The possession and consumption of cannabis were recently largely legalized in the Federal Republic of Germany. Although there are maximum quantities that you can carry with you, there are hardly any other significant restrictions. This is a thorn in the side of Deutsche Bahn, for example.

Within Germany you are allowed to carry a maximum of 25 grams of cannabis with you. This also includes public transport including airplanes. With the latter, however, there is a special situation in that this is only legal on domestic flights, while carrying “weed” is still punishable on international flights. When it comes to long-distance bus and rail transport, it all depends on which country you are coming from or which state you are traveling to. Carrying them is completely legal within Germany.

Just because you can have cannabis “ready to smoke” in your pocket doesn’t mean you can smoke a joint in front of or in the train station. Under criminal law, absolutely nothing can happen to you. This is likely to be massively disruptive to Deutsche Bahn, because it has announced that it wants to prohibit the consumption of cannabis on train stations, platforms and station forecourts on the basis of house law if these belong to the DB. To this end, a change to the house rules is being prepared, which will come into force shortly.

Before the change in the law, the Federal Police, which is responsible for protecting train stations and trains in Germany, still had tough options. For example, criminal charges could be filed in the event of illegal possession or consumption. This often resulted in a criminal conviction by a court. This is exactly what is now no longer possible, provided that the maximum quantities and the minimum age are adhered to. So the deterrent simply disappears.

Deutsche Bahn believes that it has already found a solution for this: Anyone who believes that they still have to smoke cannabis on DB premises despite the joint ban under house law should be banned from the premises. Technically, this only applies to the train stations and not to the trains, but you cannot get on the train without entering the station.

Absurd: Deutsche Bahn handles the ban on smoking tobacco products at train stations much more laxly than, for example, the Austrian Federal Railways. In Austria, the former smoking areas at most stops have been completely banned from the platforms and, if at all, relocated to the station forecourt. In Germany there are still many smoking areas on train platforms. There are currently no plans to completely abolish this. The new “cannabis regulation” now means that it depends on what you smoke: Anyone who inhales cigarettes, pipes or even Cuban cigars does not run the risk of being banned from the house. Anyone who smokes a joint is doing so legally from a criminal point of view, but will soon violate the railway's joint ban and risk having to walk on foot in the future because there could be a ban on entering DB stations.

It is still unclear whether the DB security employees will receive instructions in the future that they should check exactly what passengers are smoking in the smoking areas or at the station forecourt, if it even belongs to Deutsche Bahn...