2024 Saw Major International Marijuana News In Germany, Ukraine, Australia, Poland And Other Countries

Cannabis reform has become a global conversation in recent years as attitudes and evidence continue to back a shift away from more punitive, criminal drug policies. And in 2024, a handful of countries—primarily in Europe—began embracing medical and adult-use marijuana programs.

While considerable marijuana-related developments unfolded in the U.S. at both state and federal levels, countries such as Ukraine and Slovenia took steps to expand access to medical marijuana. German and Polish officials, meanwhile, moved toward broader, nonmedical access to cannabis among adults. Meanwhile, a United Nations (UN) report published in June acknowledged that marijuana legalization in the U.S. and Canada may have helped to shrink the size of illicit markets.

Here are some of the biggest international cannabis news stories of 2024:

Germany begins to legalize cannabis for adults

Ahead of what could be a pivotal election in early 2025, officials in Germany began implementing parts of a new cannabis legalization law that officially took effect in April. At that point, the the legalization of possession and home cultivation for adults took effect, and social clubs began to open, providing members with legal access to marijuana products.

In December, the federal minister for food and agriculture also signed off on a plan to allow for research-focused commercial marijuana pilot programs to test legal and regulated access to cannabis for consumers—the latest piece of the country’s legalization law. Meanwhile, the city of Frankfurt recently announced plans to move forward with a five-year pilot program that would make cannabis products available to adults more broadly, with the city of Hanford also pursuing a similar plan. A number of other localities have also expressed interest in conducting cannabis sales pilot projects.

While the results of the coming election could roll back the law, a recent survey found that most in the country—59 percent of eligible voters—support allowing adults to purchase cannabis from licensed stores. Respondents who identified as Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) were the only political affiliations that supported rolling back the existing reform law in the poll. And it’s that coalition that advocates worry will seek to undermine the policy if they win in the national election in February, which many expect they will. “We are abolishing the traffic light coalition’s cannabis law,” CDU and CSU said in an election manifesto. “This law protects dealers and exposes our children and teenagers to drug use and addiction.”

Medical marijuana is coming to Ukraine

Medical marijuana officially became legal in Ukraine this past year, allowing cannabis access for patients with severe illnesses and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) resulting from the nation’s ongoing conflict with Russia, which launched an invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

Lawmakers approved the medical cannabis legislation last December, but the opposition Batkivshchyna party used a procedural tactic to block it by forcing consideration of a resolution to repeal the measure. That resolution failed in January, clearing its path to enactment.

Despite the reform, products aren’t expected to become available until sometime in early 2025, according to health officials in the country. The legal change officially took effect this past summer, but so far no products have become available as officials work to get infrastructure around the medicines up and running. While the text of the legislation as introduced explicitly listed only cancer and war-related PTSD as qualifying conditions, the chair of the health committee said in July that lawmakers were hearing daily from patients with other illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, voiced support for medical marijuana legalization in mid-2023 as well as during his presidential campaign in 2019, prior to Russia’s large-scale invasion.

UN officials continue to criticize drug war, calling for focus on reducing harm

As 2024 drew to a close, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights called on the international community to move away from punitive, criminal drug policies, saying that the global war on drugs “has failed, completely and utterly.”

“Criminalisation and prohibition have failed to reduce drug use and failed to deter drug-related crime,” Commissioner Volker Türk  at a conference in Warsaw that included leaders and experts from across Europe. “These policies are simply not working—and we are failing some of the most vulnerable groups in our societies.” He urged a shift to a more evidence-based, human rights-centered approach to drug policies “prioritising people over punishment.”

The comments came on the heels of a statement earlier in the year from UN special rapporteurs, experts and working groups, who together asserted the drug war “has resulted in a range of serious human rights violations, as documented by a number of UN human rights experts over the years.” The statement also highlighted a number of other UN agency reports, positions, resolutions as well as actions in favor of prioritizing prevention and harm reduction over punishment.

