Germany is currently home to the largest legal medical cannabis market in Europe, and also home to the third largest overall economy on Earth. Due to historical quota limitations on domestic medical cannabis production, Germany has imported a lot of the supply for its medical cannabis program from other nations.
According to data recently published by Germany’s Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices, and initially reported by MJBiz Daily, Germany imported roughly 34.6 tons of medical cannabis products in 2023.
“That’s a 26.2% increase over the 24,876 kilograms imported the previous year.” MJBiz Daily stated in its coverage. “Canada remained by far the top supplier to the German market in 2023, followed by Portugal and the Netherlands in a distant second and third, respectively.”
According to a recent market analysis by Research and Markets, the overall emerging legal European medical cannabis industry is set to undergo considerable growth between now and 2028.
“The burgeoning Europe medical marijuana market is poised for robust growth, as evidenced by the latest market insights which project an impressive leap from US$ 3,414.26 million in 2022 to US$ 9,703.38 million by 2028.” the researchers stated in a press release.
“This significant expansion is characterized by a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 19.0% over the forecast period.” they also stated.
Germany recently legalized cannabis for adult-use, with the nation’s new CanG law taking effect on April 1st, 2024. While there is no way to know exactly how large Germany’s adult-use cannabis consumer base will be, there are available statistics that can help provide a very educated guess. According to official statistics from 2021, an estimated 8.8% of adults in Germany reported that they had consumed cannabis at least once in the last 12 months.
Applying an 8.8% consumer rate to Germany’s adult population (about 70 million people) works out to roughly 6 million people. It’s quite likely that number is, in reality, a bit on the lower end being that many cannabis consumers have historically refrained from admitting to cannabis use on government surveys due to prohibition policies.
According to an analysis by New Frontier Data, cannabis consumers around the globe “spent an estimated $415 billion on high-THC cannabis in 2020” and that figure is expected to increase to to $496 billion by 2025.
“Much of the world has not yet legalized cannabis, and nearly all the demand resides in illicit or unregulated markets. In 2020, 94% of high-THC cannabis spend was in unregulated channels.” New Frontier Data states.
New Frontier Data has determined that sales of high-THC cannabis products through legal regulated outlets totaled $23.7 billion in 2020 and that legal sales are projected to reach $51 billion by 2025. New Frontier Data estimates that legal cannabis sales of adult-use cannabis “are projected to be double those of legal medical sales by 2025, despite the higher number of medical markets globally.”