Blueprint for a KCanG Reform

Lead: The official evaluation of Germany’s Consumer Cannabis Act (KCanG) does not stop at the diagnosis. It tells lawmakers quite specifically what would have to change for cultivation associations to play their role. The report even uses the German legal term for a formal KCanG reform: Novelle.

From diagnosis to recommendation

The finding itself is well known: cultivation associations barely play a role in the market so far. But the second EKOCAN interim report does not stop there. In its conclusions it hands lawmakers a whole catalogue of recommendations (EKOCAN 2nd interim report, 2026). The core points, in the order the report lists them:

• review the restrictive legal and institutional framework for licensing cultivation associations,
• do the same for the numerous rules on cultivation and distribution and for the consumption ban inside cultivation associations,
• allow associations to provide neutral online information about their offering (the report refers to Section 6 KCanG here),
• publish all licensed associations in a nationwide whitelist.

The overarching goal named in the report: enabling “all adult consumers to become members of a cultivation association” (our translation from the German original).

This is not an activists’ wish list. It comes from the evaluation that lawmakers themselves commissioned in Section 43 KCanG.

Important: this is not about scrapping Section 6

This is where the debate tends to cut corners. EKOCAN does not recommend lifting the advertising ban. The report recommends enabling associations to provide neutral information about their offering online. That is a narrow, clearly defined proposal.

The difference matters in practice. Section 6 KCanG is short and strict: it prohibits advertising and any form of sponsorship, both for cannabis and for cultivation associations. As long as that rule stands unchanged, nothing changes for your club: factual information yes, advertising no. A recommendation is not a law.

The model existed before the law

It gets interesting when you place these recommendations next to the specialist literature. Years before the KCanG, the Ghent criminologist Tom Decorte drafted a detailed scenario for a non-commercial cannabis market, deliberately conceived as a counter-model to profit-driven commercialization (Decorte, 2018).

Some context, because it matters for how much weight this carries: this is a book of roughly 100 pages, not a peer-reviewed study. And EKOCAN does not cite it. The juxtaposition is ours, not the report’s. What can be said is this: both point in a similar direction. A system that organizes legal access without creating a for-profit market. Accessible enough to push back illegal supply, regulated enough for youth protection and quantity limits to work. What cannot be said is that science and the evaluation arrived at the same conclusion independently of each other.

The common thread: visibility and access

Boil the recommendations down and two things remain: visibility and access. Visibility, because an association nobody can find supplies nobody. Hence the proposals for neutral information and a public whitelist. Access, because an association that is hard to join will not replace the black market. Hence the call for leaner licensing and operating rules.

On visibility, something is already happening, just not at the federal level. Lower Saxony has been running a public list of licensed cultivation associations since April 2026, while other federal states publish nothing. For now, the nationwide whitelist has turned into a patchwork.

What does this mean for your club?

It gives you a solid basis to argue from. When you make the case for better conditions to your municipality, a public authority or the press, you are not standing there as a lobbyist demanding looser rules. You are quoting the official evaluation. That is a different negotiating position.

In concrete terms: the whitelist idea, neutral findability within the limits of Section 6, cutting back licensing hurdles. These are no longer fringe demands but documented recommendations from a report to lawmakers. Always name the exact source along with them. That is the whole trick.

What we do not know yet

Whether a KCanG reform will come, and what it will look like, remains an open question. As of August 2026 the Consumer Cannabis Act stands unchanged. What is currently moving through parliament is an amendment to the Medical Cannabis Act, a different matter that should not be confused with a KCanG reform. And the non-commercial market scenario from the literature is a model, not a field trial. Whether looser rules would actually help the associations break through is something the ongoing evaluation, which runs until April 2028, has yet to show. The path is sketched out. Nobody has walked it yet.

For your club

• EKOCAN makes concrete recommendations: review the licensing rules, review the rules on cultivation and distribution, put the consumption ban inside associations to the test, allow neutral information online, create a nationwide whitelist.
• The goal named in the report: enable all adult consumers to become members.
• Section 6 KCanG remains unchanged. What is recommended is neutral information, not a green light for advertising.
• So far the whitelist exists only state by state (Lower Saxony since April 2026), not nationwide.
• For your public communication: you are quoting the official evaluation, not just an opinion. Always name the source.

Sources

• EKOCAN, 2nd interim report: Manthey, J., et al. (2026). doi:10.25592/uhhfdm.18530
• Decorte, T. (2018). Regulating Cannabis: A Detailed Scenario for a Nonprofit Cannabis Market. Archway Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4808-6143-5.
• Section 6 KCanG (German law text): gesetze-im-internet.de/kcang/__6.html