Still not highDrugs policy in Germany is a mess

“THE pain wasn’t going away.” It was 2004. Two years earlier a car had missed a “stop” sign and hit Günter Weiglein, throwing him off his motorbike, breaking many bones and leaving him full of medical screws and plates. Prescription painkillers were proving ineffective, leaving him sweaty and sleepless. Then, one evening, he smoked cannabis with some friends. It was a revelation: “70% of the pain went, without side effects.” It became a routine and, after a close shave with the police, he sought the right to smoke legally. In 2014 the government granted him an exceptional licence to consume cannabis, which helped pave the way for the nationwide legalisation of medicinal cannabis. It came into force last March.

But almost a year on, sufferers like Mr Weiglein struggle to obtain the weed they need. One problem is the conservatism of the medical industry. Many doctors are reluctant to prescribe cannabis rather than traditional opiates, like morphine. Even when they do, at around €24 ($30) per gram, more than double the street price, the over-the-counter cost is more than many people can afford privately. Health insurers decline a third of requests for reimbursement. Not all pharmacists stock cannabis, either because they disapprove or because they are unfamiliar with it. And demand far outstrips supply. Yet Germans take new treatments seriously (Apotheken Umschau, a health-and-medicines monthly, is the country’s most read magazine) and particularly like natural remedies.

Growing cannabis within Germany will remain illegal until next year, when just ten licences will be issued allowing production at secret sites by trained pharmacists vetted for security, sworn to confidentiality and (lest they be tempted to sample for quality) prevented from touching the finished product. Farmers think these conditions impossible.

That leaves foreign-grown cannabis. But here, too, “the licensing rules are far too strict,” says David Henn, whose firm, Cannamedical, is Germany’s largest supplier. The blockages are evident even in Cologne’s weed-friendly pharmacies: “We’re on a waiting list. I think it will take two months,” says Frau Metzdorf at the Apotheke im Hauptbahnhof. At the nearby Dom Apotheke, clients are told to wait three months, though “those who really want it can get it on the corner”.

Plenty do. Police in big cities sometimes turn a blind eye to street dealers (possession of small quantities is legal). Growing cannabis at home is riskier. In November Mr Weiglein was sentenced to two years’ probation for having 45 cannabis plants in his flat. The first licence for home cultivation was issued in 2016, but he is urging that this, too, be fully legalised. “That’s the next frontier,” he says.