This article was updated on September 02, 2026
In December 2025, we asked our in-house team of experts how they expected to see the industry evolve over the coming year. Following a frantic news cycle over the past eight months, we wanted to revisit these predictions and examine what has come to fruition, what regulation is stuck in political limbo, and what developments have come out of left field.
Key pieces of legislation in major global markets, including Germany, the UK, and Australia, are yet to be fully clarified, published or enforced.
Each of these could yet have a transformative impact on their respective markets, shaping or curbing the telemedicine prescribing phenomenon which we cited as the engine of growth throughout 2025.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s decisive and rapid efforts to push through cannabis rescheduling was something few, including Business of Cannabis, predicted with any confidence.
In the last weeks of 2025, we noted that the previous year had marked the biggest year for democratic elections in human history, seeing a wave of anti-incumbent sentiment sweep the globe, resulting in a far more complex dynamic for cannabis policy.
As such, in markets like the Czech Republic or the US, promising legislative reforms had been stalled, while other markets like Germany and Australia were under threat of inching backwards. Looking ahead, we predicted:
- Germany and Australia would tighten medical cannabis regulation in 2026, reversing 2024’s reform momentum.
- Chronic oversupply would set in across Europe’s medical cannabis markets.
- Sustained oversupply would drive further price compression.
- Operators whose business models depended on uncapped, telemedicine-driven growth would face a reckoning.
- Canada would extend its dominance of the global supply chain, having already shipped an estimated 240 tonnes of cannabis in 2025, more than double 2024’s 107 tonnes.
Has telemedicine prescribing been restricted in key global cannabis markets?
Telemedicine has become the main channel for patient access in the world’s largest medical cannabis markets. Its use has become a significant driver of growth in markets including Australia, Germany and the UK as it connects patients with doctors comfortable prescribing medical cannabis, which remains few and far between globally. Additionally, a prescription can be obtained from the comfort of their own home.
By the end of 2025, the ease of access to cannabis, combined with questionable marketing practices by some platforms and a lack of oversight, had become a contentious issue in Australia and Germany.
At the time, Prohibition Partners‘ Lead Analyst Alex Khourdaji noted that telemedicine restrictions were ‘bound to occur’ in Germany in 2026, while cannabis market analyst Alfredo Pascual suggested that Germany was entering the year with ‘a clear risk of regulatory tightening in medical cannabis, even if the exact timing and final shape of the rules remain uncertain’.
Despite these restrictions becoming a ‘sword of Damocles’ for every business prescribing, distributing and exporting to Germany for much of the year, that sword now seems to be blunted and is yet to drop.
In the original draft, published by the Health Ministry in July 2025, the government proposed measures which would have banned mail-order dispensing while requiring a mandatory in-person consultation for a first prescription.
Even by its first Bundestag reading on December 18, 2025, potential terminal cracks were already clear between the ruling coalition parties and the ‘asymmetry’ of the bill’s contents. January 2026’s Health Committee hearing, bringing in 22 expert witnesses to debate the changes, failed to move the debate forward and only served to solidify the view that in its current form the bill was unworkable.
Ever since, the bill has been stuck in regulatory limbo, and analysts are split on when, if at all, the final version of the bill will be finalised and enforced.
In the meantime, the pushback against medical cannabis in Germany has taken another form. From July 30, cannabis flower no longer qualifies for statutory health insurance (GKV) reimbursement. This controversial amendment is seen by some as a way to appease critics of medical cannabis while further restrictions remain static. Regardless of the political intention, its impact will fall almost entirely on patients with the most severe conditions and is being fought at every step by the industry and patient representatives.
Our analysts also highlighted Australia as a key market to watch in 2026. Its situation mirrors that of Germany closely. Telemedicine prescribing has driven rampant growth in its medical cannabis market, driving a pushback and threats of restrictions from the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA).
