The Danish Government presented this Wednesday a package of measures to definitively end the sale of cannabis in the free commune of Christiania, after several fatal shootings in recent months in that neighborhood of the capital due to clashes between gangs.
The last episode occurred at the end of August and caused the death of a 30-year-old young man in a shooting in which more people were injured, leading for the first time in half a century of Christiania’s history to its residents to ask the authorities to close “Pusher Street” (the street of camels).
This street was created at the end of the 80s by the “Christianites” so that the trade would not expand throughout the neighborhood and has survived several temporary closures and hundreds of police operations to keep the sellers away, without success until now. .
The new legal package aims, apart from increasing the presence of agents in the area, to toughen the fines for sellers but also for buyers, who could face prison terms in case of repeat offences.
“These measures are the first step in the direction of a permanent closure of Pusher Street that seeks to end the demand on the street, while we decide what will be there when it is closed,” the Danish Minister of Justice explained today at a press conference. , Peter Hummelgaard.
The social democrat has defended that a definitive solution for the street may involve the construction of shops or homes and has not been in favor of a possible legalization of cannabis, as neighboring Germany recently approved or several successive mayors of Copenhagen have defended from the same game.
Denmark introduced a pilot program for the use of medicinal cannabis five years ago that is still in operation, but it is in Christiania where cannabis derivatives have been freely sold, since its inception 52 years ago, when it was founded by a group of young people who occupied about former military barracks and proclaimed a free city of anarchist inspiration.
The Danish authorities have tolerated the sale of cannabis on Pusher Street to varying degrees, but the increase in violence in recent years has led to increased police activity and has ended up overcoming the resistance of “Christianites” to the closure of a street considered the biggest center of sale and consumption of cannabis in northern Europe.
