It's a big step and still a compromise. Let's see how this whole non-commercial approach works out. I know some people who don't want to get into growing and don't want to join a club.
Exactly, this is what I don't buy in the "black market will get extremely unattractive" argument. The status quo is to buy illegally (but with very low risk for the buyer, and usually excellent anonymity) from established dealers, often people with a lot of knowledge in growing/processing. The new legal approach would be to either grow yourself, or join a club [0]. I don't consume cannabis, but if I would have to choose between joining a state-registered alcohol club, brewing my own beer, growing my own grapes, or just buying a bottle of wine illegally now and then from someone who has expertise in making it (and with nearly all risk on the seller side), I would definitely opt for the latter.
The big advantage is that you can be sure that the cannabis you are buying is actually of a good quality. Especially in Baden-Württemberg (cannot find the source anymore), more cannabis that has been confiscated by the police was impure than pure. And you never know whether you get indica, sativa, 10% THC, 25% THC, CBD that is spiked with HHC, just CBD, or cannabis that is spiked with something else. If you find a good dealer that you can trust has good quality weed, than that is fine. But I have been buying from a lot of different dealers over the past few years (not random people on the street, people I know through other people), and the quality is always all over the place.
I never want to buy from any black-market dealer ever again, once these cannabis clubs are up and running.
This. Buying weed in Berlin is nothing like buying in pre-legalization North America. If you buy without a solid connection, you will more often than not get a laced product. It took me a few years to get a reliable supplier and people frequently reach out to me on Reddit because I brought it up years ago.
> Also growing it is super easy. If you can grow tomatoes then you are already overqualified.
That's a little overstated. It's easy to grow very low quality weed. Growing something capable of being on a shelf to be sold is very much a skill that takes time, even for someone with a green thumb; the girls get too stressed very easily, and attract pests like you wouldn't believe.
Pretty sure tomatoes attract more pests. Also people grow these in the forest on small sunny patches and they do just fine. It's literally a "weed", it grows like crazy. But yes, it won't be premium quality, just some average weed.
No, it's extremely easy to grow high quality weed too. It cannot be overstated how easy of a crop it is. The (mildly) difficult and labor-intensive part is the post-processing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39482755
B) I was a small grower who worked contributed a small bit to the regulatory infrastructure for Colorado's legalization and communicated with many growers of many crop sizes.
It's not extremely easy.
Additionally trimming isn't difficult in that it takes skill, it's difficult in that it's a lot of mind numbing work. Consistently growing is difficult as a skill.
The whole discussion kind of reminds me of the beer brewing industry, where techies think because they had a couple garage brews that went well (and don't consider the ones that didn't), they think they are a replacement for a brewery. And weed is even worse; you're looking at an hour a day for a small batch, and you can't miss a day. And the girls are way worse at telling you what went wrong, whereas you can generally tell exactly what went wrong with beer from the off flavors.
Stress is good for canabis plant, however, I agree with you that growing quality pest free weed requires daily attention.
I have grown extremely strong weed before the Canadian legalization and the method I used to maximize thc production consists of constantly stressing the plant. It was a combination of topping¹, super-cropping² and stem splitting³.
1- During the vegetative phase cut the top of the plant, wait a few weeks and repeat.
It really just depends on your seeds. Yes there is fancy shit you can do, but good seeds + light + water is literally all you need to grow perfectly fine weed.
The trickier stuff is in curing it, but even that is pretty straightforward.
That may be true, but it is still much more convenient and anonymous to just give someone you trust some money, especially if you live in an apartment, or have small children. I would be extremely hesitant to grow cannabis on our balcony. I am 100% sure neither my landlord, nor my neighbors would approve.
> I would be extremely hesitant to grow cannabis on our balcony.
Why is that? Just buy a small body, auto flowering seed, some fresh soil and water it every couple days and wait. You won't have a gigantic harvest but that's basically all you have to do and you will have more weed than you know what to do with. When grown, cut it, hang it upside down and wait until it's dry.
Anonymity. My neighbors, my parents, my wife's parents, the parents of children that visit my child, everybody passing our balcony on the street, and essentially every visitor to our apartment would assume that we consume drugs regularly. This is something I could not have cared less about when I was in my early twenties and living in a building full of students. But it is not something you want to be associated with if you have children in kindergarten or school and if you have to face other parents or teachers from your neighborhood on a daily basis. If I would start to consume cannabis, I would prefer to do it in private.
Common misconception. You generally want to grow cannabis in a "grow box" of some kind, because you need decent control over the light the plant receives (there's distinct vegetative/flowering phases for cannabis plants). In that case your enclosed box can ventilate through a carbon filter, which by most reports (see the countless threads on r/microgrowery for example) cuts the odors down to nothing, even late in the flowering phase.
You can do it outside as well, but typically a box is the best with regulated lighting, temperature and humidity.
I’m not sure I believe the carbon filter reduces the smell to nothing, in my experience it still stinks while running through an internal AND external carbon filter.
The smoking also produces strong odors, which (as a neighbor) I do not approve of, so I'm not sure if adding the odors from growing and processing to that will make the situation much worse?
Many are switching to vaping these days, which produces far less odour, and what little there is dissipates quickly. Vapour also doesn't stick to fabrics, walls etc like smoke does - it's just superior to smoking in every way.
> [Vaping is] just superior to smoking in every way.
Is there higher risk of infection transmission? I'm sure those reports a few years ago of serious lung infections from tainted vape oils are biasing my thinking here, but it also makes some sense that a high-temperature flame on a dry medium wouldn't transmit nearly as many microorganisms as a lower temperature vaporization of a wet medium.
That usually came from some additive for the desired viscosity of the vaping liquid, leading to popcorn lungs. Only black market things, didn't happen to legally aqquired stuff where it was legal at the times.