The Health Practitioner Regulation Agency had already taken action against 57 practitioners by mid-2025, with 60 more under investigation, after data showed eight prescribers had written more than 10,000 cannabis scripts between them in six months, one alone wrote over 17,000.
As with Germany, the promised reforms to the medical cannabis industry are yet to be fully fleshed out, let alone enforced. In August, the TGA refused to put a concrete timeline on the reform process but indicated that it was unlikely before 2027.
Nine months into 2026, and the telemedicine reckoning we had expected has so far failed to materialise. What the remainder of the year has in store for the world’s thriving medical cannabis markets remains unclear.
| Prediction | Predicted by | What’s happened | Status |
| Telemedicine restrictions “bound to occur” in Germany in 2026 | Alex Khourdaji, Lead Analyst, Prohibition Partners | The draft bill passed its first Bundestag reading on December 18, 2025, but has stalled since a January 2026 Health Committee hearing exposed splits in the ruling coalition. No restriction has taken effect | Stalled, not enacted |
| Germany entering 2026 with “a clear risk of regulatory tightening in medical cannabis, even if the exact timing and final shape of the rules remain uncertain” | Alfredo Pascual, cannabis market analyst | Reimbursement withdrawal for cannabis flower took effect July 30, but the telemedicine-specific bill itself remains unresolved | Confirmed via a different mechanism |
| Australia flagged as a market facing telemedicine-driven regulatory action | Prohibition Partners analysts | The Therapeutic Goods Administration declined to set a reform timeline in August 2026, indicating action is unlikely before 2027, even as enforcement against individual prescribers continues | Confirmed direction, delayed action |
Has Canadian cannabis oversupply hurt European margins?
Prohibition Partners’ Senior Analyst, Lawrence Purkiss, said in December that ‘oversupply is likely to become a common theme in the coming year’ as Canadian producers continued to scale up their focus on the higher profit European medical cannabis markets.
Nine months on, Germany’s own pharmacy data shows that average flower prices fell by 46% to €4.52 a gram in the 14 months to March 2026, down from routine sales above €10 a gram in late 2023.
Canada’s flood of product into Europe has only accelerated. BfArM’s Q1 2026 figure was revised last month from its original publication in May (50.5 tonnes), increasing by 33.7% to August update (67.6 tonnes), marking the most imports of any single quarter.
More than 480 products above 25% THC now sell for €6 to €8 a gram, a price band that would have been unthinkable two years ago.
Operators are already restructuring around it. Cantourage Group, previously reliant on revenue-sharing distribution deals, launched Gramz in July, a proprietary flower brand it will buy outright rather than share margin on.
Meanwhile, our analysts also predicted that Thailand would become an emerging legitimate player in the European medical market. Khourdaji said: “The country benefits from abundant resources, an ideal climate for cultivation, and low operating costs,” pointing to ‘a number of cultivators producing for medical exports’.
In August, we reported that Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health is pressing ahead with a draft Cannabis and Hemp Act that would restrict its liberal cannabis market to purely medical and research use cases.
Amid continued pressure internationally to help curb the spike in illegal cannabis imports across Europe, Thailand looks all but certain to become a strictly medical market, for both businesses and consumers.
While its transition is still in its early stages, the market’s direction is clear. GACP-certified farms grew from a handful in 2024 to 149 by November 2025, against 11,814 licensed operators overall.
European companies like Germany’s TONNEX are already taking note. Krautinvest reported last month that the company is building a pharma-grade supply chain from Thai producers into its EU-GMP Schwerin facility, inspecting over 100 Thai facilities to date.
