Legal medical cannabis product sales began through German pharmacies in 2017, and in the years that followed, the European country became the largest legal medical cannabis market on the continent. Significant contributing factors to the rise of Germany’s medical cannabis industry are the rise of telemedicine and medical cannabis delivery services.
Unfortunately, Germany’s Health Minister Nina Warken is currently pushing to prohibit both medical cannabis telemedicine and delivery services in Germany. Minister Warken and the Ministry of Health recently published a draft amendment that, if adopted, would:
- Mandate in-person doctor consultations
- Ban mail-order medical cannabis dispensing
- Impose stricter rules for medical cannabis prescriptions
A leading German medical cannabis company, Bloomwell Group, has compiled and published data that provides much-needed context regarding which regions and medical cannabis patients may be the most impacted if the harmful amendment and its provisions are approved.
“Bloomwell Group released a map outlining the number of medical cannabis patients in Germany in relation to the country’s population, along with which regions have the most, and least, patients. The results suggest that online delivery of medical cannabis is heavily relied upon by German patients who do not have local access to brick-and-mortar pharmacies that can supply cannabis treatment.” stated Bloomwell in a press release obtained by Cannabis Industry Data.
Per Bloomwell’s analysis, “there are significantly more medical cannabis patients in relation to the population in the South of the country than in the North,” and “almost half of the cannabis patients in Germany do not have access to a brick-and-mortar pharmacy specializing in cannabis treatment within a 10-kilometer radius.”
“If half of cannabis patients cannot legally obtain their medication from a pharmacy within a 10-kilometer radius, what alternative remains for these medical patients besides turning to the illicit market? We are only at the very beginning of the legislative process, and given the severe potential consequences of the current draft for limiting the pharmaceutical care access of hundreds of thousands of chronically ill patients, I predict that this amendment will not be passed in its current form. Fortunately, the SPD parliamentary group has already emphasized that without solid evaluation results, they will not jeopardize patient safety through such drastic measures.” states Niklas Kouparanis, Co-Founder and CEO of Bloomwell Group.
Leading international cannabis economist Beau Whitney, founder of Whitney Economics, estimates that Germany is home to between 700k and 900k medical cannabis patients. According to the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM), Germany imported 43.257 tonnes of medical cannabis products in Q2 2025, which, when combined with the 37.519 tonnes imported in Q1 2025, totals 80.776 tonnes in the first half of 2025.