Legalising Cannabis in Berlin?

Let’s get to the point/ Let’s roll another joint/ And let’s head on down the road/ There’s somewhere I got to go.
Well, it’s already the case in Amsterdam and it seems a large number of people in Berlin do drugs anyway, so yesterday’s news didn’t really come as a surprise to me. What did surprise me however was that all this is happening on our front door. We live in Neukölln, a predominantly Turkish area of South-East Berlin. There are delicious kebab shops open all night and sometimes we are lucky enough to witness a Turkish wedding, when music and drums fill the street as well as clapping, dancing and car horns blaring a big “congratulations” to the happy couple. The outfits are lovely, all glizty and sparkling away and confetti covers the cobbled streets.
A few streets down from us is the Gorlitzer Park, of drug dealing fame. The first time we walked through we were slightly taken aback at the gangs of African men who came up to us offering us drugs. I was pretty sure this wasn’t legal behaviour but it was all out in the open and you could see people on the side of the path receiving money for drugs.
As it is our quickest way to get to the other side of the river, we got used to seeing all these men, who would be there from early morning to the wee hours. Outside the park there are the guys who are watching for the police. Further up the road there are one or two men on bicycles, ready to cycle to warn their friends of a raid. It doesn’t feel unsafe, it just feels normal. We like taking our guests through the park towards the Berlin Wall that is still standing to let them get a feel of the differing sides of Berlin.
I have often wondered what these Africans are doing here. Sometimes we walk past fifty of them, just hanging out. Do they really make enough money for everyone to eat, to survive? Day after day, they sit and hope people will buy. If no one bought anything from them then surely they wouldn’t be there. And if I know about them, obviously everyone else knows too. Including the police. In fact, according to yesterday’s Global Post’s article (http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/130925/cannabis-kreuzberg-legalize): Although police have raided the park more than 60 times during the first half of this year and filed charges against some 170 people, the roundups have had little impact on the drug trade.
So what is the solution? According to our borough’s new mayor Monika Herrmann, the way to clean up the park is to make cannabis legal and regulate it through state-owned cafés. An interesting idea, especially in this hip area of Berlin where there seem to be ten cafés on each road already. And what would happen to the African guys? Surely they would just move on to another area, slightly further from the centre of town? I will let you know what happens and if I can no longer show my guests what we call our famous “drugs park”.