German Opposition Leader Lobbies EU To Nix Country’s Cannabis Proposal
High Times

A leader of Germany’s main opposition party took aim at the country’s proposal to decriminalize marijuana on Wednesday, asking the European Union to step in and block the plan.  Klaus Holetschek, the health minister for a conservative-led state government in Germany, “met the EU’s director-general for migration and home affairs in Brussels on Wednesday to urge an EU veto,” according to the Associated Press. The proposal was offered up late last month by German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach. If it were implemented, the new law would “decriminalize the possession of up to 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of cannabis and to allow the sale of the substance to adults for recreational purposes in a controlled market,” the Associated Press reported.  As the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported in June, “legalizing and regulating the cannabis market was one of the progressive reforms promised by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government when his [Social Democratic Party of Germany] signed a coalition agreement with the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Green Party last year.” Lauterbach, a member of the Social Democratic Party, said in June that he had “always been opposed to cannabis legalization,” but that he revised his “position about a year ago.”  He stated “his desire to have a new set of cannabis laws to present to Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, in the second half of the year,” Deutsche Welle reported at the time.  But those plans hit a snag in September, when the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) expressed concern that the proposal they had prepared may not be approved by the European Union courts. “There is a degree of caution about promises of a breakthrough before the end of the year,” a German government official said at the time.…

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