The Finnish Green Party will embark on a comprehensive plan to legalize cannabis in this Scandinavian country, reports the Euractiv portal. The Greens intend to conduct a comprehensive survey of legislation in this area, in the light of new findings about the plant and the changing attitude towards it. The direction was adopted by the Greens, which holds 20 seats in the 200-member Finnish parliament, at the party’s congress on Sunday.

In the first step of the cannabis legalization plan, the Greens will focus on decriminalizing possession and decriminalizing the cultivation of this plant for personal use. The proposal was made by the party’s youth organization, which warns that under current legislation one in four Finns is a criminal, and the sale of cannabis on the black market costs the state coffers millions in uncollected taxes each year.

“In this respect, too, the world is changing. New perspectives are coming from Portugal, Canada, Norway and Denmark. We are committed to facts based on thorough research on this matter,“said the interior minister and president of the green party after the congress Maria Ohisalo.

Otherwise, the Greens will not have an easy task. The issue is likely to cause tension between them and the Centrist Party, which strongly opposes not only the legalization but also the decriminalization of cannabis possession. Both parties sit in a 5-member coalition that currently leads the country.