Why are people calling it liberalization?
From what I’m reading there are plenty of caveats. It’s much more than decriminalization but definitely can’t be called legalization.
Legalization usually implies allowing some degree of commercialization, otherwise you end up with weird middle ground like Netherlands. What Germany is doing isn’t even going as far as Netherlands do, at least for now since there are going to be pilot programs for small scale shops (on top of currently proposed clubs).
US is vastly different from state to state, ranging from cannabis being illegal, through medical use being allowed with varying degrees of ease of prescriptions, all up to full legalization including commercialization.
Two reasons:
- There are long term plans to legalize it. Currently it may be against International Law so it will take a while until it can be opened for all. The first action will be scientific observed modell citys.
- The decriminalisation will aim to destroy the black market. This is done by allowing social clubs than can grow their own plants and hand their members up to 50 Gramms. That is a lot and the implicite idea is that this amount will also allow a bit of interchange without being enough to drive a illegal business.