Content Benefit

Content Strategy | UX Writing | Content Design | Globalization | Communications

Cannabis in pharmacies

Cannabis in pharmacies

Nine Swiss pharmacies, 1,177 participants and six months of records

On 7 September 2026 the Universities of Bern and Lucerne presented the interim assessment of SCRIPT, a randomised controlled trial that since 2024 has allowed adults who already consume cannabis to buy it over the counter in nine pharmacies across Bern, Biel and Lucerne. A total of 1,177 people signed up, split into two nearly identical groups: 588 with immediate access to the counter, 589 left for half a year with their usual supplier, meaning the illegal market. Funding comes from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Tobacco Prevention Fund, authorisation from the Federal Office of Public Health and two cantonal ethics committees.

From Milan that border sits little more than an hour away by train, yet the conceptual gap with what happens on the Italian side is measured in light years. Worth looking at the figures before the opinions.

Less combustion, more vaporising: what the interim data show

Among those with legal access, the share of people who take the substance exclusively by smoking it fell from 78% to 58% in six months. Vaporising in the seven days before the interview involved 27% of that sample against 11% of the control group, oral intake 8% against 3%.

What stands out most is the word of mouth: 71% of respondents passed on to their own circle the harm reduction tips received from staff, who are trained specifically to explain alternatives to combustion. A pharmacy thus becomes an information channel as well as a retail point.

On the classic worries the outcome is equally clear: no evidence of any rise in frequency of use, no reported episode of resale to third parties or consumption in public spaces. Prices sit just above those of the illicit circuit, and the difference pays for the counselling. Buyers aged 18 to 25 turned out to be the most price sensitive, which researchers read as unintended protection of the younger brackets. The report still awaits peer review, the project will run until 2029 and sales are authorised through October 2028.

Basel: 87 kilos and 900,000 francs taken away from the illicit circuit

The most mature experiment goes by the name Weed Care and began in Basel City on 30 January 2023 with 378 members, 299 of whom remained active after twenty four months. Over two years 87 kilograms of organic Swiss grown material were dispensed, in six varieties, a third of them below 13% THC: concentrations far removed from what circulates outside authorised channels. The canton estimates at roughly 900,000 francs the turnover taken away from dealers.

Neither days of intake nor quantities went up. The research group recorded instead a decline in dependence behaviours and in depressive and anxiety symptoms. Findings appeared in Addiction in 2025 under the signature of Baltes-Flueckiger and colleagues: in drug policy it is rare to be able to rely on experimental proof rather than mere correlation.

Eight authorised trials and a bill in the works

Pilot schemes approved by the Confederation number eight: alongside SCRIPT and Weed Care there are CanLeg in St Gallen, Cann-L in Lausanne, La Cannabinothèque in Vernier, Cannabis Research Zürich and ZüriCan in the canton of Zurich, Grashaus Projects in Basel Country. In February 2025 the social security and health committee of the National Council cleared a preliminary draft regulating the whole recreational supply chain, from cultivation to retail, with levies earmarked for prevention and education. Bern is building its rules on top of the evidence gathered, and not the other way round.

In Italy article 18 moved hemp onto criminal ground

The Italian route has taken the opposite direction. Law 242/2016 had opened the way for industrial hemp, and the Joint Chambers of the Court of Cassation with ruling 30475/2019 had established the criterion of actual intoxicating effect. Then came article 18 of decree law 48/2025, converted into law 80/2025, which prohibits import, transfer, processing, distribution, trade, transport and sale of inflorescences and their derivatives, resins, extracts and oils included, sparing only the seed chain. The level of active ingredient becomes irrelevant: what counts is the flower itself.

Added to this is the Speranza-Schillaci decree of 2020, which classifies cannabidiol for oral use among narcotic medicines, therefore obtainable on prescription alone.

Three judicial tracks: Cassation, the Constitutional Court and Luxembourg

The response from the bench deserves attention. The Court of Brindisi, GIP-GUP section, by order of 2 December 2025 referred article 18 to the Constitutional Court, questioning its compatibility with articles 13, 25, 27, 77 and 117 of the Charter and with articles 34 and 36 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the Union. The public hearing is set for 21 October 2026, and the Court of Brescia has followed the same path.

The Third criminal section of the Cassation, with judgment 11058 of 24 March 2026, rejected an appeal by a prosecutor seeking to seize a Sardinian farm: the presence of the inflorescence on its own proves no offence, what matters remains the effective capacity to produce narcotic effects.

Lastly the Council of State, after three precautionary suspensions, on 3 August 2026 referred the matter to the Court of Justice of the Union, asking whether banning free trade in oral CBD respects proportionality and the precautionary principle. A European precedent already exists: in the Kanavape case, decided on 19 November 2020, the Luxembourg judges struck down the French ban on marketing cannabidiol extracted from the whole plant, absent any proof of harmfulness.

The economics: some 3,000 businesses and half a billion in turnover

While the courts deliberate, the sector pays. Estimates point to around three thousand productive and commercial operations, an annual turnover in the region of 500 million euro and up to thirty thousand jobs exposed, across growers, processing labs, physical shops and online sellers. Retail and e-commerce, both expanding for eight years inside an authorised perimeter, found themselves outlawed with no transitional period.

Anyone working with content notices it in the most prosaic way: whole catalogues to rewrite, product pages to pull down, customer communications to draft while unsure what may still be said. A workload nobody had budgeted for.

