The central promise of every legalisation is to bring consumers from the illicit market into regulated trade. A US panel study has measured what the opening of licensed stores actually achieves. The effect is demonstrable and considerably smaller than the debate suggests.
The study in the Journal of Cannabis Research uses three waves of a nationally representative panel survey: June 2024, i.e. before sales began, January 2025 and August 2025. The analysis covered a balanced panel of 578 adults with 1,734 observations. The decisive factor was that Ohio launched licensed sales in August 2024, which allows a before-and-after comparison against other states.
Two figures that must be kept apart
The first figure describes a state of affairs: people living in a state with a fully legal market obtain their cannabis from legal sources at a share that is 31.6 percentage points higher than people in a state without legalisation. The difference is large and statistically clear.
The second figure describes a change: through the opening of licensed sales in Ohio, the legal sourcing share rose by 5.3 percentage points. This, too, is statistically robust, but the authors expressly point out that the estimate is sensitive to limitations of the sample.
The difference between the two figures is the actual finding. The 31.6 percentage points are a comparison of states of affairs and include everything that legal markets bring with them over the years, from availability and habituation to the removal of the threat of punishment. The 5.3 percentage points are what the opening of stores achieves in the short term. Anyone who cites the first but means the second overstates the effect many times over.
What this means for the German debate
Displacing the illicit market is a declared goal of the Konsumcannabisgesetz (Consumer Cannabis Act), and it is regularly used as a yardstick. This study suggests that points of sale do have an effect here, but a slow one, and that expectations of a rapid shift are set too high.
It thus fits with two findings we have reported on. A survey of 35,957 people found no surge in consumption after the German law, and the Dutch Wiet experiment brought more choice, but unchanged consumption. The common pattern: the changes turn out smaller than expected, in both directions.
Two caveats belong here. The panel comprises 578 people, which is respectable for a panel study but thin for statements about individual states. And US conditions cannot be transferred directly, because Germany has no licensed retail trade, but cultivation associations instead.
Source: Xu L. et al., „How consumers transition between illicit and legal cannabis markets following the implementation of licensed recreational cannabis retail sales“, Journal of Cannabis Research, 13 October 2026, DOI 10.1186/s42238-026-00521-w.
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