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.
Also growing it is super easy. If you can grow tomatoes then you are already overqualified.
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.
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.
Visual guide: https://www.supergreenlab.com/guide/how-to-build-a-ikea-eket...
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.
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.
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.
It's not 1974 anymore.
The trickier stuff is in curing it, but even that is pretty straightforward.
I'm not saying it's not doable; I'm saying it's not "just like tomatoes" or "just grows itself, that's why the call it 'weed'".
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.
1- During the vegetative phase cut the top of the plant, wait a few weeks and repeat.
2- https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/blog-bigger-cannabis-yields-...
3- https://herbiesheadshop.com/blog/cannabis-stem-splitting-all...
That's why I said "too stressed". It's a fine line you want to straddle.
Well, some people just prefer to go to the supermarket..
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.
So, I don’t know. I probably would pay the state premium over the guy who doesn’t have great quality control.
I never want to buy from any black-market dealer ever again, once these cannabis clubs are up and running.
This might help.
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.
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.
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.
I very much recall how long the promise of "Covid Guest Lists are not used by the police" lasted.
Also, these are not social clubs but growing clubs. You are not allowed to consume Cannabis in the club and 100 meters around it.
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.
Apparently it doesn't.
"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."
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/bundestag-livestream-can...
They can't veto it, but they could delay it.
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.
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.
Free translation: non-commercial clubs can grow cannabis and hand it out in small amounts to registered members
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
You're not there to "purchase", but the effect is the same.
- 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)