Legalising Marijuana in Poland. Therapy available?

With it basically being legal in Czech Rep, more or less also in Slovakia and it being so popular among Poland's young people, how long will it be before it's legalised here?

Will it be legalised here? Or will Poland wait for the nod from bigger more powerful EU countries?

It would bring in quite a lot of extra tax revenue for the government. Free up the Police and the courts further to chase down serious crime.

It would help to break up some of the gangs that currently control the supply of drugs coming in.

Also, if it was regulated then buyers would know exactly what they were smoking instead of buying something that may be laced with 'hidden extras'

What say you Polish forum posters?
Legalisation seems to have worked in Holland. Czech hasn't fallen into civil war and in the American states where marijuana has become legal it seems to be a success.

Can Poland follow suit? Should Poland follow suit?

Have you seen the amount of Junkies on the streets in Amsterdam.
Maybe you should read the following paper before promoting legalizing drugs in Poland.

europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/crim/dv/diazdemera_/diazdemera_en.pdf

Amsterdam is quite filthy. I would never want to live there.

Legalizing Pot would have 2 long-term effects
A) Curb alcoholism. But this has occurred in Polish youth compared to older generations anyway
B) Turn a significant percentage of the Polish population into apathetic vegetables

IMO the negatives out weight the positives

Junkies, by definition, are addicted to heroin.
It's impossible to become physically addicted to marijuana.
Heroin junkies have nothing to do with the questions posed.

Nor will I download a PDF that you've posted. God knows what kind of virus could be embedded in it.


Yea, a good thing.


Well, when you consider than less than 24% of people voted in the most recent elections, then it would seem that Poland is already a land of apathetic vegetables. We may as well be taking advantage of these vegetables and make some tax money off their recreational drug of choice.

A marijuana addict's life is controlled by marijuana. He or she loses interest in all else, their dreams go up in smoke. Marijuana addiction is a progressive illness often leading to addiction to other drugs, including alcohol. The lives, thinking and desires of marijuana addicts center around marijuana--scoring it, dealing it and finding ways to stay high.

Addiction is a progressive, long-term continuing problem. When an addict tries to stop using and fails because life without the drug is just too hard, that is addiction. Once an addict is convinced he or she cannot live without marijuana, the dependency becomes an obsession. When the addict uses even though he or she promised themselves they wouldn't, this is compulsion.

If that's to be believed (and it isn't from a neutral or objective source) it sounds pretty much the same as alcohol, though in reality alcohol is far more damaging to the individual and society. Perhaps we should legalise marijuana and ban booze.


Spot on. Legal prohibition (if there's significant public demand for something) never works. The farce in the the US when they banned alcohol is a good example. Legal suppliers couldn't do business so less desirable people filled the void.

It is scientifically impossible to become physically addicted to marijuana.
Psychologically yes, a very small minority of heavy users can become so. But once a person decides to take the step to stop smoking they can do it. It's not like heroin or cocaine addiction where they need the drug to function.

Marijuana is not a gateway drug. Most reputable researchers say there's no such things even as a gateway drug.
However, once recent study: news.ufl.edu/2012/07/10/alcohol-gateway
Says that alcohol is the true gateway drug.


However, I tend to side with this study. One that was carried out of a 12 year period by the University of Pittsburgh:
scienceblog.com/12116/study-says-marijuana-no-gateway-drug

Another question; in most countries now in Europe there is a vocal minority who are demanding that soft drugs such as marijuana be legalised. Is there something similar here?

There's one campaigning group who organise a Marsz Konopi however it's still more of an alcohol culture here, that and a mood of conformism.

The study only suggests marijuana is not addictive it does not provide conclusive evidence, associations which deal at grass root level like marijuana-anonymous are better placed to advise if THC in marijuana is addictive.

OK, so we're going to disagree on this.

But everyone in the science community seems to agree on 2 certain things:
Marijuana is nowhere nearly as addictive as cigarettes.
Marijuana is nowhere nearly as addictive as alcohol.

Now, most of us know that the only reason marijuana was made illegal in the USA was because the powerful tobacco industry lobbied for it to be banned.

Surely, thanks to scientific research, and if we allow cigarettes and alcohol then safe marijuana consumption should be allowed also?
If not then we should also ban more addictive substances like cigarettes and alcohol.

