At the 2021 CSU party conference in Nuremberg, there was only one request to speak after Markus Söder’s speech. This was a police officer who missed one topic: cannabis. The traffic light parties were just campaigning for legalization, previously there were individual voices in the CSU as to whether Bavaria could be more merciful with a few grams. You have to “confess that we keep young people away from drugs,” said the delegate: “Will you continue to ensure that we don’t give in?” No question, signaled Söder: nod, flat hand movement, zack. That probably meant: No smoking weed!
Now the traffic light rules and struggles to implement the promise, the CSU fights against it. But not Söder, the Minister of the Interior or the Minister of Justice are the spearhead – but Minister of Health Klaus Holetschek. He brings up the topic at short intervals, now alone twice within a few days. First drove the Hanfparade in Berlin, a demonstration. Reason for Holetschek to call for the legalization plans to be stopped immediately: “The inhibition threshold must not be lowered.” Then Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) said in a citizens’ dialogue that he had “never smoked weed himself” and knew people who “weed their brains out”. Template for Holetschek: If Scholz “knows the major health risks of cannabis”, he would have to put the plans on hold.
In government circles, Holetschek’s media “lead management” on the subject is no secret, it was “not specifically agreed” that it turned out. Some in political Munich joke: Since taking office, he has been busy with pandemic politics for a long time, maybe he is getting a little bored. In any case, on the other side – in the pothead lobby – it did not go unnoticed who the new spokesman for the CSU is. Meanwhile, “Mr. Holetschek is screaming,” notes the portal THC Guide, “very loudly”, he spreads “anti-hemp fake news” and is a “concrete head”. In social media, the usual response from cannabis fans to Holetschek’s warnings is different: the accusation of being a “beer lobbyist” and “playing down alcohol, the drug of death”. This is often garnished with photos of the minister’s beer tent – but because there are not an infinite number of them, the folk festival hopper Söder is usually used for illustration.