Government-led scientific studies from across Europe’s most progressive cannabis markets are solidifying an evidence base suggesting that greater access does not cause greater harm to public health.
Building on Germany’s government-mandated Ekocan reports, officials in the Netherlands recently published their preliminary findings from the country’s ongoing adult-use cannabis experiment.
Alongside these country-wide frameworks, Switzerland’s eight active regional pilot projects continue to provide unique and precisely targeted results.
Earlier this month, researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Lucerne, alongside the cities of Bern, Biel and Lucerne, presented the interim results from the SCRIPT (Safer Cannabis: Research In Pharmacies randomised controlled Trial) pilot.
What is SCRIPT and what are its early findings?
SCRIPT was one of the first five pilot projects to be approved by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) in May 2023, and began in earnest in May 2024.
Initially intended as a three-year randomised control trial, SCRIPT was designed to examine the ‘health and social impacts of regulated cannabis sales in pharmacies’ across the three participating cities.
In December 2025, the FOPH granted a two-year extension, meaning pharmacy sales are now set to run until October 31, 2028, and the study officially concluding at the end of 2029.
The catalogue is due to expand more flower varieties, a cannabis oil and eventually edibles manufactured to the specification in the CanPG draft.
A total of 1,177 existing cannabis users were recruited across Bern (777 participants, five pharmacies), Lucerne (261, three pharmacies) and Biel (139, one pharmacy), who were then split randomly into an immediate-access group of 588 and a waitlisted control group of 589 that gained pharmacy access after six months.
The interim findings were presented at a press conference in Bern on Monday, September 7, 2026, hosted by the city’s Directorate for Education, Social Affairs and Sport and attended by counterparts from Biel and Lucerne.
Even at the sixth-month analysis, SCRIPT has produced meaningful data on some of its core research aims, foremost of which is how legal pharmacy access impacts the illicit market.
In the seven days before their six-month visit, 75% of the access arm had smoked cannabis. More than half (51%) had sourced cannabis from a study pharmacy, but 40% had sourced product from the illicit market. Many participants said they use both, often in the same week.
The control arm, which only had access to illicit supply, saw slightly higher consumption at 83% over the same period.
Researchers designed the study to measure this phenomenon, setting pharmacy prices deliberately higher than the illicit market to gauge what impact this had on consumption.
Notably, those with access to regulated pharmacy products gravitated towards flower alternatives. Over the same week, 27% of the access cohort had used a vape device, with 24% sourced from pharmacies against just 5% from the black market.
This was less pronounced but still meaningful in the oral products category, which had a 6% pharmacy to 2% illicit split. Raw flower was the only delivery method in which the illicit market was a preferred source, due to its lower price and higher potency.
Dr Reto Auer, the study’s director and head of the Substance Use Unit at the Bern Institute of Primary Health Care, said: “The study produced indications that regulated supply through pharmacies can encourage a switch to potentially lower-risk forms of consumption.”
Simulated tax rates
SCRIPT carries the heaviest simulated tax of any Swiss pilot at CHF3 to CHF4 a gram on flower and resin, it lands at roughly 30% of retail on 8% THC flower and close to 50% on 20% THC resin.
The researchers note this sits above Québec’s combined effective rate of around 25% and above the 20% to 40% range anticipated for eventual Swiss regulation. The stated purpose is to let regulators observe a tax level under real conditions that would otherwise only become measurable after a law had already passed.
SCRIPTs pricing is deliberately non-linnear, meaning prices do not rise in step with THC content. Flower at 8% THC sells for CHF10 a gram, at 18% for CHF13. So weaker flower is cheaper by the gram, but stronger flower is cheaper by the milligram of THC.
Dr Auer noted: “Such results confirm international experience that fiscal measures serve as an effective youth-protection measure.”
Neither e-liquids nor tinctures carry any tax, the former on harm-reduction grounds and the latter because of production costs and poor oral bioavailability.
The pilot also integrates a paid counselling service for all its participants, which the taxes raised are used to cover. Staff deliver a consultation when a participant first collects, and can bill for further smoking-cessation sessions later in the study, at CHF30 each.
The simulated tax funds those consultations, the six-monthly study visits and vouchers for participants, making SCRIPT the only Swiss pilot that pays the people taking part.
By the numbers
Two years of sales produced 19,515 units of flower, 3,433 of resin, 6,363 of e-liquid and 814 of tinctures, sold in 5g, 5g, 2ml and 10ml units respectively. Blue Mint Cookies at 18% THC led on volume at 49.2kg, ahead of Grapefruit Haze at 15%.
Over the same period pharmacies sold three Mighty vaporisers at CHF399, five Arizer Air Max at CHF259 and 29 Wolkenkraft Vita at CHF99. They sold 1,014 Honey Stick e-joints at CHF19.
As such, SCRIPT’s results so far suggest that cheap disposable products were much more effective than more expensive reusable hardware.
How did this compare to illicit sales?
Participants submitted 127 illicit samples for laboratory analysis at the University of Bern’s Institute of Forensic Medicine, including 104 flower, 21 resin and two liquids. Nine showed synthetic cannabinoids, seven of them resin.
Flower averaged 15% THC and resin 22%, with resin samples ranging up to 46%. One submitted e-liquid tested at 79% THC.
Of the 69 samples where the participant had estimated potency beforehand, one estimate was correct. Twenty-seven were too low and 41 too high, in both directions by up to 24 percentage points.
Sourcing was overwhelmingly social, with consumers purchasing from friends and acquaintances first, then a personally known seller, then home cultivation.
“You never know what cutting agents are in it or what other active substances. Not having that fear is worth an enormous amount,” one participant told researchers.
Did it improve safety?
Forty-five participants, 4% of the cohort, reported 51 serious adverse events in the first six months, including 26 events among 24 people in the access arm and 25 among 21 in the control arm.
Psychiatric events ran at 6 events among 6 people in the access arm against 8 events among 5 in the control arm.
With these small sample sizes in mind and the minimal variability between the groups, reliable conclusions can not yet be drawn.
One participant was disciplined for reselling study product. No other police-relevant incident was recorded across nine pharmacies in three cities.
Several participating pharmacy staff told researchers that their own prejudices about cannabis consumers had dissolved through contact, with one stating cannabis consumers were now ‘among our favourite customers’.
The researchers acknowledge the results have not been peer reviewed and say they published anyway because SCRIPT sits ‘at the interface of science and politics, where the facts are uncertain, the values contested and the decisions urgent.’
