1. Privilege of youth
Why do people take drugs?
Is it curiosity, peer pressure, the desire for self-optimization, the search for happiness or a defiant reaction to Health Minister Karl Lauterbach?
He again warned of the dangers of cannabis consumption in a double interview with rapper Sido today: "If I start early, I run the great risk of permanently damaging the brain.
The regular consumer becomes duller and less creative.« (Here is the entire conversation.)
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Politician Lauterbach, musician Sido: "If he were a dealer, we wouldn't be sitting together"
Photo:
Nikita Teryoshin / DER SPIEGEL
It's a good thing that regular users will have to be less creative in the future to get their hands on the drug.
The Bundestag decided today to partially release cannabis.
The debate was unusually full for a Friday afternoon in Parliament.
Amid loud heckling, the MPs debated the bill, and there were disagreements in the traffic light faction until the end: several SPD MPs had spoken out against the bill.
What was decided in the end is not the large-scale legalization that the traffic light parties had actually planned at the beginning of the legislative period.
My colleague Milena Hassenkamp from our capital city office speaks of a solution that passed parliament "more German than planned, i.e. more bureaucratic" than necessary: the common stoner will be allowed to carry 25 grams with them in the future.
Have 50 grams a month - around 150 joints.
He has to grow the grass himself. At home or in so-called growing associations.
Delivery in shops will later be tested in model projects.
If everything goes right.
“That can’t be assumed,” comments Milena.
»You can legalize cannabis because you recognize that people in this society take drugs and cannabis is no more dangerous than alcohol.
You can make it as an election gift for young stoners.
But this legalization will not make anyone healthy.
And it won’t stop anyone from smoking weed.”
Milena has found an even simpler explanation for why people take drugs: forgetfulness of death.
One of the many privileges of youth.
Read the full comment here: Even if the brain breaks
2. Two fronts
These days are the second anniversary of Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a moment when Ukraine is on the defensive.
Shortly before the anniversary, Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny died in a prison camp.
The US announced today that it would impose new sanctions against Russia.
In New York and Washington as well as in the US states of Florida and Georgia, among other things, proceedings have been initiated against several oligarchs.
“Triumph of Violence” – The new SPIEGEL, here digitally and at kiosks from tomorrow
All of this will probably be of little use as long as Putin has the loyalty of large sections of the Russian population.
Why do most Russians accept the violence in their own country and the war?
My colleagues Christina Hebel, Ann-Dorit Boy and my colleague Benjamin Bidder investigated this question in the SPIEGEL cover story.
“This is how Vladimir Putin rules the Russians” is a story that almost makes you angry in many places.
Because the indifference described therein towards Navalny's fate seems so inhumane.
Vladimir Putin currently seems to have a very good chance of winning this war on two fronts.
Domestically in the suppression of all resistance.
And in Ukraine.
Photographer Johanna Maria Fritz and my colleague Christoph Reuter were there with Ukrainian soldiers.
“The men and women there feel abandoned on both sides,” says Christoph Reuter.
"From abroad, which supplies too little ammunition and weapons, and from that part of our own population that thinks the war is none of their business."
Read the whole story here: This is how Vladimir Putin rules the Russians
3. Secret double life
Interviews with football stars often have a high level of embarrassment.
Not so the conversation between my colleagues Rafael Buschmann and Gerhard Pfeil and national coach Julian Nagelsmann.
"We could live better together as a society if we didn't constantly complain about everything," he says, for example.
Footballer's German usually sounds different.
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National coach Julian Nagelsmann
Photo: Peter Rigaud / DER SPIEGEL
Nagelsmann not only speaks reflectively and unusually openly about his dismissal from FC Bayern Munich, the return of Toni Kroos to the national team and his expectations before the home European Championship ("The senior national team has been on the rocks in terms of sport for years. There was nothing there recently , which could nourish the hope that we will get to the semi-finals.") I was particularly touched by his memories of his own father.
Until now, the public knew nothing about his double life as an agent for the Federal Intelligence Service and his suicide.
“The father’s story had a decisive influence on the personality of the national coach and allowed him to grow up early,” says Raphael Buschmann.
Perhaps the great self-confidence of the national coach, who is only 36 years old, contributed to him getting into such powerful positions at such a young age.
“I don’t really know self-doubt,” says Nagelsmann.
And: »I once had my risk of burnout tested.
It's zero percent.
Apparently not that many people have that.
But I do pay attention to my rest periods.
I go to the mountains or ski.
I love football, but life isn't just football.«
Harald Schmidt once said about the recently deceased soccer world champion Andi Brehme that what impressed him was "that he didn't constantly let the intellectual out."
He probably won't say that about Nagelsmann after this conversation.
Here is the whole conversation: National coach Nagelsmann about his father in the secret service
What else is important today?
