It may not be Switzerland’s political capital, but it could easily be its cannabis capital. We’re talking about Zurich, one of the country’s largest cities and its main financial hub. Given its influence, it makes sense that cannabis-related developments there to draw attention. And this latest one is significant. Following a vote held in March, the government decided to take a key step: extending the scientific pilot program for regulated cannabis in order to keep gathering data before moving into the debate over national legalization.
Zurich launched Züri Can – Cannabis with Responsibility, a scientific initiative designed to study how consumer behavior changes when people have access to legal cannabis within a regulated system. The results were so robust and consistent that the country chose to double down on the initiative.
What Is Züri Can, Why Does It Matter, and Why Is It Working?
Although Switzerland still prohibits the general commercial sale of cannabis for adult use, the country has been adopting an increasingly pragmatic stance toward the plant. In recent years, the federal government has authorized a series of scientific pilot programs to study what happens when access to cannabis is regulated in a controlled manner.
The logic behind the strategy is, forgive the pun, logical: before drafting a final law, real data is needed. It also requires acknowledging that certain behaviors already exist among the population and that, rather than simply banning them, governments should determine the safest way to regulate them. This is the view of Andreas Hauri, Zurich’s Director of Health, who acknowledges that “thousands of people consume cannabis in Zurich. We must acknowledge this reality and act accordingly.”
Zurich was one of the first cities to move forward with this approach and today leads one of the most closely watched cannabis experiments …
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Author: Camila Berriex / High Times
