Legalization In Germany: First Black Cannabis CEO In The Country And German Commissioner Discuss Key Aspects

Germany decriminalized medical cannabis in 2016 and in November 2021, leaders of Germany’s incoming governing parties stated they had a formal agreement to legalize marijuana. "We are introducing the controlled supply of cannabis to adults for consumption in licensed stores,” the parties said in a 118-page agreement.

According to the Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) the legalization of recreational cannabis could bring the country some 3.4 billion euros ($3.85 billion) in tax revenue. What’s more, it would save roughly 1.3 billion euros annually for the judicial system and create 27,000 new jobs.

Alain Menghé à Menghé is the CEO and founder of LIO Pharmaceuticals GmbH, a German-based medical cannabis company. In a recent interview with journalist Alex Roger for the International Cannabis Chronicle, the executive talked about the future of the cannabis industry in the European country.

Menghé à Menghé highlighted that opening the cannabis market for the recreational sector will exert pressure on the supplier side. “In the medical sector, for example, the need of developing indication-specific new drugs will force the actors to increase their engagement in R&D while in the recreational sector there will be a shift in innovative branding development,” he said.

Although the market is highly competitive, the CEO noted that firms in the pharmaceutical sector will play “a very important role” after the legalization of cannabis.

“It is clear that those of us who are now fully licensed are in a great position to move forward on the recreational front,” said Menghé à Menghé the first Black CEO of a German cannabis company. “It won’t just be about Canadians, a range of products, producers, and companies from around the world will enforce their engagement in Germany as first step market entry in Europe.

“When I founded LIO Pharmaceuticals with my partners, our goal was to combine product innovation in the cannabis sector with pharmaceutical expertise from ‘big pharma’. Today, we have finalized our new headquarters near Düsseldorf, the unique ‘Bank of Cannabis,’ a more than 1000 sm former bank with an underground bunker as a narcotic and non-narcotic warehouse (...) we plan to supply the complete German market and stepwise the European market,” Menghé à Menghé said. “This will be the first European ‘white label factory’ at least both for flowers and for extracts.”

German Commissioner Provides Insight Into Legalization Approach

Burkhard Blienert has served as Germany’s ‘drug czar’ since January. Blienert recently participated in an interview with Stern in which he discussed the effort to legalize cannabis in the country.

Blienert considered Germany’s “progressive drug policy” as “the realization that in the field of cannabis, criminal law is not a tool that helps. That’s not how we reach consumers, Bliener said and added that cannabis regulation requires “a different social perspective”.

Regarding the terms of the coalition agreement, the commissioner explained the objective “is not to allow people to obtain products that are illegal and harmful to their health on the black market but to empower people and create regulated access to safe products for them.”

He acknowledged that a lot of people are looking forward to cannabis legalization and highlighted this is a complex process that takes time.

“I’ll have to disappoint everyone at the moment. We are in the early stages where we are debating and discussing the structures for a process. We need a law that lasts. This is a complex and complicated project involving many ministries. And I would like us to involve the public, associations, and science. The goal is legalization in this legislative period. We’ll do it,” he said.
Image via El Planteo.