There is certainly something to be said about German cannabis reform that the rest of the world—and in particular, the U.S.—can learn from. The issue may have dragged excruciatingly slowly forward since 2017, but now that they have decided to actually do it, the government is moving forward quite fast to implement a new policy.

Last week, the government announced that ten new federal positions would be funded to oversee the new market. Two will be at BfArM, the medicines and medical devices agency where the current Cannabis Agency is located, and eight more will be directly under the Ministry of Health. The distinction is one of bureaucratic semantics as BfArM is an independent agency under the rubric of the health ministry. Yet this is Germany, land of bureaucratic hair splitting.

Yesterday, the Health Ministry also announced that it would start the first of five hearings today with the process lasting for the duration of June. More than 200 people are expected to take part—drawn from medical, legal, and business verticals, along with government officials and “international experts.”

The Ministry was told in a typically German and blunt fashion by the Bundestag budget committee last month that it was tasked with introduction of a bill that would be passable by the end of the year—or they would lose a million euros allocated for their PR budget.

The Impact of German Recreational Reform in Europe

While nothing is ever definite except death and taxes, it is highly likely that German recreational reform will pass by the end of this year. When the actual market starts is another question. Like Canada, or on a state level, Colorado and Washington State, sales could be delayed until the start of 2024. 

There are also other critical elements of legalization to be decided, such as decriminalization. Sales will be a large topic and range from how brick and mortar dispensaries will be set up to the ever-thorny issue of online sales. Clearing both previous convictions as well as pending legal cases is also a priority. There are about 200 criminal cases pending against legitimate CBD businesses, and over 185,000 against individuals, mostly for non-violent and personal cultivation and possession.

Beyond domestic impact—which also includes the creation of a regulatory structure for commercial cultivation, processing, packaging, and distribution beyond sales—there is another issue now front and center in this discussion and impacts the conversation across Europe. Namely where the richest country in the E.U. will source its recreational product—particularly until domestic cultivation is harvested. No matter how much new cultivation is initiated by all three medical bid winners, they will not be able to produce enough to supply the domestic market (nor should they be allowed to try). This also seems to indicate that feeder markets, including those cultivators now sourcing medical grade flower from countries including Portugal and Greece, are primed to step into the breach.

This in turn is also likely to drive further reform in most, if not all, other E.U. countries—especially those now on the brink of reform anyway. Portugal and Luxembourg have already announced progress on recreational reform since Germany announced an expedited schedule this spring. They are unlikely to be the only countries in Europe who will act. This is a valuable export crop not only for developing world countries, but many in Europe as well. Spain is one of them.

What Will Be the International Impact?

Beyond the immediate states of Europe, the impact of Germany going full Monty recreational will be massive. Its population is twice the size of Canada.

Apart from the domestic market and the inevitable topic of exports, it is also inevitable that political reform here will drive the issue in other places—starting with the U.S. (at minimum). 

If the Germans can do it, and within five years of federal reform of the medical kind (which also has not happened yet in the U.S.), there is little to hold this conversation back anywhere else.

What this also may well presage is further talks at the UN level, where reform has been punted for several years now. Removing cannabis from a Schedule I drug is now closer than it has been since before international prohibition which began to be implemented globally after WWI.

Quite ironically, the country which lost both of the global conflicts of the last century may well go down in history as the revolutionary force on the winning as well as the right side of history when it comes to cannabis.

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A Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare panel met on May 25 to begin discussions regarding lifting the ban on medical cannabis to benefit patients who suffer from refractory epilepsy.

As reported by The Asahi Shimbun, the ministry may revise the current law sometime this summer. Japanese law currently prohibits any possession or cultivation of any part of cannabis, including “the spikes, leaves, roots and ungrown stalk of the cannabis plant.”

The Asahi Shimbun references that of the “Group of Seven,” or the seven countries with the most advanced economies, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Of these, Japan currently has one of the strictest approaches to cannabis regulation and prohibition. In August 2021, the Japanese ministry wrote a report that recommended that the government should consider following the example of other countries to allow patients to use medical cannabis.

While the ministry is discussing the addition of a provision to the Cannabis Control Law that would exclude medical cannabis consumption from becoming grounds for punishment, the agency also seeks to further criminalize recreational use.

Although cannabis is illegal, there are some Japanese cannabis cultivators who are licensed to produce hemp to create shimenawa, a specific rope that is commonly used at shrines. There are no punishments for these cultivators, for fear that the production of the ropes may include “unintentionally inhaling substances of marijuana.” However, this assumption was disproven when no farmers’s urine tests came back positive for cannabis in a survey conducted in 2019.

The Asahi Shimbun writes that some experts believe the law should provide treatment options for “those addicted to marijuana to prevent repeat offenses,” which mainly includes Japanese youth.

