Good. Time to finally put those dealers in Görli (largely) out of business.
For non-locals: that's Görlitzer Park, Berlin, which has largely been owned (and rendered nearly useless) by the dealers for several years now (along with the neighboring streets, and a good chunk of the recreational land on the canal zone nearby).
I find it hard to believe marijuana is the only substance dealers in a park serving an urban center with a penchant for clubs/night life like Berlin are peddling...
My impression is that weed is their main source of revenue. So legalizing it would make dealing A LOT less profitable.
Also, the group of potential weed buyers is pretty large and diverse, meaning they need to approach pretty much everyone. The group of potential buyers for harder party drugs is more easy to identify, hence you can stop asking everyone.
AIUI weed is generally the least consequential when busted for dealing, so it's the most visible entrypoint dealers openly broadcast on the street.
Weed is like the cover charge at the door. Cocaine, meth, fent, mdma, lsd, shrooms, etc. are the drinks served at the bar.
If this is anywhere near a correct understanding, legalizing weed would cause little/no reduction in the activity. It would lessen the potential consequences for dealing weed even further, while "drinks at the bar" continue being served.
We'd need to legalize and regulate all drugs, and do so without taxing it so much the black market continues to thrive via lower prices.
Non-legal Cannabis in Germany is a surprisingly low margin product; profit is made through volume, which increases risk exposure. So it's not amazing for dealers, despite the large demand.
It's abundance leads to a very competitive market (in Ballungsgebieten), like in other markets substitution though home production is always looming.
For dealers in Berliner parks, there's also always competition with more reputable informal suppliers as well as medical trickle downs or substitutes.
This leads to the incentive for dealers to steer consumption towards products with higher margin (or an increase of margin through lesser quality product).
Strange impressions you have and totally disagree. The park is vibrant and full of kids and families over the day.. dealers don't even annoy you usually if you signal strong non-interest or don't fall into typical buyer group.. you can even walk safely through the park at darker times when you stick to the big ways (though I mean to feel safe, I'd say you are almost safe everywhere as safe as you can be in a big german city in darker places everywhere... you are likely even safer there because enough people around vs other scary places)
Yes, they can make a bad and for some an intimidating appearance, and make others mad, but "making the park useless" is a gross exaggeration... how often are you there, and where you from? Just curious..
Most of these people are not as bad, and while this film sure tells a story, I'd suggest to watch the modern version of "Berlin Alexanderplatz" just to get another perspective.
"The park is vibrant and full of kids and families over the day.. dealers don't even annoy you usually if you signal strong non-interest or don't fall into typical buyer group."
Yeah, that's where I want to take my kids, where the "drug dealers don't annoy us if we're not interested"... you must have very high annoyance thresholds.
You are both right, in my opinion. It’s fine if you can get over the dealers on every corner. The park is full in the summer and children play there. The dealers behave well and won’t harm you, but there are dealers on every corner.
Yeah, I guess compared to the demimonde of 1920s Berlin one could say it's pretty tame.
But by that, and the other indications you are providing - "some are intimidating, some not... you can even walk safely at night if you stick to the large paths" are what I mean by falling fall short of the standards of what one expects from nice, decent and inviting city park.
As for the kids and families there during the day - it's not like they have much choice.
Where you from?
Let's just say I've lived in plenty of places in Europe - not necessarily 24-hour party people destinations like Berlin, but definitely not backwaters either - where one didn't have to think twice about taking a walk in the park at night.
I also remember a Berlin from not too long ago when it was ugly and decrepit (if in a beautiful way), for sure - but where one didn't need to be on one's guard in so many places, as now.
They haven't, the park is still very popular, with kids, cyclists, runners, &c.
You just have a bunch of people saying "hey do you want something?" when you get in/out. There even is a petting zoo inside the park, it's far from a no man's land. In summer it's full of people sunbathing &c.
It's kind of an open secret that police allows them here so that they don't proliferate everywhere else. This open secret contract means they're also mostly harmless and police are patrolling around the park very often.
Marijuana decriminalization amd legalization was billed in part based on the notion that it wasn’t going to change people’s behavior, just decriminalize existing activity. At least in DC, it’s led to a noticeable uptick in marijuana use. You can smell it in the streets in many parts of the city, including in office buildings. It’s sad to see Germany go down the same road.
