A former slaughterhouse in Dresden, now home of cannabis plants.
They were planted in November, with the first harvest due in January which will mark the first legal, large scale harvest of cannabis on German soil.
The leaves will be turned into cannabis flour and used in legal medical marijuana products.
The company behind the plantation is called Demecan.
The Berlin-based company was one of three to win tenders from the German cannabis agency to produce cannabis in Germany. The two other companies are still working on their production.
“It is actually something very new. It is a unique facility that we have here in Germany. One of the only German facilities to cultivate medicinal cannabis,” said Constantin von der Groeben, managing director of Demecan
“And what we see here is our first batch of medicinal cannabis that we are currently cultivating. This facility will then, next year, output one tonne of dried cannabis flour. So, a thousand kilograms.”
Medical cannabis products were legalised by the Federal Government in Germany in 2016.
But the new government, under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, that took over in December 2021, wants to go a step further and legalise the sale of cannabis for recreational use to adults in specialised, licensed shops.
It would be similar to the legislation that is in place in Canada and some US states.
In Berlin, several start-ups with a cannabis focus have been founded over the last few years.
One is the Sanity Group which specialises in medical cannabis products as well as self-care products containing cannabis CBD oil, which is extracted from the cannabis plant.
Fabian Friede, co-founder of Sanity Group, welcomes the move towards legalisation.
“So, I think overall, on the macro level, the direction is the right one. I think moving towards recreational use of cannabis is awesome. Also, easing up the prescription of medicinal cannabis is awesome,” he says.
“But as you already said, it is all about the details. And therefore, I think we are super curious, and the waiting time is the hardest because we would love to start preparing and of course, we do that already. Preparing in every direction, because we don’t know exactly in which direction it is going.”
Source: Euronews.net
Image: Unsplashed
