Erwin Rüddel has never smoked weed. Or so he thinks. The CDU politician no longer knows that exactly. There was this one holiday, he says, with school friends in Amsterdam. He was just 18 years old. He vaguely remembers a stranger offering the boys a cigarette at a party. They would all have pulled it. But he no longer knows whether there was cannabis in it. "In any case, I didn't feel anything."

Since then, says Rüddel, he has not tried it again. Sure, I've thought about it, but the right opportunity never came up.

Access to all STERN PLUS content and articles from the print magazine

ad-free

Already registered?