A new study conducted by German federal health officials shows that rates of marijuana use declined among youth after the country legalized adult-use cannabis last year, contradicting one of the more common prohibitionist arguments against the reform.
The Federal Institute for Public Health’s Drug Affinity Study published on Tuesday examined marijuana use trends in 2025, finding that the rate of past-year cannabis consumption for youth aged 12-17 dipped from 6.7 percent to 6.1 percent since the prior survey in 2023. More regular consumption (at least ten times in the past year) also decreased from 1.3 percent to 1.1 percent.
Among young adults between the ages of 18 and 25, the study showed a slight uptick in cannabis usage, with past-year consumption increasing from 23.3 percent to 25.6 percent between 2023 and 2025.
Germany’s former health minister Karl Lauterbach, who spearheaded the government’s legalization plan, said the results of the research “confirm what the goal of legalization was: through the debate about dangers for children and adolescents, their consumption does not increase or even decreases,” according to a translation.
Die Studie würde bestätigen, was Ziel der Legalisierung war: durch die Debatte über Gefahren bei Kindern und Jugendlichen steigt deren
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