Review CannaTrade and outlook Legalize it!

Repression is the reality, legalization is our wish. The CannaTrade showed all the things you can do legally with and around hemp today. But that's not enough for us: We also want legal handling of flowers and resin!

7'700 visitors stopped by at the CannaTrade 2014 - a peaceful crowd streamed into the Stadthalle Dietikon and visited the two floors with the exhibitors' booths. Also our Legalize it!-booth found many interested people, who were then “worked” by our team: Finding members and donations was our goal. We have known for almost 25 years that recruiting members is not easy. But the 12-member Legalize it! team was tirelessly present throughout the three days and did not let up. A hempy thank you to our helpers!

A big praise goes to the CannaTrade team, which has once again carried out this fair professionally.

Only thanks to the many helpers our secretary Sven could give a lecture every day about the legal situation of hemp in Switzerland. The about 40-minute lectures with question/answer round were well attended, the audience very interested. Here we saw that our topic “hemp and law” occupies many and well-founded information is consumed with pleasure.

Unfortunately, it is not so that then immediately all become members. Recruiting members remains a tough undertaking. But to compile information on this difficult and hidden topic and to summarize it in an understandable way takes time and money. We have to make that clear again and again.

The five-person panel, hosted by Nachtschattenverlag, also found its audience. The topic was the possible turnaround in drug policy that we are perhaps currently experiencing. After all, many elements internationally suggest that perhaps the end of prohibition against hemp has truly begun. The developments in Colorado and Uruguay, as well as many other small steps, allow this assumption.

And in Switzerland? Thomas Kessler was still convinced of his concept (creation of a hemp law similar to the liquor law, cultivation in mountain areas), even though it is now almost 30 years old: he sees a good chance that substantial changes will come in two years. The panel leader Mischa Hauswirth (BaZ journalist), on the other hand, said that Switzerland would probably be the last country to find a legal way of dealing with it. Well, and that's the exciting thing about the current situation: We don't know how what could happen when in Switzerland. And until then, the current NarcA simply remains valid. Our secretary Sven Schendekehl emphasized that the only constant over the last years has been the increase in repression and that there is nothing to suggest that there will soon be less prosecution (i.e. that the NarcA will be applied more loosely by the law enforcement agencies ).

The other panelists were Mathias Bröckers and Emmanuel Kotzian, both from Germany.

We want legalization, but we see that we are still too weak for an initiative or a big political campaign to change NarcA. That is where we want to get to, but that needs a few more members. And as I said, we are getting more, but finding members is a tough task and can only happen slowly.

That is why we are mainly concerned with the prevailing illegality and the consequences of repression. There we can educate, help many and do that well with our current resources.

But in the end we want THC to become a legal substance in Switzerland, like alcohol or nicotine. For that to happen, we need to find a majority in a vote. We must never lose sight of that: You need a majority in a vote. And that's the crux of the matter.

The Federal Council, like the FOPH, finds that the urban dispensary projects probably cannot be carried out legally. For this, it wants to commission the EKDF to develop proposals on cannabis policy. He expects a report in 2017. Geneva is now “ready” for Cattacin's group to submit a request to the government council in the fall for permission to conduct a feasibility study. This is all certainly interesting, but does not look like a speedy solution!

For the time being, the only thing left to do is to continue to inform people about the repression, to collect facts and cases, and to publish the findings. We will certainly continue to do this. In the medium term, we want to reach a size (members, funds) that allows us to exert political influence. Because one thing is clear: The prosecution of hemp and THC-users must stop. We want to be able to smoke weed legally. For this we have to build a network that reaches from left to right, from poor to rich, from freak to millionaire and fights for an improvement of the situation despite all differences.