[sebst]

Could someone with a background in law explain the advantage of a reclassification over imposing the same penalties on this particular group of substances?

Because outside of the legal definition, I would not call those “weapons” in everyday language. They are a thing on their own…

[Klaus23]

I don't have a background in law, but here are some suggestions. The German penal code often imposes harsher punishments for the same offense if a weapon was involved. Rape, for example, carries a minimum sentence of two years. If a weapon is present, it is a minimum of three years. If the weapon is used, the minimum sentence is 5 years.

Before the change, date rape drugs would have fallen under a minimum of three years because of a separate clause.

Classifying them as weapons would also affect crimes other than rape.

Additionally, if legal substances can be used as date rape drugs, classifying them as weapons would give the police more authority to act in certain situations.

[greggyb]

One avenue, couched in specifics of US law, but I presume the ideas have analogs in Germany's legal system:

A battery occurs when a harmful physical contact occurs. Contact with a weapon is pretty much by definition battery.

The use of such a drug in the commission of rape or other violent crimes would then be a very easily proven case. If the substance is present in a victim's body, then battery has occured, basically by definition.

Given that rape and other violent crimes that are committed with the use of such drugs may not leave other physical signs on the body of the victim, then this may be the only physical evidence.

The examination for presence of such a drug in the bloodstream is also much less intrusive than for a typical rape kit exam.

There's nothing binary or black and white in such investigations, so this is an additional avenue to provide evidence to support the prosecution of these violent criminals.

[jojobas]

> If the substance is present in a victim's body

There is a possibility that the accused has nothing to do with it, you still have to prove it wasn't some third party or the victim who procured and took the drug.

[purplepatrick]

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Germany has a written legal code. This could mean that punishments are more strictly classified than under a, say, precedence-based common law system. Changing the classification could move these kinds of crimes into harsher punishment bands.

[andrewflnr]

The law being written does not prevent changing it[0]. Someone changed the written law once to add these weapon-specific provisions, they can do it again. And unless the optimal provisions for date rape drugs are identical to those for weapons, they probably should do it again.

[0] It might actually be easier to change a properly written law. I hate our stupid precedent-based system in the US.

[impossiblefork]

I think weapons is the right term. It's a method of chemical restraint. Combat gases with similar functions are regarded as weapons too.

[wongarsu]

I wasn't able to find any information on how exactly that reclassification is happening. Everyone just quotes that one sentence by the Federal Minister of the Interior that they are doing it.

My best guess is that they don't see a chance to get a law to this effect passed (see also the note about the other related bill being postponed), so they are taking some measure that's in the existing jurisdiction of the ministry. That might be the ministry passing regulations to this effect, or the federal police trying to declare date rape drugs as illegal weapons

[neetle]

They fall into the same fuzzy area as chemical weapons imo. They have a non-standard form factor, sure, but they’re still primarily intended to harm people

[BriggyDwiggs42]

Wait did you just put rape in quotes wtf