This is interesting. I live in Baltimore where people have been smoking it in the streets illegally for decades. And I have never once smelled it in my house or my office. I smell more piss in DC than marijuana smoke.
I'm pretty glad that Germany has decided to stop locking people in cages for a flower. It's due time we focus on other crimes against humanity.
I'll take MJ smoke smell over piss or car exhaust any time, thank you. By the same logic we'd criminalize pissing in public places or ICE vehicle use. I think such a place already exists. It's called Singapore, though they don't criminalize ICE vehicle use either. They just make it very expensive.
Singapore is great. They still have a civilization building culture, like Americans used to have. If they had acted like modern Americans it would still be a poor country. Though, I agree prison is too much. We should publicly cane people who smoke MJ in public.
A colleague from Singapore told me that caning isn’t much of a thing anymore. If you are sentenced to a number of strikes, these will be broken up into a number of „appointments“. Apparently you can easily avoid them with a letter from your doctor.
"These data show no clear relationship between marijuana legalization and alcohol use. Alcohol use increased more than the national trend in Washington (1 percentage point more), Massachusetts (2.3 percentage points), California (1.9 percentage points), and Oregon (1.2 percentage points) but decreased in Colorado (–0.75 percentage points), Maine (–1.4 percentage points), Alaska (–1.1 percentage points), and Nevada (–1.8 percentage points)."
Interesting to see that the data doesn't reflect what I anecdotally have noticed among my friend group: a near-universal pivot from alcohol to cannabis for 50-80% of occasions. Some 100%. That said, my friend group's demographics probably play a part in this.
Sad to see that harder drugs like alcohol are legal even today. Does anyone in your family consume alcohol, rayiner? Pretty sad to see alcohol being sold so openly and consumed, in front of children.
From your reply it seems like alcohol consumption does not create the same kind of sadness in your heart as a milder drug like marijuana does. Why so, rayiner?
Sad. We need to move away from smoking, not encourage this cancer-causing good-for-nothing behavior. Not to mention it causes streets to smell like a skunk.
I used to smoke weed, I think it's not necessarily bad, but like alcohol, or even psychedelics, some people are really not meant to touch these things. Especially teenagers/young adults, people with predisposed to get addicted, &c.
That being said Europe smokes a lot of weed already, making it legal will help with a lot of side effects of drug traffics. I just hope they use proper pedagogy and support: for well balanced, educated and healthy individuals it's a really good tool, for other people it can be a social/professional death sentence (like alcohol)
> Not to mention it causes streets to smell like a skunk
I'm not sure they'll make it legal to smoke outdoors. In many countries alcohol is legal but drinking in the streets isn't for example.
Inhaling fumes from burning plant matter can't be good for your lungs though?
How can it not increase the chance of cancer (even if to a lesser degree) if you smoked as many joints as some people smoke cigarettes per day (of course you'd have other problems if you tried that)?
We know that just inhaling smoke from a wood fueled stove will increase lung cancer risk. What would be unique with Marijuana that makes their imperfectly burned plant particulates more safe than any other imperfectly burned plant matter?
The CDC view is also that all smoke from burning things is harmful to the lungs and can cause cancer, regardless of what is being burned. People with lung damage is strongly recommended to avoid getting into contact with smoke, including smoking Marijuana.
I think I can argue that it's rational to take care of the most pressing issue you face in a given circumstance. I know we as humans aren't very rational, which is why for example I'm typing this message right now instead of working on a task a client wants done today.
BUT we can probably agree it's a generally good thing to focus on bigger problems before smaller ones.
> Whether smoking marijuana causes lung cancer, as cigarette smoking does, remains an open question.67,70 Marijuana smoke contains carcinogenic combustion products, including about 50% more benzoprene and 75% more benzanthracene (and more phenols, vinyl chlorides, nitrosamines, reactive oxygen species) than cigarette smoke.67 Because of how it is typically smoked (deeper inhale, held for longer), marijuana smoking leads to four times the deposition of tar compared to cigarette smoking.71 However, while a few small, uncontrolled studies have suggested that heavy, regular marijuana smoking could increase risk for respiratory cancers, well-designed population studies have failed to find an increased risk of lung cancer associated with marijuana use
Yet a cursory look at your comment and submission history finds nothing on the topic of this (compared to weed) HUGE killer in Germany. Maybe you're taking up the fight somewhere else, but I think, just like I'm not going to finish this comment and get right back to work, you probably are laser-focusing on this objectively minor health issue (weed usage) for whatever reason, perhaps reefer-madness propaganda? I'm not sure, I'm curious why you think it's an issue compared to something like alcohol, that actually kills lots of people in Germany (I couldn't find any statistics tracking how many people
are killed each year in relation to weed in Germany, but my understanding of the drug is that the number should be 0 in terms of actual overdose).