| Prediction | Predicted by | What’s happened | Status |
| “Oversupply is likely to become a common theme” as Canadian producers scale up their focus on European medical markets | Lawrence Purkiss, Senior Analyst, Prohibition Partners | German pharmacy flower prices fell 46% to €4.52 a gram in the 14 months to March 2026, down from over €10 a gram in late 2023; Q1 2026 imports were revised to 67.6 tonnes, the largest quarter on record | Confirmed |
| Business models built for the “snap rush” of cheap Canadian supply would face a reckoning | 2026 outlook | Cantourage Group launched Gramz in July, a proprietary flower brand it will buy outright rather than share margin on | Confirmed |
| Thailand would emerge as a legitimate player in European medical supply, given its climate, resources and low operating costs | Alex Khourdaji, Lead Analyst, Prohibition Partners | Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health is advancing a draft Cannabis and Hemp Act restricting the market to medical and research use; GACP-certified farms grew from a handful in 2024 to 149 by November 2025; Germany’s TONNEX is building a pharmaceutical supply chain from Thai producers into its Schwerin facility | Confirmed, still early stage |
Have European medical markets moved away from cannabis flower?
We also predicted that the dominance of cannabis flower would come under increasing pressure this year amid increasing negative attention and incoming markets omitting it from their frameworks altogether.
While this additional pressure has materialised to some extent, it has come from an unexpected direction. It was the Finance Commission for Health, not Drug Commissioner Hendrik Streeck, that moved against flower, seeing it pulled from Germany’s statutory insurance coverage on July 30.
A second, more structural threat to German flower supply emerged on June 8, when the Hessisches Landesamt für Gesundheit und Pflege published guidance challenging the compliance model underpinning much of the country’s imported flower.
Producers typically cultivate under Good Agricultural and Collection Practice standards in a third country, then route the crop through an EU Good Manufacturing Practice facility for final processing. Hesse’s authority argues that drying, is a critical manufacturing step that should require GMP compliance from harvest, not only at the EU end of the supply chain.
The guidance applies directly only to Hesse-licensed operators and isn’t formal regulation, but German regulators tend to converge on interpretation. If other states adopt the same reading, a meaningful share of Europe’s imported flower supply loses its compliance basis in one move rather than fading out commercially.
Elsewhere, Curaleaf International Chief Executive Officer Juan Martinez told Business of Cannabis in January that newer medical cannabis frameworks are favouring extracts over raw flower, framing it as ‘how newer frameworks choose to establish themselves’ rather than flower being rejected outright.
Spain’s medicines agency has mandated standardised oral solutions in hospital pharmacies, excluding raw flower except via CE-certified vape cartridges. Flower still leads only in the markets where it’s already entrenched, but the largest market in Europe’s position is now the one facing pressure on two fronts at once, from reimbursement and from compliance.
| Prediction | Predicted by | What’s happened | Status |
| Flower’s dominance would come under increasing pressure amid growing negative attention | Ben Stevens, Editor, Business of Cannabis | Germany’s Finance Commission for Health pulled flower from statutory insurance reimbursement from July 30; Hesse’s health authority separately challenged the compliance basis for imported flower on June 8 | Confirmed, different mechanism than originally cited |
| Emerging markets like France and Spain would launch without flower in their frameworks | Ben Stevens, Editor, Business of Cannabis | Spain has excluded raw flower from hospital pharmacy dispensing except via CE-certified vape cartridges; France’s blueprint keeps flower in its framework, restricted to CE-certified vaporisation, though the launch remains delayed | Partially confirmed |
What happened to intoxicating hemp?
Following a year of eye-watering statistics on the growth of the ‘intoxicating hemp’ market across the US, our prediction that it would continue to dominate the debate through 2026 was already plain to see.
The Senate passed a sweeping ban 60-40 on November 10, 2025, folded into shutdown-reopening negotiations and expanding hemp’s legal definition to cover all THC forms under a 0.4mg-per-container cap, a change the US Hemp Roundtable said would ‘wipe out 95% of the industry.’ Senator Rand Paul tried and failed to strip the language.
What’s happened since has also closely matched what we expected. Enforcement is arriving compound by compound, not all at once. On May 4, 2026, the DEA formally assigned HHC its own Schedule I code, arguing the cannabinoid ‘does not occur naturally in the cannabis plant and can only be obtained synthetically’ in a separate action from the farm bill fight, aimed at a single molecule.