Imagine if you will than tobacco and alcohol were discovered today, do you imagine the public would be allowed to consume them?
I think not.

It is important to keep Cannabis illegal. It is an important tool in criminalising the young and retaining control over the youth. It would have a devastating impact on the alcohol industry and the profits of shareholders. The fact that cannabis has known medical benefits would become more become more widespread and this would affect Big pharm and the profits of shareholders. By keeping Cannabis illegal means young people are more likely to come into contact with serious hard drugs such as Heroin.

It is important to keep Heroin illegal as this means it is easier to control the masses, helps divide the working classes, create an under class, which we need to justify large numbers of prisons and police.

On a personal note I would in favor of banning both alcohol and cigarettes.

Alcohol is way too easy to make at home for a ban to be effective. And family in Scotland used to grow tobacco. But I do agree a ban on public sale might work - people can socialise, watch televised sport, etc without either ... it will just take some getting used to. Also, remember the BMJ support for banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after the year 2000? If it worked, one generation would basically weed out (sorry) the smokers.

Jaysus, life in Poland would be intolerable if we all couldn't get drunk every so often.

Another in favour of the Czech model.

Poland is far too conservative for this day and age, and the Poles seem to love regulations and laws so much (when the restriction doesn't apply to them) that I'm beginning to wonder if they didn't secretly enjoy communism :(

Hence, the establishment will never lift the draconian laws on cannabis use here, preferring to control rather than to let the population live - whilst of course hypocritically swallowing their drug of choice, coke et al.

Both have been tried and neither has worked, especially alcohol. Anyway, religious organisations would object to an alcohol ban unless they got exemptions in which case Rastafarians (there are a few in Poland) and various other religious groups who use substances currently prohibited would justifiably expect an exemption from substance laws too.


At the time of the change in Czech law, several people said to me (none of them drinkers or smokers especially) that people in Poland can deal with certain freedoms less well and require strong laws to compensate for a lower inner self-discipline and rationality than Czechs. I thought that's a bit extreme at the time however there may well be something in that. And by the way, some did enjoy communism just as some today support very controlling political parties.

Some churches use Ribena instead of wine for communion

I've heard of that. Most insist on wine though. At least one religion uses a drug called DMT in their ceremonies and of course, closer to the thread topic, one well known one uses marijuana.

The Matter of the Most Holy Eucharist

The wine that is used in the most sacred celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice must be natural, from the fruit of the grape, pure and incorrupt, not mixed with other substances.During the celebration itself, a small quantity of water is to be mixed with it. Great care should be taken so that the wine intended for the celebration of the Eucharist is well conserved and has not soured. It is altogether forbidden to use wine of doubtful authenticity or provenance, for the Church requires certainty regarding the conditions necessary for the validity of the sacraments...

You would not be going to Carrefour for the 20 zloty special :-) I somehow doubt Ribena is used as the base is cranberry which is not a grape.

Check the thread title - last posts are off-topic

At the moment, there's a strong possibility that coffee shops are going to open later this year or early next year just down the road (really only a short drive from several Polish cities) in Berlin. Marijuana is more or less legal there; it's freely available in public (Hasenheide and the wonderful Görlitzerpark, also I noticed dealers last Sunday standing on Skalitzerstrasse by the u bahn and also in the pocket park on Fugger Eck); it's generally good quality and the quantities (at Görli anyway) are reliable. Easy to get wholesale quantities too.

Most importantly, there are no real border checks between Berlin/Poland. The train is cheap, the bus is even cheaper and you can be home in Warsaw in 5 hours or Poznan in 2ish.

People can rail about how they disapprove of this that or the other, but some things can't be stopped so easily once a ball is rolling. Better to apply excise duty, vat etc and bring this already existing sector of the economy into the mainstream. Whether the cost of alcohol treatment or the other direct or indirect costs of alcohol, like the high levels of alcohol related crime, child neglect etc are covered by those taxes is a moot point. But if there is an existing social cost to marijuana use, why not recoup some of that in the same way that we do with alcohol?

Poland would lose nothing by legalising it (they may have to one day anyway, depending on how the EU develops) and everything to lose from the present policy of allowing alcohol to be more freely available than marijuana. As a policeman said to me during the decriminalisation debate a few years ago, he'd rather go into a room full of pot smokers than a room full of drunks.

