Many people use THC containing products medicinally or recreationally. But hash and weed are still illegal. Therefore, THC users face a variety of problems. We, the Legalize it! association, help people who use THC products with legal questions. For this purpose we offer personal consultations and written information.
We follow the political development surrounding hemp in Switzerland and publish our evaluations of it. Ultimately, we want to achieve the complete legalization of hemp - even if the path there remains long.
Our main topics can be reached via the six headings in the navigation at the top of the page (or in the hamburger menu on your cell phone). The quick navigation leads to the respective sub-topics of a main topic (here to the latest news from our association, the prosecution and politics). Below you will find all current information from the Legalize it! association.
The National Council's Committee for Safety and Health (SGK-N) will discuss the draft bill for a new Cannabis Products Act again on July 3-4 (item 20.473). This will probably be the final meeting.
We are very curious to see whether this three-year stage will soon be completed, when the texts will be published and the consultation process can begin. There will probably be over 100 pages to read.
In the meantime, our policy group has compiled a number of arguments and studies. We will organize a day, probably in September, on which we will discuss the texts together. We will then formulate our consultation response.
If you would also like to help with this work, please get in touch.
Our members are currently receiving the latest issue 106 of our magazine Legalize it!
The summer issue contains the Minutes of our association meeting 2025, a first look at the persecution figures for 2024 and a call for participation in the political process over the next few years. We will make the complete magazine available as a PDF from September.
Become a member so that you are always up to date (e.g. also by e-mail) – in this way you make our activities possible and support Association. Legalize it!
We have also published another issue of our magazine Legalize it! as PDF. The Issue 105 is now available for download both as a whole and as individual articles in the Politics and Scene sections. The current issue (#106) is still reserved for our members.
The National Council's Social Security and Health Committee has to deliberate once again. The draft bill for the new Cannabis Products Act and the accompanying explanatory report should then be finalized. Both will probably be published in summer 2025 and the consultation process can begin.
To prepare for this, it is helpful to take a look at our policy overview page. There you will find our articles from the last 20 years as well as a brief overview of the ongoing discussions.
This year, we are digitizing our archive, which mainly contains political and legal information. The archive dates back to the 1990s and contains several dozen bulging folders. Fabian has been scanning everything for a few weeks now. The digital archive will then be more accessible and storage will take up much less space.
A cannabis pilot project should also be set up in Aargau. This is the demand of a petition by the Young Liberals: Cannabis Pilotprojekt jetzt! We hope you will sign the petition and that it will meet with a positive response.
It's quite extraordinary that a large proportion of the cannabis for the pilot projects is grown in Aargau, but no such project is planned there.
We reviewed the year 2024, approved the annual report and accounts and elected the 2025 Board of Directors. We will publish the minutes of the meeting in the next Legalize it!, issue 106.
Our AM took place in our new meeting room for the first time. We intend to use this for various activities to support the political process in the coming years.
The Federal Statistical Office (FSO ) had already published the narcotics statistics (BMS) for 2024 at the end of March. In the meantime, we have been able to update our documents and in Legalize it! No. 106 we will publish a first article with these figures. As has been the case for years, this will be a general overview with initial estimates. A more specific analysis of, for example, the differences in the prosecution of weed and hashish is planned for the fall (LI107).
But this much can already be revealed at this point: The figures have fallen by around three quarters since the highs in 2015 – but there were still just under 15,000 criminal offenses reported in Switzerland in 2024! And this is without the figures from the fixed penalties published by the FSO only up to 2021. This means that 40 cannabis-related offenses are still reported every day in this country! The future will show how far these figures will fall before the trough or legalization is reached.
Become a member and stay up to date – also with regard to repression and how to avoid it!
Do you need a new vaporizer? Or fresh CBD flowers? We ask you to consider our corporate members when making your purchases: You can find the list here. In addition to our private members and donors, corporate members are an important part of our Association.
At the end of the week, the National Council's Social Security and Health Committee discussed the work of its sub-committee “Regulating Cannabis”. All the details are not yet clear, but the media release does give some indication of what will be in the preliminary draft.
Of course, we would like to see much more: a truly liberal approach. The bill contains a lot of restrictions and overly cautious provisions. This is not liberal cannabis legislation.
But we understand the fears of the population. We see that after decades of prohibition, after all the fears, small steps are needed to win majorities. That is why we support this compromise and will also campaign for it.
We also have to make many compromises in the pilot projects that we don't like. Be it in the dispensaries or as study participants. We are adhering to the restrictive regulations. This is feasible, even if we don't think it's great.
In any case, restrictive decriminalization is also better than this black market, which functions without tests, without product safety and channels money into dubious pockets. We definitely don't want that anymore.
We have been running our Hanfstübli, a cannabis social club, for 1.5 years as part of the “Züri Can” pilot project. As part of this project, we are allowed to legally sell around a dozen tested varieties weed and hash to interested parties from the city of Zurich. Over 120 study participants are now entitled to purchase from us.
We have now reached the halfway point of the project, which is currently scheduled to run until October 2026. Of course, we hope that there will be an extension, but this will require coordination and agreement between many political and administrative bodies.
In any case, we have already experienced a lot and have been able to investigate many questions. For example, some varieties seem to be much better suited to commercial cultivation outdoors (or in a greenhouse indoors). Then the flowers differ in their appearance in terms of moisture or trimming accuracy. It took many trials and improvements before the consistency of hash was right, because the legal limit of 20 % THC poses a particular challenge for hash.
So we saw what works well, what doesn't work so well, what the participants say about the products and how they develop over the years. This is really concrete, not just theory! We were also able to exchange many experiences on alternatives to smoking (vaporize, food). Because even if legalization were to come: Harm reduction will be an important pillar of it.
Next week, the Commission on Social Security and Health is discussing the work of its sub-commission. We are curious to see what it has to say. Will it accept the deal? Does it want to discuss it further itself? Can a realistic timetable be drawn up for the consultation process and the deliberations in Parliament? Perhaps a media release will follow on Friday, then we will know more.
We will also be meeting at the end of the week to sound out which activities are sensible and feasible for us. Anyone interested in the background and problems of a new approach to hemp is welcome to read our pages on the subject.
Magazine Legalize it! #106
Unfortunately, this magazine is only available in German.
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