Ben Stevens
01-27-2025
A month out from Germany’s federal election, alarm bells are ringing for the booming cannabis market.
With the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, making an election pledge to ‘abolish the previous government’s cannabis law,’ the party’s unwavering poll lead is becoming a major concern for Germany’s cannabis businesses.
While CDU/CSU remain comfortably in the lead, with 31% of the vote, the party will need to form a coalition with at least one other party. Given that they have ruled out joining the far-right AfD, currently second in the polls, they will have little choice but to join a pro-cannabis party.
The case against cannabis reform is being driven by the boom in medical cannabis prescriptions, which many now believe is effectively acting as a pseudo-recreational market.
This phenomenon, in turn, is being driven by the snail’s pace of cannabis cultivation association licensing across Germany.
A push for repeal
In its election manifesto, the CDU/CSU pledges to ‘abolish the previous government’s cannabis law,’ stating that it ‘protects dealers and exposes our children and young people to drug use and addiction.’
However, it remains unclear whether this would mean rolling back the changes to medical cannabis, namely removing it from the list of narcotics, which has driven the recent boom in the market.
Speaking to local news outlet Handelsblatt, Tino Sorge, health policy spokesman for the CDU/CSU, called the legalisation of recreational cannabis a ‘big mistake that needs to be reversed,’ but failed to clarify whether cannabis would be added to the list of narcotics once again.
“The aim is to provide care for patients in pain, for example, and not to ensure supplies for recreational smokers.”
A key concern is that the ease of access to medical cannabis is increasingly becoming a source for people to access cannabis for recreational purposes.
Some companies, like online platform Dr Ansay, now stand accused of taking advantage of this fact and lending legitimacy to those who wish to repeal the law.
In a recently published exposé from ZDF, the booming medical cannabis platform is criticised for enabling easy access to cannabis without proper medical oversight, allowing users to obtain prescriptions via online questionnaires without in-person consultations.
The platform is also accused of exploiting legal loopholes, such as allowing doctors from other EU countries to issue prescriptions, sometimes without proper verification or adherence to ethical guidelines. For example, an Austrian doctor linked to the platform issued prescriptions to patients she had never met, and her practice address could not be verified.
This trend is being exacerbated by the frustratingly slow and overly complex licensing process for cannabis cultivation associations, designed to be Germany’s route to adult-use cannabis access.
The most recent data from Prohibition Partners’ Global Cannabis Report: 5th Edition, which is due to launch this week, suggests that just 90 permits have been granted to date, despite 442 applications being submitted.
As such, those who want to access cannabis for recreational purposes are pushed towards the medical market or towards the black market, both of which this law was designed to avoid.
Medical cannabis continues to thrive
This rising tide has indeed lifted all ships, seeing medical cannabis companies of all types continuing to experience dramatic growth.
According to a newly published report from Bloomwell Group, one of Germany’s largest medical cannabis operators, the number of prescriptions received by pharmacies increased by 1000% between March and December last year, following the law change on April 01.
The number of strains available to patients also nearly doubled over this period, while the average price per gram of medical cannabis fell from €9.27 in January to €8.35 by November.
Meanwhile, high-THC strains, with over 25% THC content, gained popularity, rising to 29% of prescriptions by year-end. The average THC content of all prescriptions increased from 21.77% in January to 23.35% in December, reflecting growing demand for more potent strains.
So, as the February 23 election draws ever closer, industry organisations and advocates have begun making their case for the social and economic benefits of the landmark CanG Act.
The German Cannabis Business Association (BvCW) published a position paper last week, laying its core arguments ahead of the election.
Titled, ‘Cannabis as a growth driver: Industrial opportunities and policy options’, the paper argues that medical cannabis is crucial for growth and foreign investment, of particular importance, as Germany positions itself to address an economic crisis.
“The cannabis industry is a magnet for foreign investment capital, which creates jobs and generates taxes. The Cannabis Act was an important building block on which politics should continue to build,” explained Dirk Heitepriem, President of the BvCW.
Echoing this, Semdor Pharma’s David Henn told Handelsblatt that a repeal of the cannabis act could decimate the thriving sector, which has become the focal point of the European market.
“If the cannabis law were to be completely repealed, it would be an earthquake for the industry/ I am sure that 70 percent of German cannabis companies would then disappear from the market within twelve months,” he warned.
Despite this, many advocates are in favour of a revision of the laws surrounding telemedicine, placing some guardrails around the online prescription process.
In their position paper, the BvCW argues that while telemedicine clinics are vital for patients in rural areas and help address physician shortages, legal frameworks for telemedicine remain outdated.
The report calls for urgent regulatory updates to ensure telemedicine’s reliability and integration into modern healthcare infrastructure while safeguarding against misuse.
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