Consumer Choice Center Makes Headlines and Promotes “Smart Cannabis Legalization” in Luxembourg

During a three-day visit of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg in late April 2019, Consumer Choice Center staff met and held significant meetings with various policymakers from the ruling parties, opposition parties, community groups, labor unions, and religious leaders in order to provide lessons learned from the Canadian experience of legalizing cannabis.

Luxembourg’s ruling coalition announced last fall it would potentially become the first European country to fully legalize the recreational use of cannabis.

Due to the experience of the Consumer Choice Center in advocating for “smart” cannabis policy in Canada, CCC North American Affairs Manager David Clement and Deputy Director Yaël Ossowski offered lessons from Canada’s legalization of cannabis in October 2018, including both successes and failures that Luxembourg should aim to either emulate or avoid.

Beginning with a press conference at the Press House in Luxembourg City, Clement and Ossowski addressed five major concerns stemming from Canada’s legalization law and how it has impacted consumers:

  1. Allowing branding and advertising so consumers are more informed
  2. Avoiding excessive taxation so consumers will stay off the black market
  3. Avoiding overregulation of production causing supply issues
  4. Allowing public consumption in select areas so lower income consumers who rent their residences can also consume cannabis
  5. Allowing non-residents in Luxembourg the ability to purchase legal cannabis

Their comments and interviews were featured in all of Luxembourg’s major newspapers, including many front page stories, and made the top of the evening news.

PRESS CONFERENCE

MEETINGS

After the press conference, CCC staff met with representatives of the local chamber of commerce, Health Committee members from the Prime Minister’s Democratic Party, the LCGB, Luxembourg’s largest labor union, the Youth Information Center, the ADR Party, and the LSAP, the socialist party with power in the coalition government.

The next step will be to directly consult with the government to help craft its cannabis regulations, hopefully toward a model that promotes competition, safety, and helps stamp out the black market.

TeLEVISION INTERVIEW

The Consumer Choice Center went to Luxembourg to provide policymakers, civil society leaders, religious groups, and labor unions with lessons on the legalization of cannabis from Canada.

The CCC promoted the idea of “smart” legalization that would embrace consumer access, competition, safety, and eradication of the black market.

This report aired on Luxembourg’s RTL station on the evening news.

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