To Germany next and from today people there can legally smoke cannabis in public.
Hundreds of people filled Berlin's Brandenburg Gate at midnight for a smoking as the new law came into effect.
The part decriminalisation follows decades of contentious debate in Germany.
The rules around medical marijuana are also being relaxed.
Our Berlin correspondent Jessica Parker reports now from the city of Dresden.
It's out in the open.
Adults in Germany can now possess up to 25 grams of cannabis in public,
enough to make dozens of joints and grow up to three plants at home.
Who did you visit in this?
While people like Marcel are planning newly permitted cannabis social clubs,
not for tourists though, just German residents.
Abigram from cannabis which goes from the cannabis social club is one gram
that's not on the black market.
What do you say to people who say look, cannabis is addictive and it is harmful,
especially to young people?
Everything has dark sides and you have to know about the dark sides
and only when it's not illegal you can free talk about these dark sides.
For these cannabis clubs in cities like Dresden,
won't pop up overnight and come with their own rules.
Exacerbating fears that demand will quickly outstrip legal supply.
We assume that the black market will be strengthened,
particularly at the beginning in the chaos phase,
when demand will be great because of the signal this law sends.
The black market and criminal networks will adapt
and they will also infiltrate the social clubs.
It's a high security cost and why?
Into the highly secure halls of a medical cannabis grower,
you're also seeing some deregulation.
Cannabis will not be in a caudic anymore in Germany,
it will be just as any other pharmaceutical product,
which makes it much more easier for patients to get it from a doctor
and to get it from the pharmacy.
They keep this room at around 23 degrees but it's also really quite humid.
Now there are 650-ish plants in this room and they are almost ready to be harvested.
And the psychiatric substance is...
The benefits of medical cannabis are debated,
while the relaxation around recreational use has been contentious.
This is an argument in Germany that likely hasn't yet reached full maturity.
Jessica Parker, BBC News, interesting.
Well, I've been getting more reaction to this story from Steve Rolz.
He's a senior policy analyst at Transform Drugs Foundation.
That's a charity that works to create what it says
is a just and effective system of legal regulation for all drugs.
He told me what he thought of this move by Germany.
I think it's very significant.
I mean, a number of countries in Europe have been making this move.
Germany's not the first.
Malta actually changed its law in 2021.
Luxembourg changed their laws in 2022.
We've also seen famously sort of historic reforms in the Netherlands
and Switzerland and Czech Republic are also doing it.
So Germany's actually part of a wave of reforms that are sweeping across Europe.
But I think perhaps it's the most politically significant,
just really because of its political significance within the European Union
and within the world.
So when Germany does something, I think people are going to take notice.
You know, it's 100 times bigger in population terms
than either Luxembourg or Malta.
And it's very hard to ignore.
They're a serious actor within Europe and they're a serious player on the global stage.
So it's a very big deal.
And I'm sure that the impacts of this are going to ripple around Europe and the world.
So do you think there will be more countries looking to Germany
and perhaps legalizing cannabis going forward?
Yes, I mean, undoubtedly.
We're seeing, you know, 10 years ago,
nowhere in the world had actually formally legalized and regulated adult use recreational cannabis.
And today there's 45 or so jurisdictions around the world
and more than half a billion people are living in jurisdictions
that are in the process of or have already implemented legal access to recreational cannabis.
So clearly there's a trend here.
There's a growing movement.
And I think Germany just represents growing momentum in that direction.
I think other countries are going to look at the look at what happens in Germany and other countries.
See that whilst it may not be ideal,
it's certainly better than the obvious failings of prohibition and the war on drugs.
And they're going to be thinking, well, we should be considering this.
You know, we may not like the fact that people use cannabis, but they do.
And we have a choice.
We can either leave that market in the hands of organized crime groups and unregulated dealers,
or we can try and regulate it within the within the ambit of the state
and trying to reduce the harms that cannabis can cause to individual users
and to the wider community.
And Germany has been very clear that it's a public health measure and a community safety measure.
Yes, although some doctors there are saying that the liberalization is actually going to fuel drug use.
Well, I mean, that hasn't really been the experience in countries that have made this move already.
There's been reforms of different nations, quite difficult to generalize,
because different countries have taken very different approaches.
But in Canada, for example, you know, use has gone up marginally,
but not interestingly amongst youth, which is, you know, where a lot of the concerns
are focused.
But of course, use has been rising for decades.
Use of cannabis has been rising for decades under prohibition, under the war on drugs.
So, you know, there's not really any evidence that that an enforcement,
a punitive enforcement approach can somehow eradicate drug use or eradicate markets.
So this is a pragmatic position that deals with reality, that there is demand for these drugs.
And if it's not met through some legally regulated responsible government system,
it will be met anyway through an illegal market controlled by organized crime groups.
So you might want to look at it as a least worst option, but it's a pragmatic one,
and more and more governments are going down that road.