Good. My retirement plan is to have a "pick your weed" style plantation, similar to the "pick your strawberries" fields. probably have to think about pricing for product used on site.
I live where weed is legal and all the charm goes right out the window once the allure of illicit fun is gone.
There are weed shops everywhere, like fast food places, and the clientele is pretty similar to Burger King.
Is there room for high-end product? Sure. But by and large it feels like a commodity play. There might as well be a weed section next to the beer section in the gas station store.
Big Tobacco will take over once it's legal at federal level anyway. I guess I'd like it to be more like specialised tea shops or cafés, but it's mainly wishful thinking on my part.
The only positive side to this is being able to grow your own stuff without being annoyed by the police. They've got better things to do anyway, like fighting organized crime.
we will have the fresh picked one for people to cure at home, and some choice snacks and herbs to enjoy onsite. Probably also a cooperation with local bakeries for the munchies :)
so far, it is nothing but a dream, however we own a pretty decent plot of land where you can't build anything because it is in a water protection zone. great soil, though.
Going by watching friends grow setups, you'd have to have staggered grow cycles within contained areas to make sure there was always something to pick and cure. The whole fresh picked part seems silly to me, and I'm someone who has contemplated converting scotch tasting journals into weed ones for folks that rant about terpenes all day.
I think a "Farm to Jar" setup would be neater, almost like visiting a brewery that does free tours of the grounds. Tour and a tasting room followed by visits to the shop to buy your favorites.
I don’t think this would work well because of the relatively small harvesting window for flowers. Assuming that it’s an outdoor farm, you’d also have to contend with frost and other factors that could destroy the harvest. I think it would be nice to have a farm that people could visit though and learn about the process. Another idea that I’ve considered before would be to rent a small plot of land on a larger farm, and pay a fee to have someone else grow and harvest the plant for you. Finally, I think there’s a market for a harvesting service, where people bring in whole plants, unharvested, an the company fully processes the plant (trims and cures the flower, makes bubble hash or shatter from the leaves, etc.)
Sounds pretty much like wine grapes. Have you ever made wine? It's rewarding but it involves many hours of hard work: picking up the grapes at thd right time, carrying countles trays, sorting, crushing, pressing, fermenting, filtering. And that's just the harvesting and processing part. Most people just like to drink the wine, thank you. That's why it's such a value added agricultual product.
I was thinking the same thing about cannabis being more analogous to wine. Processing cannabis is less complicated than making wine, but it still requires precision and time. It seems like it would be better to follow the model of winery tours and tastings, and just apply that to cannabis farms.
> Probably also a cooperation with local bakeries for the munchies
Canna-croissant with hemp seeds on the surface, yummy.
The trouble with sativa is that a succesful farming operation requires 40 tonnes of fertilizer per hectare and it will bleed the soil dry of nutrients fast. It makes it an interesting proposition for the Dutch agri tech sector, which will grow it tulip style like they do now with flowers and those great looking vegetables that don't have any taste and are pumped with ferts.
"They could also grow up to three plants for personal use, with rules on enclosing them to prevent youth access" is so wonderfully German. I'm sure there'll be a small 20-page booklet that explains the enclosure rules.
I have a guide on how to buy weed in Berlin. A big chunk of it warns readers about how sketchy and dangerous it is if you don’t have a trusted contact. Weed is frequently contaminated with really nasty chemicals.
A Canadian or American reader might not appreciate how different the environment is from their pre-legalisation days. The weed you buy is genuinely dangerous.
For non-locals: that's Görlitzer Park, Berlin, which has largely been owned (and rendered nearly useless) by the dealers for several years now (along with the neighboring streets, and a good chunk of the recreational land on the canal zone nearby).