(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s opposition conservatives have pledged to overturn the legalization of cannabis if they win power in February’s election.
“We don’t want to smoke pot, we want safety and order,” Tino Sorge, a health policy spokesman for the center-right CDU/CSU group, said Friday during a debate in the lower house of parliament.
“We will implement this after the next federal election,” added Sorge, whose group has a big lead in the latest opinion polls.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government partially legalized cultivating and consuming cannabis earlier this year, drawing on experiences in countries such as the Netherlands, Canada and the US. It also launched an information campaign to fight abuse, protect minors and commissioned a study on the impacts of the policy.
“You have invited a special guest — organized crime,” Silke Launert, another member of the conservative group, told lawmakers. “You have opened the door for Dutch drug gangs.”
Germany’s elections are set to be held on Feb. 23, seven months earlier than originally scheduled, after a dispute over budget policy led to the end of the three-party governing coalition. Opinion polls suggest the CDU/CSU alliance is leading with more than 30%, and would almost certainly need to join forces with other parties to secure a majority in parliament.
It may struggle to turn back the legalization of cannabis if it forms a coalition with Scholz’s Social Democrats. The country’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, who belongs to that party, defended the move, arguing “it’s all about making existing consumption safer.”
“We need to give the law a chance,” Lauterbach said. According to a 2021 survey, 4.5 million German adults had consumed cannabis at least once during the previous 12 months, mostly people aged 18 to 24, according to the Health Ministry.
--With assistance from Iain Rogers.
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