“Citizen’s Initiative” Seeks to Legalize Marijuana Across the European Union

European citizens of voting age can
submit “citizen’s initiatives” that, if they clear a million
signatures, require EU lawmakers to propose legislation.  The
initiatives need
a minimum number of signatures from at least seven different EU
countries, they have to be formed by groups of at least seven
European citizens, each from a different member state, and,
unsurprisingly for Europe, organizations of individuals can’t
launch initiatives on their own.

Last November, the EU accepted the “Weed Like to Talk
Initiative,” which seeks to legalize (and regulate!) marijuana in
Europe. Last week, the initiative’s backers started collecting
signatures. Via their “manifesto”:

Liberticidal policies pursued in certain Member States
turn quiet citizens into offenders or criminals, while other
European citizens are free to use cannabis in their Member
States. The question of coherence and discrimination is worth
asking.

The ECI Weed like to talk aims at making the EU
solve this problem by adopting a common policy on the control and
regulation of cannabis production, use and sale.

Cannabis use is a matter of every citizen’s freedom
of opinion and right of control over his or her own body, as in the
case of alcohol and tobacco. It has been shown many times that the
health risks of cannabis are much lower than that of legal drugs
used for recreational purposes (alcohol, tobacco) and medical
purposes (pain killers, psychoactive medication). Yet cannabis is
still considered as a narcotic drug and therefore a “punishable
offence” by the United Nations (2), although this classification is
more and more disputed (3).

Drug trafficking is in no way the cause, but rather the result, of
repressive State policies: the troubles it brings are the logical
consequences of drug prohibition, not of an intrinsic “evil”
character of cannabis.

Emphasis is in the original. While the “marijuana is less
dangerous than alcohol” may be groan-worthy for those worried about
the desire
of statists to impose even
more restrictions on alcohol consumption, I am partial to the
word “liberticidal,” which it never occurred to me was a word that
existed.

No country in the European Union has completely legalized
marijuana, the way Colorado, Washington, or Uruguay have, though a
handful have decriminalized it. Portugal did so for marijuana and
harder drugs more than a decade ago,
leading to a plunge in drug use in the country. The Netherlands
has
sort-of legalized marijuana, but still has a “drugs are bad”
attitude even if the government’s decided largely to look the other
way.

The “Weed Like to Talk” initiative has a year to collect the
million signatures it needs to compel EU lawmakers to act, making
it a harder task than a White House “We the People” petition but
also apparently a far more substantive one.