Netanyahu presents security cabinet plan for the period after the Gaza war:
Israel's army has been conducting its offensive against Hamas for four and a half months.
Now, for the first time, Prime Minister Netanyahu has formally presented the security cabinet with a key plan for the future of the Gaza Strip - with five specific goals.
Thousands of suspected cases of social fraud:
The federal government is having the nationality of more than 5,000 Ukrainian refugees checked.
You may have received benefits without authorization.
Lindner bans the gender star:
No more “civil servants” and “colleagues”: Because all kinds of special symbols for gender-appropriate language were used in documents from the Ministry of Finance, the staff wanted clarity.
Now everyone is disappearing.
Solar manufacturer Meyer Burger wants to stop module production in Germany:
Europe's solar industry is fighting against cheap competition from China.
So far the government has not been able to agree on a funding concept for the industry.
Solar manufacturer Meyer Burger therefore wants to relocate its production.
My favorite glosses today: Seen like this
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Hans-Georg Maaßen
Photo:
Jens Schlueter / AFP
On Fridays you can always find my colleague Stefan Kuzmany's column "Looking like this" here as part of the situation in the evening. Today Stefan writes about why Hans-Georg Maaßen is giving up the Values Union:
Surprising end to a secret operation: On Thursday, Hans-Georg Maaßen announced the dissolution of his just-founded ValuesUnion party.
"It's over," Maaßen said at a press conference in Chemnitz.
This was preceded by the departures of prominent values union members with connections to the “Reichsbürger” milieu.
This means that his actual goal can no longer be achieved, said Maaßen: "I only pushed forward with the founding of the party in order to permanently bind right-wing extremist threats and to let their energy waste away pointlessly." In fact, the former President for the Protection of the Constitution revealed, his commitment to the Values Union was was an undercover operation in which only he, former Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and former Chancellor Angela Merkel were privy to.
The Chancellor had "sent her best man into a politically explosive and personally very challenging assignment."
The top official and the two politicians staged a public rift that would ultimately result in Maaßen apparently drifting to the right-wing fringe and making him a credible figurehead of the extreme right.
For years he had to pretend and use “absurd statements” to gain the trust of the extremes.
As a private citizen, he was "rather liberal in his attitude"; it "torn him up inside."
That's why he couldn't continue to present himself as "completely crazy" and finally decided to end "Operation Stauffenberg."
Together with Merkel, Maaßen now wants to write a book about “this crazy time,” and a podcast is also planned.
But first he just wants one thing: “To finally talk to normal people again.”
You can find all episodes of »Seen this way« here.
What we recommend today at SPIEGEL+
The “Hoss & Hopf” method:
Excitement surrounding the “Hoss & Hopf” podcast: A crypto influencer in Dubai and a financial advisor from Stuttgart are spreading conspiracy myths and misinformation.
Millions are listening.
If there is criticism, the moderators suspect a campaign.
Stefan Weber's revenge:
He accused Annalena Baerbock and the deputy head of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" of having copied.
Apparently Stefan Weber is not only concerned with clean science, but also with personal revenge.
"A combination of state defense and embrace":
The young Bonn Republic was riddled with Nazis - but it was still possible to prevent a right-wing rallying movement at the time.
How did that work?
And what do we learn from this for dealing with the AfD?
"'Odysseus' has a new home":
Half a century after the last Apollo flights: the landing of a private space probe on the moon is a historic success.
Now there is a week until “Ulysses” falls silent forever in the icy moonlit night.
Which is less important today
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Photo: Stu Forster / Getty Images
Arrow news
:
Luke Littler
, 17, the English shooting star of darts, is apparently thinking about ending his career early.
In an interview with The Times, "The Nuke," as fans call him, said: "Maybe I'll play for another ten or fifteen years and retire when I've had enough."
Mini concave mirror
You can find the entire concave mirror here.
Cartoon of the day
And tonight?
It would be time for the big rush.
I mean the captivatingly written book by the Freiburg historian Helene Barop: “The Great Intoxication.
Why drugs are criminalized.
A global history from the 19th century to today«.
You learn amazing things: for example, that heroin used to be a cough syrup, cocaine was a local anesthetic, cannabis was smeared on the gums of teething babies and that cola contained cocaine, as did the Vin Mariani wine cocktail.
In the United States in the 19th century, Protestant fervor and racism combined to form a rejection of everything that dulls the senses.
Barop writes in her essay on the same topic: "The drug problem is an American invention - and an American export product."
Likewise, legalization is an American export product.
I lived in the US state of Colorado for two months in 2019.
There, in so-called "dispensaries" - a mixture of a personally serviced corner shop and a modern Apple store with a brightly lit product counter - everything except joints is offered: cannabis gummy bears, cannabis juice, cannabis waffles... lots of them Alternatives for people who don't like reading at the end of the day.
Have a nice weekend.
Yours sincerely
, Anna Clauß, Head of Opinion and Debate