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Will Switzerland become the first European country to wholeheartedly legalise recreational cannabis? It’s early days yet, but it looks like a possibility; that doesn’t, however, mean that progress in Europe generally is speeding up.
Last week, the Social Security and Health Committee of the Swiss National Council (the lower house of the country’s legislative assembly) approved – though not without a substantial number of dissenters – a bill that would allow not only cultivation for personal use, but also commercial production.
The proposed regime seems to resemble the Uruguayan model more than those followed in the US and Canada, but many details are undefined, including exactly what kind of finished products would be allowed and the precise structure of distribution (which would be a state monopoly).
Beyond asserting that there would be distinct medical and recreational markets, that there would be taxation and that there would be controls on marketing, the bill is more a collection of generalities than an actual regulatory framework; the next task for Swiss lawmakers, in fact, is to develop just that.
A leap for Switzerland, a small step for Europe
Even so, it’s a significant step forward in a long process for Switzerland, which amended its Federal Narcotics Act in 2021 to allow cannabis trials, before beginning them in 2023. For Europe in general, though, it is unlikely to be a game-changer.
Liberalisation of cannabis laws in Europe has been much-discussed and much-advocated, and not so long ago, many following the subject would have regarded parts of the continent as having much more liberal attitudes towards the issue than the US. But where recreational cannabis is concerned, the reality is that in recent years Europe has trailed far behind the US, let alone Canada with its nationwide regulation.
Of course, medical cannabis is legal in most European countries, as it is in most US states. But while around half of US states have legalised recreational cannabis as well, European progress has been sputtering at best.
Medical cannabis is still a better bet in Europe
Recent developments in Germany have attracted a great deal of attention, with non-commercial cannabis clubs now officially permitted. But that is still far from a commercial market, and there are no signs that it will become one anytime soon. And apart from Malta, with its similar “cannabis harm-reduction associations”, no other European country has really gone very far beyond decriminalising possession of small amounts.
Strictly speaking, that is still the legal situation even in the Netherlands, although commercial sale has been famously tolerated there for decades, to the point of de facto legalisation. In Spain, similarly, the more recent tolerance of cannabis clubs is not legally enshrined at the national level.
Against this backdrop, it would be excessively hopeful to expect that legalisation in Switzerland will represent more than an incremental advance for recreational cannabis in Europe, though of course a successful rollout of a Swiss legal framework would at least provide a model for other countries to consider.
In the meantime, medical should be the bigger European hope for the cannabis industry. Some governments are still clearly cautious (the draft royal decree on medical cannabis in Spain, for example, would impose very tight controls on availability), but there undoubtedly is widespread support too, and the presence of large centralised healthcare systems in European countries means that, at least in theory, any extension of medical cannabis availability could achieve scale quite quickly.
– Barnaby Page CannIntelligence staff
Image: AI-generated
