“We need more control”
CSU wants to measure cannabis consumption in wastewater
March 11, 2024, 4:40 a.m
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How much is weed smoked in Germany? After cannabis legalization, the CSU would like to answer this question with nationwide monitoring of wastewater. At the same time, the party also wants to take action against the law in various ways.
The CSU is calling for nationwide wastewater monitoring in order to monitor cannabis consumption behavior after the planned legalization. “We need more control so that Germany doesn’t become Europe’s stoner nation,” said the CSU parliamentary group leader in the Bavarian state parliament, Klaus Holetschek, to the editorial network Germany (RND). In the past, increased drug consumption in European cities has been demonstrated via wastewater. The wastewater monitoring instrument is also very well developed in Germany and became established during the corona pandemic, the former Bavarian Minister of Health continued.
The aim is to find out how consumer behavior changes after legalization. According to the law passed by the Bundestag, possession and cultivation of the drug will become legal for adults for their own consumption from April 1st with numerous requirements. However, permission to grow and consume cannabis is “wrong and dangerous,” said Holetschek. “Early emotional and psychotic illnesses will increase. The brain matures by the age of 25, and those who consume cannabis risk permanent damage.”
Countries criticize legalization on April 1st
After the legislative resolution in the Bundestag, the CSU had already announced resistance to the amendment to the Narcotics Act. “We on the part of the Free State of Bavaria will take part in everything that makes this law invalid or delayed or made later or different,” said party leader Markus Söder.
“We examine all complaints, from the requirement for consent to general damage. And I can already say today that we will apply this law extremely restrictively.” Many important questions remain unanswered – such as who controls whether the zones around schools and kindergartens where consumption is not permitted are adhered to. It is also doubtful how the many ongoing legal proceedings should be dealt with. “Should they just be painted?”
Other federal states also want to prevent cannabis legalization from coming into force on April 1st and postpone it by six months. The North Rhine-Westphalia State Justice Minister Benjamin Lambach from the Greens recently told the digital media company Table.Media that the time of five weeks between the adoption and entry into force of the law was “not nearly sufficient” for the public prosecutor’s offices and courts in North Rhine-Westphalia to comply with the regulations to implement the retroactive remission of sentences in a timely manner. In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, “in tens of thousands of cases it has to be examined whether penalties imposed should be remitted in whole or in part,” explained Limbach. He pointed out this problem early on, but Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach did not hear of it.