The ban itself remains unresolved rather than repealed or confirmed. The Senate voted in August to push the compliance deadline from November 12 to December 12, but the House passed a different farm bill without any hemp language attached, and the two chambers haven’t reconciled, so November 12 is still, on paper, the operative date. Thousands of manufacturers are still looking for a new home rather than disappearing.
Intoxicating hemp’s uncertain future
| Prediction | Predicted by | What’s happened | Status |
| “The genie is out of the bottle” — intoxicating hemp would remain a dominant, unresolved policy fight through 2026 | Ben Stevens, Editor, Business of Cannabis | The Senate passed a ban 60-40 on November 10, 2025, but enforcement has arrived compound by compound rather than as a single sweeping ban — the DEA assigned HHC its own Schedule I code on May 4, 2026, while the compliance deadline remains contested between the House and Senate | Confirmed |
| An estimated close to US$30bn in market activity at stake | Ben Stevens, Editor, Business of Cannabis | The DEA’s own May 2026 filing put the figure at US$28.4bn and 320,000 jobs | Confirmed, closely aligned |
What has changed in the UK’s medical cannabis industry?
Sarah Sinclair, Editor of Cannabis Health, predicted steady patient growth against a persistently narrow prescriber base.
NHS Business Services Authority data shows 1,701,064 items dispensed in English community pharmacies in 2025, up 154% year-on-year from 668,511 in 2024, itself up 136% on 2023’s 128% growth. Since 2019, the market has expanded from 278 items dispensed to 1.7 million, a more than 6,000-fold increase.
That volume runs through a narrow pipeline. FOI data published June 30 shows pharmacist-independent prescribers issued 61.9% of all CBPM items between January 2019 and May 2025, with nine of the ten highest-volume prescribers in the dataset working within telemedicine clinics. The top eight clinics alone account for roughly 80% of all CBPM prescriptions.
Sinclair also expected greater regulatory engagement. The critical Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs review Sinclair referenced is now overdue, having been scheduled for release in summer 2026.
Elsewhere, her prediction on legal gaps has landed most concretely. Patient Protect launched on March 9, a UK-wide advocacy service covering employment, housing, policing and driving discrimination, founded by patient advocate Alex Fraser and cannabis lawyer Robert Jappie.
On driving specifically, the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s first official cannabis guidance only reached forces on January 7, more than seven years after legalisation, and its own author admits training remains inconsistent across all 43 forces.
Sinclair’s read on high-potency demand also now has the numbers behind it. NHSBSA data shows 53.6% of 2025’s 1.2 million flower items with parseable THC data sat at 25% or above, with 75% above 22%. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, that climbed to 66.5% at 25% or above and 85% above 22%.
| Prediction | Predicted by | What’s happened | Status |
| Patient numbers would grow steadily while prescriber numbers stayed low relative to demand | Sarah Sinclair, Editor, Cannabis Health | Prescriptions rose 154% year-on-year to 1,701,064 items in 2025, but 61.9% of all CBPM items were issued by pharmacist independent prescribers, with the top eight clinics accounting for roughly 80% of volume | Confirmed |
| Increased regulatory engagement from bodies such as the CQC and the ACMD | Sarah Sinclair, Editor, Cannabis Health | The ACMD review remains outstanding, having been scheduled for summer 2026 | Delayed |
| Legal gaps around driving and workplace testing would become harder to ignore | Sarah Sinclair, Editor, Cannabis Health | Patient Protect launched March 9 to address employment, housing, policing and driving discrimination; the National Police Chiefs’ Council issued its first official cannabis driving guidance on January 7, more than seven years after legalisation | Confirmed |
| Continued growth in demand for high-potency flower | Sarah Sinclair, Editor, Cannabis Health | The share of flower items at 25% THC or above rose from 53.6% in 2025 to 66.5% in the first quarter of 2026 | Confirmed |
