A recent survey conducted by the German daily Die Welt among 35 German cities shows that at least 11 cities are willing to participate in future local experiments in the regulated sale of cannabis for recreational purposes, as was proposed in April this year.
Interest from 11 German cities to participate in experiments
Frankfurt am Main was the first region, together with Offenbach, to announce its intention to submit a joint application as a model region. Shortly afterwards, the green-red coalition in Munich also made a similar request. This displeased the state government, led by the CSU, which is in principle opposed to experimentation and legalization.
Other cities are also considering applying. Bremen has announced that it is open in principle. Hanover is also showing “very great interest”, a spokeswoman said. Bonn is “positively opposed” to the project, while Tübingen, Leipzig and Schwerin could offer to participate in principle, but have not yet made an official decision.
For some cities, it is already clear that they absolutely do not want to participate. These include Nuremberg, Freiburg, Aachen, Essen and Eisenach.
The following cities have not yet expressed interest: Hamburg, Cologne, Dortmund, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart. They want to wait until the exact legal conditions for model regions of the federal government are established. We can therefore expect the number of interested cities to increase in the coming months.
The district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in Berlin had already applied for a pilot project with the Federal Institute in 2015 and the Land of Berlin in 2019. In both cases, this was rejected. The State of Berlin finally sued the authority in 2021. The procedure is still ongoing and could be short-circuited by the arrival of the legalization pilot projects.
