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This would fix one of my biggest issues with Europe! All the pleasures in the world except the ability to get good weed anywhere! Sure all the "cool people" hav

This would fix one of my biggest issues with Europe! All the pleasures in the world except the ability to get good weed anywhere! Sure all the "cool people" have a supply but its just shitty street stuff where the supply chain is completely broken. Its the same situation in Portugal where people are like "look everyone can have some and they fixed the drug problem forever" yeaaah but what about the supply chain? Like one city in the Netherlands is the only place you can go to right now, and the conversation amongst people all across Europe is so immature. Weed is conflated with the hardest drugs possible, and good luck trying to have a conversation about Sativa over Indica! Big oversight, and yes I am grouping 30 countries together because that's my experience. Gimme at least one country with California-style recreational shops everywhere. Looks like Germany will be it! Way to go "legalize all fun things" Green party! Didn't notice they got into the coalition, I kind of noticed when the other coalition didn't get all the votes they were used to, but didn't really put too much thought into it.

hnbad 5y ago
The Greens have been pro-legalization for a while but somewhat mixed on a national level because they vary from very progressive to socially conservative state-by-state. Their support for this is genuine but I wouldn't have trusted them to push for it if there had been any risk of resistance. The SPD tends to be more socially conservative than the Greens (although the party base is extremely mixed). They only proposed a very cautious experimental legalization program during the election and mostly didn't talk about it. They're likely seeing this as a cheap win they can still pin on the other coalition partners if pushed on the issue by conservatives. After nearly two decades of grand coalitions, they seem to mostly let the other two partners do what they want for now. The FDP may be market extremists but they've been using legalization as a major ticket to attract younger voters for decades now. Their shtick has basically been doing politics focused on big businesses and the extremely rich while marketing themselves as an attractive option for young voters by pushing reasonably popular progressive policies (as long as they don't interfere too much with the economy). Their primary motivation for legalization is likely economical (since the tobacco industry has been pivoting towards cannabis for a while now since lobbying for less tobacco regulation stopped working decades ago) but the kids will think it was a principled stance towards progressivism or liberty or something, so it's a double win.

hnbad 5y ago

The Greens have been pro-legalization for a while but somewhat mixed on a national level because they vary from very progressive to socially conservative state-by-state. Their support for this is genuine but I wouldn't have trusted them to push for it if there had been any risk of resistance. The SPD tends to be more socially conservative than the Greens (although the party base is extremely mixed). They only proposed a very cautious experimental legalization program during the election and mostly didn't talk about it. They're likely seeing this as a cheap win they can still pin on the other coalition partners if pushed on the issue by conservatives. After nearly two decades of grand coalitions, they seem to mostly let the other two partners do what they want for now. The FDP may be market extremists but they've been using legalization as a major ticket to attract younger voters for decades now. Their shtick has basically been doing politics focused on big businesses and the extremely rich while marketing themselves as an attractive option for young voters by pushing reasonably popular progressive policies (as long as they don't interfere too much with the economy). Their primary motivation for legalization is likely economical (since the tobacco industry has been pivoting towards cannabis for a while now since lobbying for less tobacco regulation stopped working decades ago) but the kids will think it was a principled stance towards progressivism or liberty or something, so it's a double win.