GERMANY – Every day in Berlin’s Gorlitzer Park, dozens of dealers – many of them undocumented immigrants from western and northern Africa – offer weed for sale. Last year, 1,568 arrests were made between January 1 and July 20. Of those, 1,159 were for infractions against the narcotics act and 170 against residency laws.
“We have no policy of tolerating the drug trade in the park,” according to one of Berlin’s police officers. “Several patrols go through it every day. If people don’t notice them, it’s because they’re often in plainclothes.”
The 35-acre green space in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district is on the site of a former railyard and coal depot. It was transformed into a park in the early 1990s. To reduce the risk of getting arrested, dealers bury their stash in the ground in small, shallow holes and work in teams. Many of the dealers come from cultures where growing and consuming cannabis is common and widely accepted, even when it’s illegal. However, what they sell at the park is European-grown, not imported.
“The marijuana here isn’t the same as what we have in Africa,” said one dealer “African ganja is much stronger.”
Dealers said they didn’t have any other work options because without residency permits they can’t be legally employed. The majority of locals in Berlin are not disturbed by the practice as they make up the vast majority of the dealer’s customers. Weed is the second most popular recreational substance next to alcohol in Germany.
“We’re all hoping to find women with European passports willing to marry us,” said another “That’s the only way we could get legal status.”
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