Germany scales back plans to allow cannabis sale in shops and pharmacies

Health minister says adults will be allowed to grow and consume limited amounts privately or at members’ clubs by end of year

Adults in Germany will be able to grow and consume recreational cannabis privately or through non-profit members’ clubs by the end of the year, the country’s health minister announced on Wednesday, scaling back previous plans to make the drug distributable in shops or pharmacies nationwide.

“The previous cannabis policy has failed,” said the health minister, Karl Lauterbach, as he presented the German government’s new two-phase approach to legalising cannabis at a press conference in Berlin. “Now we have to go new ways.”