Anyone following the current debate surrounding the new EKOCAN interim report quickly gets the feeling: the verdict has already been passed.
Partial legalization problematic.
Youth protection endangered.
Crime not effectively curbed.
Urgent need for action.
This is exactly how the report is currently being picked up politically. On April 1, 2026, the Federal Ministry of Health even spoke of an "urgent need for action," accompanied by clearly sharpened statements on partial legalization. bundesgesundheitsministerium.de
And this is precisely where the problem begins.
Because an interim report is not a final reckoning.
It can provide clues. It can reveal developments. It can identify problem areas. But it is not automatically reliable evidence that partial legalization has failed.
Anyone who sells early, methodologically limited signals as a political general reckoning is quickly turning observation into certainty.
Precisely for this reason, it is not only about critically reading such reports, but also about ensuring that genuine community perspectives become visible. If you want to contribute your experiences, you can participate directly in our survey here: https://forms.gle/pQff2ZR9AzmXseKf9
Evaluation is important. That's why it must be properly classified.
First of all:
We do not question the necessity of scientific evaluation.
On the contrary.
If Germany introduces a new cannabis model, then one must look very closely:
- What happens with youth protection?
- What changes in the health sector?
- What happens to the black market?
- How does law enforcement develop?
- What about medicinal cannabis?
- And how do consumption patterns change at all?
This is exactly what EKOCAN was set up for. According to the Federal Ministry of Health, the project examines the effects of the Cannabis Consumption Act on child and youth protection, general health protection, and cannabis-related crime. For this purpose, various data sources are combined, surveys are conducted, and consumers as well as cultivation associations are involved.
That is correct. And that is important.
But: Anyone who takes evaluation seriously must also take its limits seriously.
And precisely these limits are being lost far too quickly in the public and political exploitation of the report.
Early data is not automatically proof
This is one of the most important points of all.
Just because certain indicators change after a change in law does not automatically mean that the law itself is the clear cause.
Because with a regulatory change like the partial legalization of cannabis, many things change at the same time:
- public attention
- media coverage
- stigmatization
- reporting behavior
- control practice
- documentation
- legal and semi-legal sources
- the distinction between medical and non-medical use
Even the Science Media Center classifies the second interim report as part of an ongoing evaluation and emphasizes that its publication falls into a politically highly charged discourse. sciencemediacenter.de
The clean conclusion is therefore not:
"The data proves the failure of partial legalization."
But rather:
"The data shows developments that must be carefully interpreted and do not support premature political final judgments."
More visibility does not automatically mean more harm
This, too, is often oversimplified.
If more cases become visible after decriminalization or partial legalization, it does not automatically mean:
- more consumption
- more harm
- more problems
It can just as well mean:
- more openness
- less secrecy
- better recording
- more contact with the support system
Especially with cannabis, this is absolutely plausible. Those who used to remain silent might now speak up. Those who used to hide their consumption might now admit it. Those who previously remained outside institutional contacts might statistically appear more visibly later.
This does not make the data worthless. But it makes them significantly more open to interpretation than some political reactions currently suggest.
And precisely for this reason, it is not scientifically sound to directly construct a clear negative balance sheet of partial legalization from early anomalies.
The actual question is not just: who was surveyed? But also: who was really reached?
A particularly sensitive point is the reach into the actual consumer community.
In the published study protocol, EKOCAN describes several recruitment channels for the surveys:
- paid advertising on social media
- calls via the study website
- promotion by members of the expert advisory board
- depending on the question, dissemination through networks of addiction prevention and youth protection
For the question regarding members of cultivation associations, a complete register of all approved cultivation associations was even to be created and used for recruitment with the support of the state authorities. Furthermore, the protocol explicitly states that for valid statements on cultivation associations, the most comprehensive recruitment possible of numerous clubs from different federal states is necessary. wolnekonopie.org
On paper, this sounds plausible at first.
But this is precisely where the crucial question lies:
How well did these planned access channels actually reach the real, consumption-oriented community in practice?
Because there is a big difference between a planned recruitment channel and an actually meaningful sample.
Especially with cannabis, reach often doesn't happen through institutional visibility, but through:
- trust
- proximity to the scene
- closed groups
- clubs
- friend groups
- messenger distribution lists
- local networks
- community-specific channels
And that's where it's decided whether a survey was ultimately only formally widely advertised — or whether it really reached the people whose life reality is ultimately to be evaluated.
Formal expertise is not automatically community proximity
The fact that a project is supported by experts and accompanied by advisory boards is not a problem in itself. On the contrary: it makes sense in principle.
