treaties because then you know some countries can just decide to ignore human rights treaties as well. And to make more treaties and so on right yeah it's a problem but on the other hand what should you do? Yeah but probably now that more countries more and more countries are deciding to reform their drug laws which is kind of outside of the already outside of the UN treaties because even if you say you know it's like okay it's a scientific experimentation which can somehow fit into the system but everybody knows that it is actually a violation of the treaties so maybe these countries can come together and do what you say what Bolivia said for example that resign the treaties in regard of cannabis and create one other treaty within these countries on regulatory rights. So I would prefer to take the Bolivian correct way instead of the Canadian we don't care way because well I also see that international treaties are important as a whole but if it's not possible to reform them in a time horizon that makes any sense then we must do it other on another way. So good luck for the United Nations to show some more uh flexibility. So finally I would like to ask you about about the future steps like what can we expect now is there any timeline we can see for the government or when can we expect any concrete proposal appearing? First of all don't be sure that anything happens until it happens. There are some threats that can destroy the whole plan like we've seen in Luxembourg it could for example it could be that this new coalition just takes for one year or something and then they have a big fight and discussion and whatever and the whole thing explodes and we have new elections like in Italy I don't know every year something in average could also be the new reality for Germany it's the first three-party government since the 50s or something until then it was also only two-party governments which is more stable at the end. So this is a problem we have those conservatives in the area governments who could stop the show at least for the full legalization so we'll see and my bet is for the timetable fast decriminalization next year and regulation law if it's good end of 23 and shops opening I hope before the end of the election term in four years that would be I hope that's not later because then the government again could turn it all backwards. Okay thank you I hope that when we will speak next time we will already have the opportunity of speaking about the about the system how it will look like in reality and how the retail shops will be organized and things like that so thank you thank you Gawork so much for being with us today and I wish you luck with your work. Thank you and good luck for the rest of the world to get there too. Bye bye.