Former German Health Minister Continues To Promote Regulation Over Prohibition

Professor Dr. Karl Lauterbach is a German physician, epidemiologist, and health economist who has served as a Social Democrat (SPD) lawmaker since 2005. Dr. Lauterbach also served as Germany’s Federal Minister of Health from 2021 to 2025 before being succeeded by Minister Nina Warken last month.

During his tenure as Germany’s Health Minister, Dr. Lauterbach led the effort to lobby the European Union to allow his country to legalize cannabis for adult use. He advocated for Germany to be able to adopt and implement a legalization model similar to Canada’s recreational legalization model, including national recreational cannabis sales to adults.

Unfortunately, the EU did not allow Germany to proceed with robust nationwide adult-use cannabis sales, citing current European Union agreements that prohibit such commerce. However, Dr. Lauterbach and other German lawmakers did succeed in approving and implementing a scaled-back version of adult-use legalization, the initial provisions of which took effect on April 1st, 2024.

Former Minister Lauterbach continues to advocate for cannabis industry regulation over prohibition in Germany, as evidenced by comments that he made during a recent podcast. The comments were reported in the German Cannabis Business Association’s (BvCW) recent newsletter.

“It would of course be much better if the cultivation associations could offer it [cannabis]. On the other hand, you also have to say the following: a lot of these people who get something prescribed there also have some kind of medical problem and, if that is the case and they have to pay for it themselves, then I prefer that the person with a medical problem gets the cannabis from the pharmacy. […]” BvCW credited Dr. Lauterbach as saying (translated from German to English).

So it’s not perfect, of course, but you have to look at the alternatives. Those who get high-quality cannabis using this prescription […] are otherwise supplied by […] criminals.” Dr. Lauterbach also stated.

Germany’s legal medical cannabis industry continues to expand at a staggering rate, as demonstrated by new medical cannabis import numbers. In the first quarter of 2025, Germany imported over 37.223 metric tonnes of medical cannabis products.

To put that figure into perspective, the total imports for Q1 2025 increased by roughly 14.8% compared to the Q4 2024 total (32.419 metric tonnes), which was itself a record at the time. Q1 2025’s import total is an increase of over 457% compared to the same period one year ago. Germany imported 8.143 metric tonnes of medical cannabis products in Q1 2024.

Since the launch of initial sales in 2017, safe access to medical cannabis via Germany’s pharmacies has increased significantly, as evidenced by statistics previously provided by the German Cannabis Business Association.

“Patients can order cannabis online with a private prescription and have it delivered to their home. Nationwide, around 2,500 of the 17,000 pharmacies now offer medical cannabis,” BvCW stated (translated from German to English). “The industry’s revenue is now estimated at around half a billion euros.”

A recent newsletter by leading international cannabis economist Beau Whitney, founder of Whitney Economics, provides additional German market data. In Beau Whitney’s newsletter, Whitney Wire, he described how Germany has traditionally had a strong legal medical cannabis market. Even before the adoption of the nation’s CanG law in April 2024, which removed cannabis from Germany’s Narcotics List, Germany was already home to the largest legal medical cannabis market in Europe.

But after the CanG law’s adoption, safe access greatly improved for German medical cannabis patients, and thanks in large part to the rise of medical cannabis telemedicine, Germany’s legal patient base has increased exponentially.

“There has been a consistent number of between 200k – 300k medical patients.” Beau Whitney writes. “As a result of this new innovation, there is now an additional 500k – 600k self-paying consumers participating in the legal market.”

“When combined with 100k cultivation association members, there is approximately 800k legal consumers in the German market right now. For perspective, 800k consumers represents between 10% and 20% of the total market, while the supply and capacity at the end of 2024 represented nearly 15% of all of the supply that the market needs.” Whitney stated.

(The featured image for this article is from BMG/Thomas Ecke)