A medical cannabis provider surveyed 7,913 patients and turned the results into a figure that is easy to pass on: buying illegally means four and a half times as much stress as going through a pharmacy. The survey is the largest of its kind in Germany. It is also the only source of data on this question, and it comes from a company whose business model depends on the answer.
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That is not an accusation, but a description of a gap. While the Bundestag deliberates on restricting telemedicine and pharmacy mail-order sales of cannabis flowers, there is no public statistic on how people undergoing cannabis therapy actually obtain their medication. Anyone who wants figures on this has to get them from those who earn money from it.
What the survey measured
According to its own statements, the Bloomwell Group surveyed 7,913 medical cannabis patients online in September 2026 and published the results on 19 October as the Cannabis Barometer for the third quarter. The company itself explicitly states that the survey is not representative. This openness deserves mention because it is by no means the rule in association and provider surveys.
Asked whether they have experience with both sources of supply, that is, with illegal purchase and with medical cannabis from the pharmacy, 89.2 percent answered yes and 10.8 percent no. These 7,062 people with experience of both are the basis for all comparative questions. This is methodologically sound, because only those who know both can compare both. But it also means that the frequently cited figure of 7,913 does not apply to the comparison results.
The comparison behind the headline
The question was: How much stress does obtaining cannabis cause you? On a scale from 1 for no stress at all to 10 for a great deal of stress, the illegal market produced an average of 8.1, and obtaining it from the pharmacy 1.8.
The gap is considerable, and it matches what patient advocacy groups have been describing for years. Nevertheless, we do not reproduce the ratio that the report derives from it, namely the factor of four and a half. A scale from 1 to 10 for subjective perception has no natural zero point. Whether the gap between 1 and 2 means the same as the one between 8 and 9, nobody knows. Such values can be averaged and compared, but they cannot be meaningfully divided by one another. 8.1 versus 1.8 is a clear statement. Four and a half times as much stress is a calculation that claims more precision than the data contain.
The price that is not a market price
For the third quarter, the report cites a fallen average price of 3.77 euros per gram and presents the trend since the first quarter of 2023 as a curve. The text on the relevant page says that the average price per gram of medical cannabis flower continues to fall to this value. It contains no qualification as to which data basis this refers to.
The qualification appears in two other places. The blog post on the report says that the average price at Bloomwell has fallen. And the methodology section of the report states that all prescriptions taken into account were filled at partner pharmacies by self-paying patients via the company’s online platform.
That is a difference that gets lost in subsequent reuse. 3.77 euros is the average of one platform whose customers consist exclusively of self-payers. What patients with statutory health insurance pay with approval, what is charged for courier delivery from a local pharmacy, and what other platforms bill is not reflected in this figure. It is not suitable as a market price for Germany, but as the price trend of one major provider over fourteen quarters it is certainly informative.
The quantities and the limits of verifiability
According to the company, the volumes dispensed via the platform in the third quarter were around 50 percent higher than in the second quarter, and similar increases are reported for the four quarters before that. The report gives no absolute figures; the chart is normalised to an index value. The claim therefore cannot be verified from the outside. It also describes the growth of a single company, not of the market.
On the same page, the company writes that researchers from the EKOCAN project now consider it likely that medical cannabis is the most important source of cannabis in Germany. This is an attribution to third parties, which the report does not back up with a source reference. The estimate given in the same section, that around 20 million people in Germany would in principle be eligible for medical cannabis therapy, is also stated without a source.
The real gap: Who was surveyed?
Neither the blog post nor the methodology section of the report says how the 7,913 respondents were reached. It states that the survey was conducted online, anonymously and in compliance with data protection rules, and that the survey is not representative. Nothing is said about how the respondents were reached.
This information determines how far the result carries. If the respondents come from the company’s own patient base, then a high level of satisfaction with the legal, digital route is in part self-selection: the people surveyed would be those who have already chosen exactly this route and have not abandoned it. The result would remain interesting, but it would be a statement about the customers of one provider and not about patients in Germany. We are not assuming anything here; we are noting that the information is missing.
That this information can be provided is shown by a survey of the same type from another provider. GreenMedical evaluated 5,556 responses in the summer and disclosed that 125,997 patients were contacted and 6,218 started the survey. From this, a participation rate of around 4.4 percent can be calculated, and that is something one can work with. We covered these figures in October, labelled as a paid cooperation, and there too the assessment of the methodology was part of the article. The comparison shows: the missing information at Bloomwell is not an impossibility of this survey format, but an omission.
Why this matters right now
The draft bill amending the Medical Cannabis Act is in the Health Committee as Bundestag printed paper 21/3061. It aims to permit initial prescriptions of cannabis flowers only after personal contact with a doctor and to prohibit mail-order sales of flowers. Courier deliveries from local pharmacies would remain permitted. Until then, the existing law applies. A legal expert article considers both prohibitions open to challenge under EU law.
The political question behind this is where patients go if the digital route becomes harder. On exactly this point, Bloomwell has a figure from an earlier survey: in summer 2025, 41 percent of the participants at that time stated that they would return to the illegal market if cannabis telemedicine were restricted. The same applies to this figure as to all the others in this report. It is a declaration of intent in a non-representative provider survey, collected among people who use the digital route. What people state in a survey about their future behaviour, experience shows, corresponds only to a limited extent with what they later do.
And yet it is the best available figure. That is the point that goes beyond this report. A legislator that closes off a route of care should know where people go afterwards. This information currently lies with companies that have an interest in the outcome, and it lies there not out of malice, but because nobody else collects it. There is no official survey on how cannabis patients meet their needs, and none that asks about illegal sourcing alongside legal sourcing.
What remains of the figures
What is documented is that, among 7,062 respondents with experience of both sourcing routes, illegal acquisition is rated as markedly more stressful than the route via the pharmacy, at 8.1 versus 1.8 on a ten-point scale. It is also documented that the average price per gram on this provider’s platform fell to 3.77 euros in the third quarter, and that the cheapest flowers there were sold for under 2 euros per gram.
What is not documented is that these figures apply to cannabis patients in Germany as a whole, that 3.77 euros is a market price, and that the difference in stress is four and a half times. It remains unclear how the respondents were reached, and thus it remains unclear how far the results extend beyond one provider’s customer base.
Whoever decides on restricting telemedicine also decides how much will be known about the consequences. As long as the only figures on the reality of sourcing come from those involved in it, every debate about it remains a debate about data gaps.
Wie beziehst du dein Medizinalcannabis hauptsächlich?
Sources: Bloomwell Group, Das Cannabis-Barometer Q3 2026, report of 19 October 2026 and accompanying blog post; Gesetzentwurf der Bundesregierung, Bundestagsdrucksache 21/3061 (government bill, Bundestag printed paper 21/3061); GreenMedical, Kundenbefragung Medizinisches Cannabis 2026 (customer survey on medical cannabis). The survey figures cited come from non-representative surveys by the respective providers among their own participant groups or groups that are not specified in more detail. This article is editorial and has no business relationship with the companies mentioned.
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