Germany Will Move Forward with Marijuana Legalization
marijuanamoment.net
marijuanamoment.net
For non-locals: that's Görlitzer Park, Berlin, which has largely been owned (and rendered nearly useless) by the dealers for several years now (along with the neighboring streets, and a good chunk of the recreational land on the canal zone nearby).
Hence, rendering it basically useless as a "park".
Just ... standing there as if to intercept you when walking by.
Yes, they can make a bad and for some an intimidating appearance, and make others mad, but "making the park useless" is a gross exaggeration... how often are you there, and where you from? Just curious..
Most of these people are not as bad, and while this film sure tells a story, I'd suggest to watch the modern version of "Berlin Alexanderplatz" just to get another perspective.
> you can even walk safely through the park at darker times when you stick to the big ways
You have no idea how crazy that sounds for someone that isn't acclimatized to Berlin culture.
> dealers don't even annoy you usually
is not that strong an argument.
I too have experienced this
You can get hard drugs delivered to your door faster than a uber eats.
I've lived in many places in which drug dealers where sketchy as fuck, Berlin isn't one of these.
This thread is full of people with no first hand experience and projecting way too much
But by that, and the other indications you are providing - "some are intimidating, some not... you can even walk safely at night if you stick to the large paths" are what I mean by falling fall short of the standards of what one expects from nice, decent and inviting city park.
As for the kids and families there during the day - it's not like they have much choice.
Where you from?
Let's just say I've lived in plenty of places in Europe - not necessarily 24-hour party people destinations like Berlin, but definitely not backwaters either - where one didn't have to think twice about taking a walk in the park at night.
I also remember a Berlin from not too long ago when it was ugly and decrepit (if in a beautiful way), for sure - but where one didn't need to be on one's guard in so many places, as now.
Yeah, that's where I want to take my kids, where the "drug dealers don't annoy us if we're not interested"... you must have very high annoyance thresholds.
This isn't skidrow with dozens of people injecting drugs 24/7 in the middle of the streets lol
The dealers are plainly obnoxious - and vastly more numerous than any funk food vendors. I don't see how one can begin to make a comparison.
You just have a bunch of people saying "hey do you want something?" when you get in/out. There even is a petting zoo inside the park, it's far from a no man's land. In summer it's full of people sunbathing &c.
It's kind of an open secret that police allows them here so that they don't proliferate everywhere else. This open secret contract means they're also mostly harmless and police are patrolling around the park very often.
I live 500m away and ride by on a daily basis
Also, the group of potential weed buyers is pretty large and diverse, meaning they need to approach pretty much everyone. The group of potential buyers for harder party drugs is more easy to identify, hence you can stop asking everyone.
It's abundance leads to a very competitive market (in Ballungsgebieten), like in other markets substitution though home production is always looming.
For dealers in Berliner parks, there's also always competition with more reputable informal suppliers as well as medical trickle downs or substitutes.
This leads to the incentive for dealers to steer consumption towards products with higher margin (or an increase of margin through lesser quality product).
Weed is like the cover charge at the door. Cocaine, meth, fent, mdma, lsd, shrooms, etc. are the drinks served at the bar.
If this is anywhere near a correct understanding, legalizing weed would cause little/no reduction in the activity. It would lessen the potential consequences for dealing weed even further, while "drinks at the bar" continue being served.
We'd need to legalize and regulate all drugs, and do so without taxing it so much the black market continues to thrive via lower prices.
Legalising weed wont change the systemic social issues of Berlin
It's already more or less tolerated in Berlin for example
It'd be interesting to know if that coincided with a reduction in use of other, more destructive drugs such as alcohol.
"These data show no clear relationship between marijuana legalization and alcohol use. Alcohol use increased more than the national trend in Washington (1 percentage point more), Massachusetts (2.3 percentage points), California (1.9 percentage points), and Oregon (1.2 percentage points) but decreased in Colorado (–0.75 percentage points), Maine (–1.4 percentage points), Alaska (–1.1 percentage points), and Nevada (–1.8 percentage points)."
Interesting to see that the data doesn't reflect what I anecdotally have noticed among my friend group: a near-universal pivot from alcohol to cannabis for 50-80% of occasions. Some 100%. That said, my friend group's demographics probably play a part in this.
I'm pretty glad that Germany has decided to stop locking people in cages for a flower. It's due time we focus on other crimes against humanity.
I would be very curious to see if there's data on whether replacing prison with caning (for certain crimes) reduces recidivism.
