Germany partially legalized cannabis in April, allowing adults to possess substantial quantities and cultivate up to three plants at home.

But for those who just want to buy it, there are now what's known as cannabis clubs, which became legal at the start of this month.

Well, I talked to Nils Harbers about this, founder of Mariana Cannabis, which is an umbrella organization for future cannabis clubs across Germany.

And I started by asking him how these clubs work.

A cannabis club is a club organization, so it's kind of complicated because of the EU law.

That's why the German government made it non-commercial, non-profit clubs.

So basically, you have a bunch of guys.

That's the ideal goal of the German government.

You have a bunch of guys who grow together and harvest together and then deploy the harvest under all the members.

Or smoke the harvest, I guess.

I mean, you're a club of, you can be up to 500 members, I understand.

And as you have pointed out, these are not-for-profit clubs.

Is there a regulator to keep an eye on you all?

So it's the club laws.

In Germany, it's called Verein.

It's the club laws, and you have to do some finance compliance.

But it's kind of difficult also now in the first month for the German government.

I think this is some kind of strength for our umbrella organization, because then the How many clubs are there?

I was just going to ask that question across Germany at the moment.

It's kind of difficult to tell because not all clubs are registered yet.

For example, in Hamburg, Hamburg has 1.8 million inhabitants, and there are only 12 registered clubs.

So probably between 100 and 200.

Since cannabis was legalized in April in Germany, what difference has that made?

What have you seen in terms of uptake?

Mainly the difference in how people see cannabis.

Now you can smell it everywhere.

People smoke it in the streets.

So it's basically just your mindset.

Lots of people don't care anymore about the stigmatization behind cannabis.

Has it reduced illegal sales?

Do you know?

Is So that's the problem, because now cannabis is legal, but there are not so many ways to get cannabis.

So I think now the illegal market, the black market, even profits from it, because now the cannabis social clubs take some time to get the license to start growing.

So probably it is going to take more than six months, at least, till there is some data on the black market where we can see some reduction.