By December 2025, medical cannabis prescriptions in Germany had increased by more than 3,300% compared with March 2024, the final month before cannabis was removed from the country’s narcotics law and reclassified as a non-narcotic medication. The shift simplified prescribing, opened the door wider for telemedical care and helped normalize cannabis as a regulated treatment.
That same shift also triggered a familiar reaction. Public claims of “misuse” started circulating. Draft policy ideas began pointing toward restrictions on telemedicine and distribution. A new Cannabis Barometer: 2025 Annual Review from Bloomwell Group argues those fears do not match the evidence and that tightening access could push patients back toward riskier, unlicensed options.
The analysis is based on an anonymized review of prescriptions redeemed by self-paying patients via a digital platform at partner pharmacies across Germany between January 2024 and December 2025. The report notes that the December 2025 data are extrapolated and could differ slightly later.
Prescriptions surged, and it was not a one-month spike
The report states that prescription volume reached an all-time high in December 2025. Compared with March 2024, prescriptions increased by more than 3,300%.
It also stresses that demand looked sustained, not fleeting. Even in the first quarter of 2025, monthly prescription volumes were already nearly 1,000% higher than March 2024, according to the analysis.
The report’s explanation is straightforward. The growth reflects streamlined access to legitimate care following reclassification, plus telemedical pathways that made it easier for patients to obtain a legal prescription and fill it through pharmacy channels.
Prices fell while product choice expanded
If the story stopped at prescription growth, it would still be notable. The price and supply data make it harder to dismiss.
The report shows the average price per gram of medical cannabis flower fell from €8.33 in January 2025 to €5.23 in December 2025, a decline of more than €3 across the year.
During the same period, product availability increased. The number of available cannabis flower products rose from 468 to 724, according to the report.
It also describes a market shift toward lower-cost options. By the end of 2025, flower priced below €6 per gram accounted for almost 80% of the supplied flower. The report adds that digital access has become efficient enough that total monthly treatment costs for many patients generally fall in the €30 to €50 range.
The “misuse” narrative does not hold up under clinical definitions
The report pushes back directly on the idea that more prescriptions automatically means abuse. It evaluates misuse claims against internationally recognized medical standards, including ICD-10 and DSM-5 criteria, which focus on measurable harm, impaired health outcomes, diminished quality of life and substance dependence.
Using that lens, it concludes that allegations of widespread misuse are unfounded. Increased prescription numbers and import volumes alone, the report argues, do not meet accepted clinical definitions of misuse.
The report also states there is no evidence of an increase in problematic or near-daily use, cannabis-related hospitalizations, or mental health disorders following the removal of cannabis from narcotics law.
A policy trap: restrict access, expand the gray market
The report’s warning is practical as much as political. It argues that restricting telemedicine or tightening digital access would create barriers for patients, particularly given that only a limited number of pharmacies specialize in cannabis and stock broad strain selections. Under those conditions, the report suggests, limiting telemedical pathways could push hundreds of thousands of patients back to unlicensed sources and make medically supervised treatment harder to access nationwide.
Dr. Julian Wichmann, co-founder and CEO of Bloomwell GmbH, argues that cannabis telemedicine did not significantly increase the total number of cannabis users. Instead, he says many patients were already self-medicating without medical supervision despite legitimate medical conditions, and that the simplified prescription process helped move those users into legal, regulated access.
Niklas Kouparanis, co-founder and CEO of Bloomwell Group, frames digitized cannabis therapy as a model for cost-effective healthcare delivery. He criticizes efforts to dismantle digital processes that he describes as widely accepted and working in practice, arguing that doing so would undermine patient access and contradict broader goals of healthcare digitization.
What the report is really saying
The loudest number here is 3,300%. The quieter point is the one the report keeps circling back to.
Germany’s medical cannabis system got easier, faster and more normal. The market responded with higher prescription volumes, lower prices and more product choice. And the report argues that the scary storyline about misuse has not shown up in the outcomes it reviewed using accepted medical criteria.
From its perspective, the risk now is policy whiplash. If access is tightened in the name of hypothetical misuse, patients do not disappear. They reroute. The report’s message is that rolling back regulated access could drive patients toward the unlicensed market and create avoidable harm.
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