Is public urination not a crime? One that gets you on a sex offender registry?
The person you're replying too is clearly just spreading FUD and probably has never partaken in their live - sad!
We know that just inhaling smoke from a wood fueled stove will increase lung cancer risk. What would be unique with Marijuana that makes their imperfectly burned plant particulates more safe than any other imperfectly burned plant matter?
The CDC view is also that all smoke from burning things is harmful to the lungs and can cause cancer, regardless of what is being burned. People with lung damage is strongly recommended to avoid getting into contact with smoke, including smoking Marijuana.
How can it not increase the chance of cancer (even if to a lesser degree) if you smoked as many joints as some people smoke cigarettes per day (of course you'd have other problems if you tried that)?
BUT we can probably agree it's a generally good thing to focus on bigger problems before smaller ones.
It seems whether or not marijuana causes cancer is an open question: https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana...
> Whether smoking marijuana causes lung cancer, as cigarette smoking does, remains an open question.67,70 Marijuana smoke contains carcinogenic combustion products, including about 50% more benzoprene and 75% more benzanthracene (and more phenols, vinyl chlorides, nitrosamines, reactive oxygen species) than cigarette smoke.67 Because of how it is typically smoked (deeper inhale, held for longer), marijuana smoking leads to four times the deposition of tar compared to cigarette smoking.71 However, while a few small, uncontrolled studies have suggested that heavy, regular marijuana smoking could increase risk for respiratory cancers, well-designed population studies have failed to find an increased risk of lung cancer associated with marijuana use
Meanwhile, alcohol kills 74,000 people each year in Germany https://movendi.ngo/news/2019/04/18/study-germany-has-an-alc... and costs the country 40,000,000 euro for healthcare costs.
Yet a cursory look at your comment and submission history finds nothing on the topic of this (compared to weed) HUGE killer in Germany. Maybe you're taking up the fight somewhere else, but I think, just like I'm not going to finish this comment and get right back to work, you probably are laser-focusing on this objectively minor health issue (weed usage) for whatever reason, perhaps reefer-madness propaganda? I'm not sure, I'm curious why you think it's an issue compared to something like alcohol, that actually kills lots of people in Germany (I couldn't find any statistics tracking how many people are killed each year in relation to weed in Germany, but my understanding of the drug is that the number should be 0 in terms of actual overdose).
That being said Europe smokes a lot of weed already, making it legal will help with a lot of side effects of drug traffics. I just hope they use proper pedagogy and support: for well balanced, educated and healthy individuals it's a really good tool, for other people it can be a social/professional death sentence (like alcohol)
> Not to mention it causes streets to smell like a skunk
I'm not sure they'll make it legal to smoke outdoors. In many countries alcohol is legal but drinking in the streets isn't for example.
There are a multitude of other methods of consuming cannabis.
If Germany was only planning to legalize edibles, oils etc. it would be a different matter.
Not that I care that much about the smell. And increased cancer risk shouldn't be that high either unless you start smoking weed every day.
so far, it is nothing but a dream, however we own a pretty decent plot of land where you can't build anything because it is in a water protection zone. great soil, though.
I think a "Farm to Jar" setup would be neater, almost like visiting a brewery that does free tours of the grounds. Tour and a tasting room followed by visits to the shop to buy your favorites.
Canna-croissant with hemp seeds on the surface, yummy.
The trouble with sativa is that a succesful farming operation requires 40 tonnes of fertilizer per hectare and it will bleed the soil dry of nutrients fast. It makes it an interesting proposition for the Dutch agri tech sector, which will grow it tulip style like they do now with flowers and those great looking vegetables that don't have any taste and are pumped with ferts.
There are weed shops everywhere, like fast food places, and the clientele is pretty similar to Burger King.
Is there room for high-end product? Sure. But by and large it feels like a commodity play. There might as well be a weed section next to the beer section in the gas station store.
The only positive side to this is being able to grow your own stuff without being annoyed by the police. They've got better things to do anyway, like fighting organized crime.
I have a guide on how to buy weed in Berlin. A big chunk of it warns readers about how sketchy and dangerous it is if you don’t have a trusted contact. Weed is frequently contaminated with really nasty chemicals.
A Canadian or American reader might not appreciate how different the environment is from their pre-legalisation days. The weed you buy is genuinely dangerous.
Buying from the streets is a tourist thing
Call me when you can buy it from a store that sources it from vetted growers.