Croatia opens 400 m2, its first cannabis museum

The first cannabis museum has just opened in the Croatian capital of Zagreb.

The goal? Educating the public about cannabis.

The new museum offers an experiential guide through the history of cannabis along with cultural exhibits covering everything from cannabis-themed music to films.

Theme museums are nothing new in Zagreb, which offers “museums” on themes from hangovers, broken relationships and the 1980s. However, this experience promises to be a little different, precisely because cannabis reform is a contemporary, if not universal, issue.

Visitors are guided through two floors of cannabis history, including how the plant has been used over the past 10,000 years, as well as educational topics such as the uses of medicinal cannabis and the broad benefits of hemp. However, the museum is also dedicated to the topic of leisure use – including warnings about possible health risks during use.

Where is the legalization in Croatia?

In Croatia, as in other European countries, hemp is legal; Medical use is permitted in very limited cases, and possession of small amounts of high THC is decriminalized, but can result in fines of around $700 to $3,000. However, cultivation and sale are severely punished with at least three years in prison.

For most people who care about these issues, this status quo is far from enough. Reform of limited medical legalization came in October 2015 after an MS patient was caught growing his own to try to keep his symptoms in check. Medical cannabis is a good move, but in Croatia and elsewhere, patients still face the risk of being criminalized, especially when their doctors refuse to prescribe the drug.

In February 2020, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) attempted to introduce a bill to parliament to fully legalize the facility, but this failed for a variety of reasons, including the ongoing conservative opposition and, of course, COVID.

The Big Cannabis Stand

Many countries in Europe that have legalized medicinal use are realizing that the current status quo is far from good when it comes to cannabis. The people paying the biggest price for the slow pace of reform are patients, who tend to have larger amounts of the drug on hand if they get caught — or who are so desperate to control their condition that they resort to the more dangerous practice of self-cultivation fall back -Use when they don’t have access to the medical system (for one reason or another).

This is certainly true in places like Germany, Europe’s largest medical market, where 40% of cannabis applications to health insurance companies – meaning patients are referred by doctors – are denied (and for increasingly flimsy reasons, like citing old or outdated medical studies). In such cases, patients are often left with no choice but to try to sue their health insurance companies and get the cannabis from other places, including home growing. That too is very dangerous. Chronically ill palliative care patients do not suddenly stop being ill.

Unlike Croatia, German politicians have now promised to pass a leisure reform law within the next year, but this has been put on hold. Germany already has a cannabis museum in Berlin.

Why is cannabis reform different in Europe?

There are several reasons why cannabis reform is progressing much more slowly within the EU. Unlike Canada, the states of the United States and Mexico, both sovereign and EU courts have been reluctant to rule on the constitutional right to possess and cultivate cannabis. The issue has been watered down by an attempt to shift the conversation onto a predominantly medical track — although CBD reform has begun to take hold.

However, there is another reason that is now paramount: governments legalizing recreational use want a fully legitimate, taxable and accountable industry. While there’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s a sensible way to ensure consumer health, the previous approach has been to deny patients the right to grow their own if health insurance companies refuse to cover the cost. Patients with serious illnesses are usually also at the greatest economic risk and will of course not be able to participate economically in the coming leisure time reform – just because they cannot afford to buy licenses.

Moreover, tragically, even as a stopgap measure, the idea of ​​non-profit patient care collectives is not an issue in the EU (unlike in the American hemisphere).

Education, like museums, public campaigns and social media, and efforts like Croatia’s new Cannabis Museum remain very important. But it is also becoming increasingly clear that they are not enough. A sea change in the education of legislators and politicians, as well as physicians and other agencies, needs to go mainstream.

The time of demonizing the plant and its users is long gone. The ban itself is a museum piece. The time to do it everywhere is now.