Hashish Use Amongst Teenagers Flat After German Partial Legalisation, However Medical Market Continues Speedy Growth

Germany’s Hashish Act (CanG) has not led to a rise in use amongst younger individuals, in keeping with new peer-reviewed analysis including to the rising physique of proof contradicting the harms predicted by the reform’s critics. 

A brand new research printed on July 01, 2026 within the Journal of Well being Monitoring by researchers on the Federal Institute of Public Well being (BIÖG) and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), discovered no statistically important change in hashish use amongst younger individuals since CanG got here into power in April 2024.

It comes as the federal government is inspecting proposals to limit Germany’s medical hashish sector over allegations it’s being ‘abused’ by leisure customers. Earlier this month, it additionally moved to limit sufferers from accessing medical hashish by its statutory medical insurance scheme, banning flower and imposing a compulsory six-month course of accepted medicines earlier than receiving extracts. 

The RKI knowledge builds on the state-mandated Ekocan analysis and extra unbiased evaluation in reducing in opposition to the premise on which these restrictions relaxation.

What does the RKI report present?

Between 2023 and 2025, the years instantly earlier than and after partial legalisation, the information confirmed no statistically important change in 12-month hashish use amongst feminine and male adolescents or younger ladies. 

In 2025, 4.6% of feminine adolescents and seven.2% of male adolescents aged 12 to 17 reported utilizing hashish within the earlier 12 months, each marginally decrease than in 2023, although to not a statistically important diploma. Amongst younger ladies aged 18 to 25, prevalence was 18.8%, additionally broadly flat.

Hashish use amongst younger males aged 18 to 25, nevertheless, rose considerably from 26.9% in 2023 to 31.6% in 2025. 

Whereas on the face of it, this seems to substantiate critics’ issues, the authors state explicitly that they consider that is a part of a wider pattern and never associated to partial legalisation. 

The rise, they argue, ‘doesn’t symbolize a brand new improvement however reasonably continues a rising pattern that has been noticed since 2008’. They cite the Epidemiological Habit Survey (ESA) which discovered a rise amongst 18- to 59-year-olds from 2012 to 2021, with an extra rise predicted ‘no matter any legislative adjustments.’ 

“Total, there are not any indications of any short-term results of partial legalisation on the prevalence of hashish use amongst younger individuals,” they concluded. 

The outcome echoes a broader image Enterprise of Hashish has tracked for the reason that reform, pointing to secure consumption, a pointy statistical fall in recorded hashish offences, and no wastewater sign of a post-legalisation surge. 

Medical market worth collapse

Although the information more and more helps the conclusion that utilization among the many normal inhabitants has remained broadly flat, the most recent knowledge from Bloomwell Group’s quarterly hashish ‘barometer’ means that the medical market stays in a state of fast change. 

Drawing by itself six-figure affected person and seven-figure prescription quantity database, Bloomwell’s newest replace exhibits that the common worth of medical hashish flower fell by roughly €0.50 within the second quarter of 2026 to round €4 a gram, down from roughly €12 in early 2023, with the most cost effective flower reaching €2. 

Flower priced above €10 a gram has, in Bloomwell’s phrases, ‘nearly disappeared’ from specialised German pharmacies. The share of flower equipped at below €4 a gram rose from 13.5% within the fourth quarter of 2025 to 71.9% within the second quarter of 2026. 

This contrasts sharply with the €19 a gram paid on common for hashish flower by the statutory well being scheme (GKV). As we reported earlier this month, the removing of hashish flower from the GKV scheme was a part of a wider effort to scale back medical insurance spending, and this worth disparity provides the controversial measure some context. 

Niklas Kouparanis, Bloomwell’s Co-Founder and Chief Government, argued that chronically ailing sufferers on established remedy ‘are actually being overlooked within the chilly,’ and that ‘innovation and telemedicine should not be perceived as opponents within the well being system, however as dependable companions.’ 

Within the second quarter of 2026, Bloomwell’s affected person knowledge exhibits that the relative amount of flower ordered was almost 5000% greater than that of the primary quarter of 2024, the final full quarter earlier than CanG was enforced. 

Because the third quarter of 2025, ordered volumes have risen round 50% every quarter. Roughly 200 tonnes of medical hashish had been imported into Germany in 2025, which Bloomwell estimates at a few quarter of the illicit market. 

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Geographical divide persists, however is closing quick

The share of sufferers relative to inhabitants runs 29.6% above the nationwide common in Saarland and 27.6% in Bavaria, in opposition to 31.3% under in Brandenburg and 28.3% under in Saxony. 

This disparity is starting to even out, nevertheless. Bavaria’s share has fallen from 150.5% above the common earlier than April 2024 to 12.1% above within the 12 months to June 2026, whereas Saxony-Anhalt has climbed from 83.8% under to only 9.7% under over the identical interval. 

Japanese states are catching up quickest, with affected person progress components per 100,000 inhabitants of 314 in Saxony-Anhalt, 184 in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and 138 in Brandenburg, in opposition to 25 in Saarland and 17 in Bavaria.

The vary of medical hashish flower out there reached 1,157 distinct merchandise within the second quarter of 2026, sourced not solely from Europe and Canada however from Australia, Asia, South America and Africa. 

Non-irradiated flower, favoured by sufferers and prescribers, rose from 66.2% of provide within the second quarter of 2025 to 98.6% a 12 months later, whereas common THC content material held round 25%. 

Of the 271 pharmacies specialised in medical hashish, Bloomwell studies that 49.6% of sufferers dwell greater than ten kilometres from the closest, and 6 federal states don’t have any a couple of, leaving telemedicine and mail-order allotting to hold provide into the gaps. The affected person base can be skewing youthful, the most typical age band shifting from 33–37 earlier than the reform to 23–27 right this moment.

EUDA raises knowledge issues

Regardless of these largely constructive findings, the European Union Medicine Company’s (EUDA) lately printed 2026 European Drug Report notes that the information out there on the German market could not present the complete image. 

It notes that in Germany particularly, therapy traits are ‘affected by the close to disappearance of referrals from the legal justice system following laws change in February 2024,’. 

In essence, court docket and police referrals, one of many fundamental pipelines that traditionally fed individuals into drug therapy, has largely closed since possession was decriminalised. 

Any post-reform fall in therapy demand subsequently displays a change in how individuals arrive at therapy, not essentially what number of want it. 

Elsewhere, home-growing exercise in Germany, it data, ‘isn’t systematically monitored, making the size of uptake unclear’, an admission that the official statistics can’t see what Ekocan recognized because the fastest-growing provide channel, with self-cultivation rising from 5.4% to 21.4% of shoppers between early 2024 and late 2025. 

The company valued Europe’s hashish market at greater than €12 billion and located hashish now accounts for a 3rd of all specialist drug therapy admissions throughout the EU, Norway and Türkiye.