Teen Marijuana Use In Germany Declined Following Recreational Legalization, Government Study Shows

A new study conducted by German federal health officials shows that rates
of marijuana use declined among youth after the country legalized adult-use
cannabis last year, contradicting one of the more common prohibitionist
arguments against the reform.

The Federal Institute for Public Health’s Drug Affinity Study published on
Tuesday examined marijuana use trends in 2025, finding that the rate of
past-year cannabis consumption for youth aged 12-17 dipped from 6.7 percent
to 6.1 percent since the prior survey in 2023. More regular consumption (at
least ten times in the past year) also decreased from 1.3 percent to 1.1
percent.

Among young adults between the ages of 18 and 25, the study showed a slight
uptick in cannabis usage, with past-year consumption increasing from 23.3
percent to 25.6 percent between 2023 and 2025.

Germany’s former health minister Karl Lauterbach, who spearheaded the
government’s legalization plan, said the results of the research “confirm
what the goal of legalization was: through the debate about dangers for
children and adolescents, their consumption does not increase or even
decreases,” according to a translation.

Die Studie würde bestätigen, was Ziel der Legalisierung war: durch die
Debatte über Gefahren bei Kindern und Jugendlichen steigt deren Konsum
nicht an oder sinkt. Trotzdem müssen die Ergebnisse noch bestätigt werden.
Verbote schrecken junge Leute nicht ab https://t.co/CSQF7HwseZ

— Prof. Karl Lauterbach (@Karl_Lauterbach) September 23, 2025

“Nevertheless, the results still need to be confirmed,” he said. “Bans do
not deter young people.”

The study is based on surveys of 7,001 adolescents and young adults from
April to July of this year.

It was April 2024 when Germany’s legalization law took effect, allowing
adults to possess and grow certain amounts of cannabis and social clubs
began to open, providing members with legal access to marijuana products.

“Our data show that consumption among adolescents has not increased.
However, consumption has risen slightly among young adults, particularly
among men between 18 and 25 years of age,” Johannes Nießen, acting director
of the Federal Institute for Public Health, said in a press release. “We
must monitor this development very closely.”

The lack of evidence that youth use increased post-legalization is
consistent with pro-reform arguments. Advocates have long maintained that
providing a regulatory framework for marijuana would mitigate underage
access as more adults transition to the legal market.

In the U.S., where cannabis is legal in some form in the majority of states
but prohibited at the federal level, research has shown similar trends.

For example, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration
(SAMHSA) in July published data that showed youth cannabis consumption has
remained stable amid the state legalization movement.

The agency also held a webinar in July in which a Johns Hopkins University
researcher acknowledged that while self-reported cannabis consumption by
adults has risen as more states have legalized, use by youth has generally
remained flat or fallen.

A report from the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), for
example, found that youth marijuana use declined in 19 out of 21 states
that legalized adult-use marijuana—with teen cannabis consumption down an
average of 35 percent in the earliest states to legalize. The report cited
data from a series of national and state-level youth surveys, including the
annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey, which is supported by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

A Canadian government report separately found that daily or near-daily use
rates by both adults and youth have held steady over the last six years
after the country enacted legalization.

Back in Germany, following a pivotal national election earlier this year,
political parties that were cooperating to form a new coalition government
announced that they would be conducting an “open-ended evaluation” of the
country’s marijuana legalization law—meaning that at least for now,
officials will allow the policy to stay in place.


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In December, the federal minister for food and agriculture signed off on a
plan to allow for research-focused commercial marijuana pilot programs to
test legal and regulated access to cannabis for consumers.

At the local level, the city of Frankfurt late last year announced plans to
move forward with a five-year pilot program that would make cannabis
products available to adults more broadly , with the city of Hanford also
pursuing a similar plan. A number of other localities have also expressed
interest in conducting cannabis sales pilot projects.

Despite widespread concern that results of February’s election could spell
doom for the legalization law, most Germans— 59 percent of eligible voters —support
allowing adults to purchase cannabis from licensed stores.

For the previous three years Germans were polled on the issue, support sat
at just under 50 percent. But as the country’s marijuana law began being
implemented last year, there was a spike in favor of the policy change.

Notably, respondents who identified as CDU or CSU—two of the three
coalition parties behind the new agreement—were the only political
affiliations among which majorities of voters supported rolling back the
reform law.

German officials last year convened an international conference where
leaders were invited to share their experiences with legalizing and
regulating marijuana , with a focus on public health and mitigating the
illicit market.

Representatives from Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic
and Switzerland were invited by German Commissioner for Addiction and Drug
Issues Burkhard Blienert to the meeting in Berlin.

The countries that participated in the ministerial have varying cannabis
policies. Malta, for example, became the first European country to enact
cannabis legalization in 2021. Luxembourg followed suit, with the reform
officially taking effect in 2023 .

Government officials from several countries, including the U.S., also met
in Germany in 2023 to discuss international marijuana policy issues as the
host nation worked to enact legalization.

A group of German lawmakers, as well as Blienert, separately visited the
US and toured California cannabis businesses in 2022 to inform their
country’s approach to legalization.

The visit came after top officials from Germany, Luxembourg, Malta and the
Netherlands held their first-of-its-kind meeting to discuss plans and
challenges associated with recreational marijuana legalization in 2022.

The post Teen Marijuana Use In Germany Declined Following Recreational
Legalization, Government Study Shows appeared first on Marijuana Moment.