In December 2021, Japanese gaming company Capcom allowed the use of its Ace Attorney character to curb cannabis consumption in the nation’s youth, in conjunction with the Osaka Prefectural Police (OPP). Previously, Capcom has assisted the OPP with other crime prevention campaigns. “Capcom hopes to support crime prevention activities in Osaka and all of Japan through this program, which will see the production of 6,000 original posters, as well as 4,000 original flyers that will be included with individually wrapped face masks,” the company said in a press release.

Japan has long prohibited cannabis under the Cannabis Control Law that originally went into effect in 1948. Historically, cannabis had its place in Japanese culture and religion, but from the 1950s onward, Japanese law on cannabis mirrored that of the United State’s approach to prohibition. The Japanese hemp industry was still permitted to operate, but due to expensive cultivation licenses and a decline in demand for hemp goods, few farms remain.

While the government perspective is beginning to shift, it is still clear that Japan needs more progress before it can fully embrace cannabis legalization. In 1980, former Beatles band member Paul McCartney visited Japan with less than eight ounces in his possession, which netted him an 11-year ban from returning. In February 2022, a U.S. Marine received two years of hard labor for mail-ordering “a half-gallon of weed-infused liquid and the quarter-pound of cannabis” from an unnamed individual in Nevada. On May 17, a school nurse was imprisoned for allegedly possessing “an unspecified amount of dried cannabis in two jars and a plastic bag.”

Even when Canada legalized cannabis in 2018, the Japanese government made a statement reminding Japanese nationals living broad that cannabis is illegal to consume even if they live in a country where it’s legal.

According to Kyodo News, the National Police Agency release data that there were 5,482 people who were caught in violation of Japan’s cannabis law (4,537 for possession, 273 for illegal sales, and 230 for illegal cultivation).

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While it may sound “old hat” to cannabis industry experts in North America, the government of Argentina has just made a bold move that will allow patients to access medical cannabis in a way not seen in most reforming jurisdictions elsewhere. Namely, the Argentine Ministry of Health has authorized specially licensed and permitted nonprofits to grow cannabis for medical patients.

Each NGO will be allowed to provide cannabis to up to 150 people, cultivate both in and outdoors and register multiple properties for the purpose of the same. Patients will also have to participate in a special registry called the Registry of the Cannabis Program (REPROCANN). Nonprofits who register more than 150 patients will also be allowed to request authorization for the extension of these patient counts to the National Program for the study and research of medicinal cannabis.

Resolution 673 modifies an Argentinian resolution passed in March of last year which established and regulated the operation of the REPROCANN program and created the basic parameters of controlled cultivation for medical users. 

The Details

Each nonprofit may cultivate up to nine plants per patient and will be allowed up to 6m² for indoor cultivation and up to 15m² for outdoor cultivation for this purpose. When transported by vehicle, up to six bottles of 30ml of cannabis extract or up to 40 grams of dried flowers will be allowed by authorized persons.

The program has been set up to simplify the guaranteed access to treatments for medical cannabis users and allow third parties to provide the same for registered patients.

Cannabis Reform in Argentina

Cannabis has been decriminalized in Argentina for personal use since the Supreme Court ruled on the same in 2009 and further decided that personal use was a constitutional right. Public consumption is generally tolerated. Consumption for medical purposes had not been regulated until now. Cultivation, selling and transporting cannabis however, remained illegal.

In March 2017, the Argentine Senate approved the medical use of CBD oil. In late November 2020, President Alberto Fernandez signed a decree allowing the self-cultivation of cannabis and subsidized medical access.

What Argentina is Getting Right

While hardly the most prominent cannabis reform program globally, it appears that the Argentine government is taking a page out of other reform programs that have been implemented elsewhere—as well as what has not worked.

For example, in both the US and Canada, patient collectives similar to those in Argentina became the basis of the legalizing commercial industry. However, in places like Holland, certainly until the formal national cultivation trial kicks in next year, and currently in Spain, the growth and cultivation of crops for coffeeshops and clubs remains largely unregulated. Transport between the cultivation site and the consumption and sales location remains a hazardous affair as the entire process is still in a gray area.

Beyond this, the idea of formalizing patient collectives has not caught on in places like Europe. At present, only Switzerland has plans to implement cannabis clubs that are federally regulated—although the first dispensation of the same will still occur in pharmacies.

The entire discussion of patient collectives and nonprofits is completely off the table in Germany, now in the process of establishing guidelines for recreational use (and unbelievably delaying the decriminalization process). Patients are still largely left to fend for themselves in a maze of bureaucratic red tape that starts with the reluctance of doctors to prescribe cannabis extracts and medicines (and even more so cannabis flower) and the repeated stymieing of these requests by insurance companies and the state-run regulator which makes the final approvals. 

When they do not get this, many patients (who do not suddenly stop being sick) turn to the black market, which is dangerous for patients on both the quality side and of course, facing criminal sanctions if they are caught with more than about five to 15 grams of weed (depending on where they are caught).

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