Manuel Mekideche is the CEO of Greenplace, a shop specialising in CBD. Carlos Paulos is the director of party drugs awareness NGO 4motion.

Teodor Georgiev: How will the to allow cannabis cultivation at home impact consumption?

Manuel Mekideche: I don’t believe it will change people’s consumption. I just believe that it is not really a good idea [to have this legislation] in the form of home growing. It will be tough for some people who will misgrow, and they will want to consume but won’t have the result they want. Then they will probably look at the black market.

It’s great to have legalisation, but I believe [this approach] is not the best way. You can [instead] create a dispensary and have total control of the growing and the quality--and make sure you have people who can actually give you some advice about what you are smoking. And then you create jobs. That benefits the economy more than allowing people to grow at home. You can grow tobacco in Luxembourg but nobody does it. You won't see someone say, ‘Hey, have you seen my tobacco? It’s as good as Marlboro.’

Carlos Paulos: The proposal to give accessibility to cannabis is a good one. People who want to consume cannabis will have the possibility to take care of a plant, and this gives you responsibility, but you also have a relationship with what you are doing and what you are consuming.

We already are in a society that uses a lot of cannabis in different ways, so it’s not something new. We have home growers already, for sure. So when I say [we are] going in the right direction, I mean that this [draft law] is also taking some people out of an illegal situation, and that’s a good thing for me.

On the other hand, not everybody will have the possibility to start home growing. I think many people don’t have the knowledge or don’t want to because they just want to use it. Is this change bringing us to an increase in consumption? I don’t think so. The major difficulty in changing the legal context is that the only possibility in the proposal, for the moment, is to smoke at home, and that’s not a good thing.

Why not?

CP: Because when we’re talking about cannabis in a social and recreative context, it’s a substance that is consumed to share moments with other people. It’s like alcohol; it’s a social substance. So only allowing to use it at home, for me, is problematic.

Everybody will agree in saying that if you want to drink, go to the pub, and have a drink with your friends, and nobody would recommend that you drink alone at home.

MM: Thank you for saying that. Cannabis is a social drug; you want to share something and have fun with it. It’s not to isolate yourself. People start to isolate themselves because the THC [psychoactive component of cannabis] is too much. That’s the problem when you don’t have control over the portion of THC in the product. You need to have a certain level that makes sure that people stay social while consuming.

How do you evaluate the government’s home growing legislation?

MM: They take it too [lightly] and in a political point of view: ‘Let’s legalise it, so we can get some more people to vote for us.’ They only care about medical cannabis, but when it comes to recreative use, they don’t. That’s why it took so long for them to do something. Otherwise, it would’ve been legal for a long time.

They import their cannabis from Canada, but they’re telling us that we can grow it from home, instead of building some sort of schools and teaching people how to grow. That would create jobs and business and, at the same time, educate people.

CP: The change of the legal framework will take place in several steps. At the moment, we have access to the illegal market, so you don’t know what you’re using, except if you come to us [4motion], where you can test your substances.

You have advantages if you have a regulated market, and you also have to additionally make efforts to educate people about the benefits and the risks of using cannabis.

I think doing this [transition] in several steps is good because it gives us time to monitor and to follow up how this phenomenon will develop in our society. One big benefit of giving a legal framework to access cannabis is that it will push this topic further away from being a taboo.

Medical cannabis use has a concrete legislative framework. How do you evaluate it?

CP: When we talk about medical cannabis, there is not necessarily a difference in the product, but it’s the follow-up from a doctor and having medical assistance. That is the big difference from consuming something on your own with information from a salesman.

MM: I disagree with you. What you’re saying is right, but at the same time it’s wrong because you need information from people who know about cannabis, and many people here don’t, including the doctors.

Cannabis is medical in its essence. The problem is the lack of knowledge [about cannabis variety]. You get the indica, which is more likely to calm you down, and the sativa, which stimulates your brain. In Germany you have almost 60 different types of variety that are targeting specific needs.

What gap in cannabis knowledge do we see in Luxembourg?

MM: I don’t know why people in our society love to put things in a category: it’s either medical or recreative. But that’s a wrong way of seeing things. It is the way you’re going to use marijuana that’s going to make it recreative or medical. And you don’t need a doctor to tell you something that he or she doesn’t know. Because the doctor doesn’t smoke weed or eat it to know the effects of it. That’s the problem in Luxembourg because nobody--in the health ministry or any doctor--can call themselves a cannabis specialist.

CP: You don’t have to be an active consumer to know about the effects if we are talking in a medical context. It’s about doing a follow-up regarding a disease. We’re talking about patients, not about users.

MM: I am sorry, Carlos, but a patient is a user.

CP: We have a different point of view on something, and we don’t disagree, but you’re mixing up the points of view. The difference is that when we talk about patients, they have a follow-up from a professional. And if you’re a user, you can use it of course as self-medication, but you’re not your own patient.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.