Berlin’s Justice Senator Lena Kreck (left) wants to examine in the coming months whether basic impunity for consumers is possible even with small amounts of hard drugs.
“The house management is open to the proposal and will examine this question professionally in the coming months and make a political decision based on this result,” wrote a spokesman for the Senate Department for Justice when asked by the Tagesspiegel.
It is currently up to the prosecutors in Berlin to decide how to deal with the possession of small amounts of cocaine, heroin or ecstasy.
According to Section 31 of the Narcotics Act, impunity is generally possible for small quantities. For cannabis, a so-called common general decree was issued in Berlin, which regulates impunity for up to ten grams – at least if there is no danger to strangers or relevant criminal records.
The Greens and Left factions in the Berlin House of Representatives want to create similar regulations for hard drugs as well. The Green Party leader Werner Graf started the debate last week in the Tagesspiegel. Such regulations already exist in federal states such as Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Bremen and Hesse.
If the judiciary comes to the conclusion that impunity is possible in principle for small amounts of hard drugs, a possible general decree must be coordinated with the interior and health administration. On Monday, Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) categorically spoke out against it.
There are also strong reservations in the SPD parliamentary group about the Greens’ new initiative: “There will be no ‘right to intoxication’ in Berlin during this legislative period, and the choice of words is more than cynical,” says SPD MP Christian Hochgrebe . He refers to the coalition agreement. At the request of the SPD, the demand did not make it into these.
