If only it was a question of the Germans' right to be intoxicated;

or that the state should protect people from each other, but not necessarily from themselves, not from the fact that they are allowed to do what they want to their own bodies and souls, as long as they do not bother anyone else: then it would be against the Germans Little to criticize circumstances.

It is not allowed to smoke joints or eat hashish cookies, and it is forbidden to trade in cannabis, especially in large quantities.

But the laws are carried out rather casually by the authorities.

Claudius Seidl

Editor in the features section.

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It is true that one occasionally hears from Bavarian judges who impose the penalty on the owners of small quantities that have been caught for a year, using a hair test, to prove their abstinence. But these are the exceptions to a rule that says that cannabis use is generously tolerated, at least in major German cities. Everyone knows someone who knows where to get something without getting too deep into the criminal environment. Stressed employees sleep well and wake up without a hangover if they relax with a joint in the evening instead of a large whiskey. And if you tell your colleagues about it in the morning, there is no longer any threat of social ostracism.

You don't get the big dealers, you let the small ones run again straight away.

And when, three days after the election, the FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann and the Greens Claudia Roth conducted the first public explorations on Sandra Maischberger's broadcast and quickly came to the conclusion that they were in agreement on the legalization issue: there thought As a viewer, you realize that nothing, absolutely nothing, would happen to the two women today if they sat down with the camera switched off and let their political imagination run wild over a cup of tea and a piece of hashish cake.

Legalization because of the dangerousness?

All surveys show that around seven percent of German adults profess their own cannabis use. Unfortunately, it is also seven percent of teenagers - which raises society's question of whether it really wants to accept it, as collateral damage, so to speak, and as a price for liberal conditions. The basic assumption on which all legalization plans are based, namely, that cannabis is a so-called soft and comparatively harmless drug: this is perhaps true in adults who live in such stable circumstances that even a slightly higher dose cannot shake such a life. However, the drug is extremely dangerous for the young mind. If you are unlucky and take two too deep puffs, you may not regain consciousness until you are in psychiatry, with violent psychotic attacks,having persecution anxiety or panic attacks. Anyone who regularly smokes weed as a teenager is at risk of serious damage to their soul.