But one should not overstretch this either.
Because an expert advisory board does not automatically replace real proximity to the scene. A project name is not automatically present in the community. And a social media campaign is far from proof that particularly scene-savvy, active or club-affiliated consumers have been reached to a relevant extent.
The Federal Ministry of Health and the EKOCAN project website explicitly describe that consumers and cultivation associations are part of the project and that the undertaking is accompanied by a scientific or thematically appointed advisory board.
Therefore, the clean criticism is not:
"The researchers have no idea."
But rather:
"Institutional expertise does not replace a reliable representation of the actual consumer community — and precisely this question of reach is central to the validity."
That is the crucial difference.
Clubs are important - but that's precisely why their role was limited in the early phase
The role of cultivation associations is particularly relevant here.
Because yes: EKOCAN itself methodologically attributes high importance to them. The study protocol explicitly emphasizes that for valid statements, the most comprehensive recruitment of members from numerous cultivation associations is necessary. At the same time, however, the procedure also shows that a register of approved associations first had to be established for this purpose. Furthermore, the Federal Ministry of Health points out that communal self-cultivation in cultivation associations was only legalized by the KCanG.
And this leads to a very important point:
In the early phase of the law, clubs were relevant as a data channel, but not yet automatically a widespread, established and stable access to the entire community.
In other words:
If many clubs were still being set up, not yet fully operational, or had only just been approved, then it is methodologically difficult to speak as if the scene had already been fully and accurately captured through clubs.
This is not a sweeping dismissal of the study.
It is a legitimate question about its reach.
The actual problem is the political overstretching of the interim report
This is where it gets critical.
Because even in the publicly accessible classification of the second interim report, there is no simple black-and-white picture.
The Science Media Center summarizes that the report identifies undesirable developments and areas for improvement – for example, in youth protection, counseling, organized crime, and the framework conditions for cultivation associations. At the same time, reporting on the report also highlighted that partial legalization has not yet led to an excessive increase in consumption and that legal sources are gaining at least slightly in importance for procurement. sciencemediacenter.de
This is precisely why the current political escalation is so problematic.
If a report provides mixed, preliminary, and explicable findings, then it is simply too methodologically thin to immediately construct a narrative of clear failure from it.
It would be accurate to say:
- There are problem areas.
- There are open questions.
- There are indications of a need for correction.
- But there is no serious reason to draw a final conclusion about more liberal cannabis policy from early interim findings.
Why we as a community must now become more visible ourselves
And this is where the point that is crucial for us as a scene comes in.
If we don't want to be talked about without our reality being accurately represented, then we ourselves must make data, experiences, and perspectives more visible.
Not as a substitute for science.
Not as counter-facts.
But as a supplement where institutional research runs the risk of bypassing the actual community.
That's precisely why we launched our own community survey. It's not intended to represent the general population, but to make perspectives from the scene more visible that are easily overlooked in institutional surveys. You can participate directly here: https://forms.gle/qepuu7bpBBhgeJN79
Because one thing is clear:
- If data from the scene is missing, others will interpret it for us.
- If club members, long-time consumers, patients, homegrowers, and community-connected people do not contribute their perspective, an image will emerge that is too easily defined from the outside.
- And if the community is not visible, decisions will still be made about it in the end.
We must not simply let that happen.
Our Appeal to the Community
If you're in a social club, bring this topic to your club.
If you have a newsletter, share the survey there.
If you're active in groups, communities, or circles of friends, talk about it.
If you feel that the debate about cannabis is too often conducted without real proximity to the scene, then help make that better.
What matters now:
- Fill out the survey: https://forms.gle/V6weM9uqxm8YvNPz6
- discuss in the club
- share with friends
- post in groups and distribution lists
- make more real community perspectives visible
Not with volume instead of data.
But with more data directly from the community.
Our Conclusion
The new interim report is neither meaningless nor the ultimate truth.
It provides hints.
It poses open questions.
It offers findings worthy of discussion.
But it provides no reliable basis for alarmist political final judgments.
Anyone who wants to deduce the failure of partial legalization from early, methodologically limited, and in some parts difficult-to-interpret findings confuses an interim status with proof.
Precisely for this reason, this debate now needs:
- not less science, but more methodological honesty
- not less data, but better reach into the real community
- not less participation, but more voices from clubs, networks, and the actual everyday life of the scene
When decisions are made about cannabis, it must not only be talked about the community. The community itself must become visible.