If someone smokes a joint near your window, that smell will probably be gone in half an hour. If there is a plant that's just sitting there, it'll be more subtle, but it's not going anywhere.
That said – many people like the smell of Hopfentee (Hop tea), which is pretty similar.
Right, it does have a strong odor. But if you have a balcony then it's easy even in an apartment. Without a balcony it is a kinda difficult as you need some carbon filtering set up.
Weed can easily be adulterated (e.g. by spraying with synthetic cannabinoids), but generally it's trivial to find a supplier who doesn't do that. But also true of MDMA and ketamine.
> from established dealers, often people with a lot of knowledge in growing/processing
I don't know where you live but where I grew up in Germany this was, and still is, decidedly not the status quo. Folks I know literally "import" from hundreds of kilometers away because that's the next place where they could find someone who fits your description. The rest of the market is exactly as sketchy as I'd expect.
In some countries legal alcohol is expensive so they buy cheap stuff from “moonshiners” or whatever they’re called in those places, every once in a while you hear about poisonings affecting hundreds of people.
So, I don’t know. I probably would pay the state premium over the guy who doesn’t have great quality control.
What would be the reason for not wanting to join a club? Seems like a pretty OK solution between "it's totally illegal" and "the state store sells it", with some safe guards but still let non-profits organize the work and community.
FWIW, we have "social clubs" here in Spain, where it's neither illegal/legal on a national level, and it seems to be working out OK as far as I know.
Anonymity! Do you want to be a state registered drug user?
The clubs have to be registered and need a license. They need to keep a register of members. It is not in the law that they need to give this register to the authorities, but it is still a risk.
EDIT: I looked up the details. The clubs need to keep track of every sale, including data about the buyer. They have to report this to the authorities twice a year in anonymized form.
> The clubs have to be registered and need a license. They need to keep a register of members. It is not in the law that they need to give this register to the authorities, but it is still a risk.
I very much recall how long the promise of "Covid Guest Lists are not used by the police" lasted.
The anonymized form is only for the "automatic" reports without anyone asking. The authority can request — §26(2) — the data (= non-anonymized) at any point based on without any requirement for a specific reason.
That said, "the authority" is not necessarily the police or public prosecutor; the determination who does this is left to the federal state (who might make it the police/prosecutor, or not…) — presumably if they're not "the authority" themselves, they would have to ask "the authority" to forward it.
The law contains extensive book-keeping requirements for the clubs. Users don't want to be on a list. Especially with the CDU/CSU saying that they plan to re-criminalize if they win the next election. With the rise of the AfD and personal negative interactions with the state that these people had, I
can understand that they are cautious.
Also, these are not social clubs but growing clubs. You are not allowed to consume Cannabis in the club and 100 meters around it.
I just want to walk into a store, buy weed and walk out. Same as alcohol or cigarettes.
This being Germany, I expect to have to spend weeks joining the waiting lists of overbooked clubs, hoping that one of them has a free slot. Then more forms, sent by post because email is evil, then finally I can buy weed 3 months down the road.
If you live in Germany for a while, you learn that you never get anything without a fight here. It's always tedious.
This is actually a smaller step, as it needs to be approved by the Bundesrat before being effective. This could take month and it’s not guaranteed to pass.
"Nach der Zustimmung des Bundestags kommt das Gesetz am 22. März abschließend in den Bundesrat. Zustimmungsbedürftig ist es dort nicht, die Länderkammer kann aber den Vermittlungsausschuss anrufen und die Legalisierung so verzögern."
Do you think these 180 000 people will be able or willing to join a club? With a mandatory membership fee and legally mandated minimum membership period of three months?
As these clubs are not allowed to hire people and are also forbidden to allow non-members to act on club duties, a membership will mean some work too. How many of the 180 000 are willing to put in that effort.
> "die kontrollierte Weitergabe von Cannabis durch Anbauvereinigungen"
This does not sound like you have to "join a club", you just have to buy directly from a club.
(… reading actual text now to check …)
Nope, nevermind… §1 Abs. 13:
"Anbauvereinigungen: […] deren Zweck der gemeinschaftliche nichtgewerbliche Eigenanbau und die Weitergabe von Cannabis zum Eigenkonsum durch und an Mitglieder sowie die Weitergabe von Vermehrungsmaterial ist."
⇒ you either have to grow it yourself or be a member of an association that grows it; can't buy directly from a club if you're not a member.
In Spain this amounts to paying 10EUR to join a club then you can buy at your leisure. Seems like a fairly low barrier.
The data maintenance stuff is a bit more concerning, but I imagine once cannabis is embedded in the country the reporting will disappear in a round of cuts to gov spending
The German law tries to prevent this several ways:
- charging individually for sales is prohibited by §25(2) and §24; the only allowed thing is to have consumption-dependent but standardized ("Pauschale") membership costs. (This is, honestly, worded a bit weird and might need a lawyer to interpret "properly".) [Edit: this got changed in the final version — and is now more restrictive, only membership fees are allowed.]
- you are only permitted to be a member of one association, §16(2)
- associations are only permitted to have 500 members, §16(2)
- there is a minimum membership duration of 3 months, §16(5)
The biggest hurdle for clubs will be that they need dedicated property that fulfills the necessary security requirements. Running a club partly or wholly from a private residence is explicitly forbidden.
The German clubs are not allowed to sell or gift. Members pay a membership fee and are in return allowed to share the crop of their three allowed plants with other members.
This is basically how it works in Spain as well, you don't use the words "buy" or "sell", but you contribute financially to the club treasury and you may withdraw that deposit in suitable amount of weed. You don't hand over cash to the person behind the counter, as an example.
You're not there to "purchase", but the effect is the same.