It pointed, for example, to what it called a “landmark report” published by the UN special rapporteur on human rights that encouraged nations to abandon the criminal war on drugs and instead adopt harm-reduction policies—such as decriminalization, supervised consumption sites, drug checking and widespread availability of overdose reversal drugs like naloxone—while also moving toward “alternative regulatory approaches” for currently controlled substances. The report noted that “over-criminalisation, stigmatisation and discrimination linked to drug use represent structural barriers leading to poorer health outcomes.”

A separate report published by two organizations critical of the war on drugs recently found that $13 billion in U.S. taxpayer money has gone to fund worldwide counternarcotics activities since 2015, often coming at the expense of efforts to end global poverty while at the same time contributing to international human rights violations and environmental harms.

Poland

Polish lawmakers this year took an initial step toward decriminalizing marijuana in the country, sending a reform proposal to Prime Minister Donald Tusk for consideration.

Members of parliament in the November measure proposed that the country stop criminalizing people over possession of up to 15 grams of cannabis and cultivation of up to one plant for personal use. At the time, Tusk had 30 days to respond to the petition, which is not legally binding as it would be for a formal bill. The petition, or “dezyderat,” is more of a request from the legislative body for action on the issue. The prime minister is required to provide a written response with details about any steps the administration will take, an explanation if they don’t intend to act on it or a referral to another agency.

Polish activists said in September that they met with an official at the country’s health ministry to discuss marijuana decriminalization, which they reported received tentative support. An interior affairs ministry official also weighed in on the issue in July, forwarding the recommendation to law enforcement for review.

Slovenia

Medical marijuana was already legal in Slovenia going into 2024, but this year voters approved a pair of advisory ballot measures in favor of home cultivation for medical patients as well as non-commercial legalization for adults.

A question asking whether patients should be able to cultivate the plant for personal use earned 67 percent support from voters, while another asking whether all adults should be able to legally grow and possess the substance got 52 percent support.

The outcomes were advisory and not binding on lawmakers. Nevertheless, they could influence future legislation and contribute to the growing push for reform in the country. Slovenia’s National Assembly voted to put the questions on the ballot in April. The country’s National Institute of Public Health had taken a position against the cannabis proposals.

Full legalization falls short in Australia

An effort by Australia’s Greens Party to legalize marijuana nationwide fell short in November, as lawmakers in the country’s Senate voted 24–13 to block the legalization legislation. Opposition was led by the governing Labor Party and opposition coalition Liberal and National parties. Despite the setback, the plan’s sponsor, Sen. David Shoebridge, said the vote nevertheless marked progress in the country’s shift away from the war on drugs.

It marked the first time Australia’s federal parliament voted on a nationwide cannabis legalization bill. In a post on social media, Shoebridge vowed that despite vote’s outcome, “we’re not giving up on legalising cannabis.”

The proposal would have legalized, regulated and taxed cannabis at the national level, establishing the Cannabis Australia National Agency, or CANA, to license and oversee the commercial industry and maintain a national register of marijuana strains. Home cultivation for personal use, as well as home processing of edibles, would have been explicitly allowed under the bill. It would have also authorized the creation of cannabis cafes, where adults could use marijuana in a social setting.

Cannabis remains illegal federally in Australia outside of the country’s highly restrictive medical marijuana program, though some reforms have been adopted at the local level in past years.

Switzerland pilot projects

Switzerland dipped a toe into cannabis legalization last year, launching a regulated sales pilot program open to a limited number of participants in a handful of locations. In Zurich, for example, the program was open to a test group of 2,100 residents, who were permitted to buy marijuana from pharmacies and social clubs. Participants then answer questions about how they consumed the products and their health effects, part of a study with the University of Zurich. The so-called “Grashaus Project” study was also set to be undertaken in Basel-Landschaft, open to nearly 4,000 participants.

In April of this year, a separate study launched in the city of Bern. More than 1,000 people from Bern, Biel/Bienne and Lucerne were expected to enroll in that program, according to local reports. As of spring, the vast majority of applicants—nearly 80 percent—were men. Products available from five pharmacies in Bern include four varieties of cured flower, two concentrates, two tinctures and two e-liquids meant for vaporization.

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