Repression against cannabis continued to decline in 2025. Around 2015, the number of offenses reported by the police per year had peaked at over 70,000. By 2025, that number had dropped to fewer than 20,000: the number of cannabis-prosecutions has declined dramatically over the past ten years.
So we’re being monitored less closely. That’s nice, but it’s not everything we want. We don’t want the black market to continue to control the trade in hash and weed – of unknown quality –almost unchecked. We want clean, tested products to be manufactured through legal production, and for sales to take place in a responsible, regulated manner. Unfortunately, we’re still a long way from that: The CanPG draft is, for now, just a draft. We will not have truly succeeded until there is a legal, stable, and functioning system in place.
For years, police departments have been complaining that they have too few officers, and prosecutors’ offices are also grappling with massive backlogs. We suspect that as the police force and the office of the public prosecutor have undergone a generational shift over the past decade, their priorities have also changed: Cannabis enforcement no longer holds the same ideological significance as it did in the past. In addition, over 1,000 medical cannabis patients have now found legal sources of supply at pharmacies. The pilot projects have enabled more than 10,000 people to legally obtain hashish and weed. Added to this are the legal changes and the decisions of the Federal Supreme Court (according to the law, possession of 10 grams of cannabis for personal use is not a criminal offense, and these 10 grams may not be confiscated by the police). For the past ten years, the CBD-weed has also made it difficult to quickly classify hemp flowers as illegal. We believe all of this has made repression against hemp more difficult and less appealing.
More on the topic of prosecution figures: Statistics from 1974 to 2025