Study: Youth Cannabis Use Declined In Germany Following Legalization
Leading up to cannabis policy modernization implementation, cannabis reform opponents always warn of doomsday scenarios when it comes to youth cannabis usage rates. Such claims being made by cannabis opponents leading up to policy modernization enactment are as sure as the setting sun.
Germany’s lawmakers enacted the historic CanG legalization law in April 2024 after many months of cannabis opponents basically performing their best Chicken Little impressions and essentially suggesting that the sky would fall over Germany due to a hypothetical stoned youth post-legalization apocalypse. Thankfully, time has proven that those claims and fearmongering scenarios offered up by German cannabis opponents were not well-founded.
The German Federal Institute for Public Health recently published data regarding youth cannabis usage rates in the European country post-legalization. The “Drug Affinity Study 2025” surveyed 7,001 young people between the ages of 12 and 25 from April to July 2025, and the results were then compared to those from a similar study conducted between April and June 2023.
“According to the regularly conducted survey, the proportion of adolescents aged 12 to 17 who have consumed cannabis in the past 12 months fell from 6.7 percent in 2023 to 6.1 percent this year.” reported RND in its local coverage (translated from German to English). “The proportion of regular users who have consumed cannabis more than ten times in the past 12 months decreased from 1.3 to 1.1 percent during this period.”
The study did find that reported use among young adults aged 18-25 has risen post-legalization. However, the increase is minor, with ‘use within the last year’ rising from 23.3% to 25.6%, and ‘regular’ use increasing from 8.0% to 8.9%. That increase is far from being alarming, and certainly not enough of an increase to warrant a return to failed cannabis prohibition policies in Germany.
Germany’s professed goals for the historic CanG law are as follows:
- Youth protection
- General health protection
- Combating the unregulated market
The results of this latest government study directly address the first goal. A combination of regulation and youth education appears to be working. Efforts to support achieving the third goal, combating the unregulated market, are also showing promise.
“The Cannabis Act (CanG) led to significant changes in the supply channels among adults: 88.4% generally purchased legally produced cannabis in the last six months (home cultivation, including cultivation by friends, cultivation associations, pharmacies); before the law, 23.5% used the now legal sources.” stated the Institute for Addiction Research at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences and the Evangelical University of Freiburg about a recent collaborative survey they conducted (translated from German to English).
A declining youth consumption rate, combined with a decreasing reliance on the unregulated market by German consumers, serves to address the second stated goal of improving general public health outcomes. Legalization is working in Germany, and it will work even better once there is a sufficient number of cultivation associations and regional cannabis commerce pilot trials are operating.
