German Research Finds No Youth Cannabis Spike After Legalization

More than two years after Germany let adults grow and possess cannabis, teenagers are using it no more than they did before the law changed — a conclusion from new government-backed research that complicates Berlin’s drive to tighten cannabis rules on exactly that worry.

The peer-reviewed analysis, published July 1, 2026 in the Robert Koch Institute’s Journal of Health Monitoring, found no statistically significant change in cannabis use among adolescents or young women in the year after partial legalization took effect on April 1, 2024. Researchers at Germany’s Federal Institute of Public Health tracked twelve representative surveys spanning 2008 to 2025, producing the most direct read yet on whether the Cannabis Act (CanG) drove up consumption among the group it was written to protect.

What the data shows

Among 12- to 17-year-olds, reported use in the past year edged down rather than up: to 4.6% of girls and 7.2% of boys in 2025, both slightly below their 2023 readings. Among young women aged 18 to 25 it held broadly flat at 18.8%. In none of those groups did the year before legalization differ meaningfully from the year after.

One cohort did climb. Cannabis use among young men aged 18 to 25 rose from 26.9% in 2023 to 31.6% in 2025, a statistically significant increase. The authors were emphatic that legalization is not the cause. The rise “does not represent a new development but rather continues a trend that has been observed in this group since 2008,” they wrote, when the rate stood at 14.8%. A national addiction survey had already forecast that climb would continue regardless of any legislative change.

“Overall, there are no indications of any short-term effects of partial legalisation on the prevalence of cannabis use among young people,” the researchers concluded.

The team stopped short of calling the question settled. Because Germany’s non-commercial cultivation clubs are still getting off the ground and home growing is expected to keep rising, and because consumption increases in Canada and several U.S. states surfaced only years after their reforms, the authors cautioned that the findings do not yet support firm conclusions about the law’s longer-run effects. The result is consistent with the government-commissioned EKOCAN evaluation, whose interim findings have likewise shown little short-term change.

A medical market still scaling

While recreational use among the young has held steady, the medical side of Germany’s market is expanding fast. The federal drug regulator, BfArM, recorded roughly 201 tonnes of medical cannabis imported in 2025, close to triple the 73 tonnes brought in a year earlier and enough to keep Germany Europe’s largest medical cannabis market by a wide margin.

CanG reshaped that program by removing cannabis from Germany’s narcotics law for medical use and letting any licensed physician prescribe it. Prescriptions and imports jumped, telemedicine platforms accelerated patient sign-ups, and competition pulled prices down sharply. Industry tracking of pharmacy sales now puts the average price of medical flower at around €4 a gram, down from roughly €12 in early 2023.

That decline sits awkwardly beside the roughly €19 a gram the same tracking shows the statutory health scheme was still paying — a gap that helps explain why lawmakers moved in July 2026 to strip flower out of insurance reimbursement entirely.

Why the timing matters

The research lands at a pointed moment for German policy. Through 2026 the government has been tightening its cannabis framework rather than easing it, arguing that the medical channel is being used as a back door to recreational supply. The July insurance change also required patients to try approved cannabis medicines for six months before compounded extracts qualify for coverage, and earlier drafts sought to end online prescribing and mail-order dispensing.

Much of that agenda rests on the premise that easier access fuels harm, above all among young people. The new figures cut against that premise, adding to a body of research showing that how a country legalizes cannabis matters more than whether it does for public health.

For now, the data gives reform advocates their cleanest evidence and leaves the government with a harder argument to make. Whether that balance holds is a question the researchers themselves say cannot be answered for several more years.

References:

^{1. Orth, Boris; Eckhardt, Stephanie; and Nitzsche, Anika, “One year after partial legalisation in Germany: Trends in cannabis use among young people between 2008 and 2025” (2026). Journal of Health Monitoring 2026;11:11. Robert Koch Institute. https://edoc.rki.de/handle/176904/13777}