By the way, Warszawski, your last post is mostly a word for word quote from a particular source. Don't you think you should mention that?

According to the Mod it is off topic.

It is rather bizarre certain folk always seen to have a need to make negative comments about the Catholic church.

Schengen is about freedom of movement not illegal importation of illegal substances, Jon it is not very astute of you to suggest people could buy drugs in one country and import them illegally into another. Marijuana is banned in Poland and you should respect the Polish laws as a foreigner.

Agreed 100% or go where your kind of laws are.

Exactly if marijuana users wish to partake they can travel to places where it is legal to smoke until their hearts are content, rather than breaking the law in Poland. According to smurf the stuff is not addictive so there will be no comedown or desire to smoke more after their visit. A cheap ryanair flight to a toking zone has got to be better than running the gauntlet of being busted and getting a criminal record.

Been to Temat Rzeka on a sunny day recently? Just breath in that delightful reefer carried on the breeze, just people enjoying themselves :)

Who said it was? Though freedom of goods is part of the EU's four freedoms and some day in the future policies about intoxicants will need to be harmonised to iron out inconsistencies and eliminate opportunities for organised crime.


It's very astute indeed Warszawski. Perhaps you're also suggesting that the border guards are 'not very astute' since they predicted this would happen back in 2006. Anyway, it isn't 'importing' since that concept is now largely an irrelevance when moving personal items between Poland and Germany. Fortunately we no longer have a border and only some outdated laws remain to be removed as the campaigners want to do. Much better to be practical about it and have a unified policy. The big question is whether that policy should be joined up thinking and realistic or something from the past that didn't really work well ever and is now at best an ostrich mentality pretending there isn't a respectable market for it and at worst has created a situation where organised crime in Poland or businesses outside Poland grab all the money from that market.


Very hard to say what being a foreigner has to do with anything. Are you suggesting that a foreigner should only buy from Polish dealers rather than get a better deal in a nearby city?


Sounds a lovely place. Much the same as some of the bars on the other side of the river a few years ago - the city (during the PiS administration) licensed some bars for their cronies to run but didn't allocate any budget for policing them. The relatively easily available marijuana made for a friendly peaceful atmosphere however the lack of police enabled other problems among the people who weren't smoking pot so as soon as the kaczynski gang were out of office the situation was sorted and there's no longer a lawless atmosphere.

Incidentally there's plenty growing further down the river bank but it gets picked as soon as it's ripe. You'll notice it if you walk from the main road to the naturist beach at Błota.

Marvellous Jon - on behalf of all liberals on this board I thank you, and dog and myself will be taking the Berlin express really soon :)


Nah - not if the law is an ass.

That's the whole issue really. Should we have a law that reflects reality or one from decades ago that doesn't.

Well its the wrong side of the river what do you expect.

A bit of an oxymoron as you are suggesting you currently partake in criminal activities.


You may want to respect the law for what it is instead of converting it to your own agenda.

So John when you smoke dope in Poland you are on the same level as a drunk driver, how do you feel about that?

ó

Tell that to the folks in Saska Kępa


Hard to know how you figure that one out. Did I say I import it?


So you 'may want' to respect any law you disagree with rather than lobbying for change?


Your silliness knows no bounds sometimes. a. Did I say I smoke dope in Poland or b. Do you think smoking a joint, say, at home is the same as getting in a ton of metal with an engine while using a dangerous intoxicant?

Of course your daft drunk driving analogy falls at the first hurdle. If I were to use marijuana in Poland I would be harming nobody including myself. A drunk driver however is risking her or his life as well as that of others. So Warszawski, by your logic, when you exceed the speed limit by 2km per hour you are on the same level as a serial rapist, how do you feel about that.

Fortunately there are speed cameras acting as a deterrent for those who break the speed laws.

Art 62.1 possession of any drug by 3 years of imprisonment, should also act as a deterrent for those who you suggest could illegally smuggle drugs into Poland.

If you where to use marijuana, we can safely say you are knowledgeable of the use of marijuana in Poland.


If you where to smoke a joint at your home in Warsaw you would be in possesion of an illegal substance by Polish law which is a criminal act just like drunk driving.