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Photo: Matt Masin/dpa
Concern within the traffic light coalition that the cannabis law will fail is growing.
The Federal Drug Commissioner Burkhard Blienert (SPD) asks the state prime ministers not to slow down cannabis legalization in a letter that SPIEGEL has seen.
The current cannabis policy has failed to achieve its goals and has led to an increase in consumption and an expansion of the black market.
The legal effort that the states cited as a reason for a necessary delay in the law was not as great as they thought, writes Blienert.
The states complain that the amnesty provided for in the law for cases that are supposed to be legal in the future could overload the courts.
They do not want the law to come into force on April 1st as planned and are probably planning to appeal to the mediation committee between the Bundestag and the Bundesrat to postpone this date.
Blienert replies that in 2023 almost 15 percent of all prisoners were in custody for violating the Narcotics Act.
A maximum of 7,500 procedures would have to be checked nationwide.
The effort doesn't seem small, but it is "quite affordable," writes Blienert.
However, the federal states also see an additional workload in thousands of other cases, such as fines and suspended sentences, which would have to be reviewed.
Most recently, the traffic light tried to convince the states' health, interior and justice ministers at a meeting not to call the mediation committee.
Your concern: If the mediation committee meets on the matter, the law could end up being delayed for so long that it ends up not coming at all.
Following the meeting, the Ministry of Health examined whether the amnesty regulation could be postponed via another law in the Bundestag.
However, it came to the conclusion that this was not possible.
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