Consumption figures tell a different story

The 2025 annual report to Parliament, covering 2024 data, indicates that among students aged 15 to 19 the share of those who have taken cannabinoids moved from 22% to 21%. The substance remains the most widespread in the country, accounts for 77% of referrals for personal use and ranks as primary for 13% of clients in the care of addiction services. Urban wastewater returns roughly 52 daily doses per thousand inhabitants, a stable value.

The most telling figure concerns potency: THC content in seized hashish has quadrupled in eight years, from 7% in 2016 to 29% in 2024. That is exactly what happens when a product stays confined to a market with no quality checks and no labelling duties, as already observed elsewhere with vaping liquids.

Across the continent the European agency EUDA estimates for 2025 that 8.4% of adults between 15 and 64 turned to the plant in the past year, a share rising to 15.4% among 15 to 34 year olds. Retail value of the illicit market in the Union exceeds 12 billion euro and resin averages 23% active ingredient, against 11% for herbal material.

Medical use still hangs on foreign supply

Then there is a chapter public debate happily forgets. The only authorised domestic producer is the Military Chemical Pharmaceutical Plant in Florence, with a quota confirmed at around 400 kilos a year, while therapeutic demand touched 1,950 kilos in 2020 and 1,453 in 2023. The remainder arrives from abroad through seven distributors, with reimbursement rules varying region by region and recurring shortages that patients know all too well.

What others have chosen, from the Netherlands to Uruguay

The Dutch have stopped pretending the back room of coffeeshops did not exist. Old style tolerance kept the front door open and left resupply to traffickers; on 17 June 2024 the transition phase of the closed supply chain experiment started, and since 7 April 2025, in ten municipalities, participating venues may put on the counter only goods from licensed growers, traced from field to till, with scientific evaluation of the effects on crime and public health.

Germany decriminalised in April 2024, allowing home growing and cultivation associations. The second interim report of the EKOCAN project, released in April 2026 and built on surveys, wastewater, hospital records and police statistics, signals youth prevalence stable or slightly down and a collapse in criminal proceedings, alongside a lame framework: barely 366 licensed clubs as of 31 October 2025, able to serve at most 3.5% of consumers, while the medical channel exploded to around 200 tonnes. The current executive openly calls it a mistake, independent evaluators point at the design of the rules rather than the principle. Worth quoting in full, criticism included.

Malta opened first in the Union, in December 2021, relying on non-profit bodies: twenty two licensed by early 2026, five hundred members apiece at most, seven grams a day and fifty a month. Analysis by the Maltese university found zero pesticide residue in samples from the regulated circuit, against five in those seized outside. Luxembourg has permitted home cultivation since 2023, Czechia since 1 January 2026 grants three plants to over 21s, Portugal has lived since 2001 with blanket decriminalisation and its dissuasion commissions.

Overseas the most fitting precedent comes from Uruguay, where dispensing through pharmacies dates back to 2017 with state set prices. In early 2025 the register counted 102,125 members, of whom 75,498 bought over the counter, plus more than four hundred and sixty clubs and forty participating outlets. Problematic consumption has stayed at 2.1% since 2011, general prevalence dropped from 14.6% in 2018 to 12.3% in 2024, and age at first contact rose from eighteen to twenty. In Canada, where the law dates from 2018, the 2024 national survey records 72% of users supplied by licensed shops or sites and only 3% by illicit channels, starting from 28%, with youth prevalence essentially unmoved.

Why the Italian ban delivers nothing

The comparison returns two regulatory philosophies at opposite poles. The Confederation chose to measure first and legislate later, entrusting dispensation to health professionals who pair the goods with a conversation, and interim results point to less harmful intake methods with no rise in volumes. Italy proceeded by immediate prohibition, leaving Cassation, the Constitutional Court and the Luxembourg bench to test whether it holds, while the substance keeps circulating at ever higher concentrations and with no quality control whatsoever.

Here I am stating a personal position, and I state it without qualification: Italian prohibitionism throws us a long way behind the countries we measure ourselves against every day. Amsterdam closed the loop after half a century of ambiguity, Bern collects data, Valletta and Luxembourg have drawn clear perimeters, Montevideo has been dispensing at the counter for eight years. Rome opted for prohibition by decree and is now collecting judicial referrals.

What interests me most concerns the effects, and positive ones are nowhere to be seen. Consumption does not retreat because of the ban: the one point decline among students sits inside a continental trend that bears no relation to article 18. The underground market does not retreat either: hashish potency quadrupled in eight years describes an illicit channel in excellent health and increasingly aggressive. Meanwhile tax revenue evaporates, traceability disappears, and the counselling that accompanies every purchase in Bernese pharmacies remains unthinkable here for the simple reason that the counter to deliver it is missing.

There is also the paradox of industrial hemp, swept away with everything else. Thousands of people farming inside an authorised framework faced a rule change with substantially retroactive effects, without any health authority ever producing proof that the banned products cause harm. Eight years of activity, wiped out overnight for reasons that have little to do with public health.

Fair to recall that the Swiss sample consists of adults already using regularly, so it says nothing about people who have never tried, and that the interim analysis still awaits peer validation. With that caution, one fact stands: somebody is gathering evidence while elsewhere the preference goes to arguing without any.

Related sources

Chiara Bonifazi