Development of the medical marijuana industry in Poland 2026 - report

The Polish medical marijuana market is often described with numbers that no one officially publishes. The Ministry of Health has stated directly that since hemp flowers are not covered by reimbursement, the ministry lacks the tools to analyze the number of prescriptions issued for them (Rynek Aptek, 2020). Hard data that can be opened and read concern the volume of imports and the number of prescriptions issued in the e-prescription system. These define the limits of this report, and everything outside of it has been removed. Below you will find the legal status applicable in 2026 along with links to acts in the ELI register, a series of import data from the Chief Pharmaceutical Inspector, available prescription numbers, and a description of the rule that, starting from November 2024, determines how a patient receives a prescription.

KEY INFORMATION
- Medical marijuana has been legal in Poland since November 1, 2017 (Act of July 7, 2017, Journal of Laws 2017 item 1458).
- From November 7, 2024, a prescription can only be issued after a personal examination of the patient; a teleconsultation will not suffice.
- All raw material comes from imports: 14 kg in 2017 compared to 7.8 tons in 2024 (GIF).
- Hemp flowers are not reimbursed; the patient covers the full cost of therapy.
- Cultivation for pharmaceutical raw material can only be conducted by a research institute with a GIF permit (Article 49a of the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction).

Is medical marijuana legal in Poland and since when?

Yes. Medical marijuana has been legal since November 1, 2017, based on the Act of July 7, 2017, amending the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction and the Act on Drug Reimbursement (Dz.U. 2017 poz. 1458). The ELI register indicates the status of this act as "in force," so the legal basis has not changed for eight years.

In practice, this means that cannabis other than fiber is a pharmaceutical raw material in Poland, not a ready-made medicinal product. A doctor prescribes it on a prescription marked as Rpw, which includes narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. The patient fills it at a pharmacy that handles such substances, and the pharmacy prepares the raw material according to the prescription.

Polish law does not contain a closed list of conditions under which medical marijuana can be prescribed. The decision is up to the doctor, who assesses the situation of the specific patient and takes professional responsibility for it. In media reports about Polish practice, oncology and neurology often come up, including chronic pain and drug-resistant childhood epilepsy (Serwis Zdrowie PAP, 2024).

Before 2017, the path was different and much narrower. A patient could only access a cannabis preparation through a targeted import, which required individual consent from the Minister of Health for a specific person and specific indication. The Commissioner for Human Rights pointed out this mechanism among the barriers to therapy access, as the procedure took time, and the patient's condition did not wait (Commissioner for Human Rights, 2018).

It is worth separating two things that often blend into one in public discourse. The legality of therapy is not the same as its availability. The 2017 Act opened the legal path but did not create a national supply, reimbursement, or patient registry. Each of these three gaps is described separately below, as each has a different basis and history. If you are interested in the patient journey itself, we have described it step by step in the guide about this, how to become a medical marijuana patient in Poland.

What did the rule of personal examination change in November 2024?

From November 7, 2024, a prescription for cannabis other than fiber and cannabis extracts can only be issued after a personal examination of the patient by a doctor. Teleconsultation is no longer sufficient. An exception is the continuation of treatment with a given preparation when the prescription is issued by a doctor providing services under a primary health care contract (Rzecznik Praw Pacjenta, 2024).

The rule does not apply only to cannabis. It also includes fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone, and cannabis resin, which are substances with addictive effects. The goal was singular: to limit the activities of services issuing e-prescriptions without examination, in a matter of minutes and around the clock. The Health PAP service described this model even before the regulatory changes, quoting advertising slogans about prescriptions "in just 15 minutes."

The effect is visible in the data on prescriptions issued by so-called prescription machines. After November 2024, the numbers dropped, and in March 2025, there was a rebound: 44.3 thousand prescriptions for medical marijuana, 23 percent more than in February. In total, 88 thousand prescriptions were issued for the four substances covered by the rule, 15 percent more month over month (Health Market, 2025, according to Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and the e-Health Center).

Data from prescription machines do not describe the entire market, as some prescriptions are created in offices and hospitals. However, they show the direction: the channel that drove the strongest growth before November 2024 has been narrowed, yet it has not disappeared. The scope of the exception is narrower than its common summary suggests. Remote continuation is only available when the prescription is issued by a doctor with a primary health care contract, so a patient being treated in a private cannabis clinic still has to return for a visit.

How many prescriptions for medical marijuana are issued in Poland?

The publicly available data series is short and comes from the e-prescription system. In 2019, about 4 thousand prescriptions were issued, and sales amounted to 26 kg of flowers. In 2023, there were already 313 thousand prescriptions, and sales exceeded 2.5 tons. The first quarter of 2024 alone brought 115 thousand prescriptions for over a ton of raw material (Serwis Zdrowie PAP, 2024).

Three caveats determine how these numbers should be interpreted. First, we are talking about prescriptions issued, not filled at the pharmacy. Second, one person in chronic therapy receives several or a dozen prescriptions over the course of a year, so calculating prescriptions per patient by simple division yields a random result. Third, the data covers the period before the change in prescription issuance rules that came into effect in November 2024.

The scale of change between 2019 and 2023 is nonetheless clear: the number of prescriptions increased nearly eightyfold, and the sales volume nearly a hundredfold. It is worth remembering from what level this growth started. Twenty-six kilograms per year is the amount that a medium-sized hospital pharmacy dispenses in a few weeks with other prescription raw materials.

Comparing the first quarter of 2024 alone with the entire year of 2023 says more than percentages. Three months accounted for over one-third of the total number of prescriptions from the previous year, indicating that the growth rate did not slow down until the regulatory changes in the fall of 2024. Only this change interrupted the continuity of the series and made simple extrapolation of the trend into subsequent years meaningless.

Where does the flower used in Polish pharmacies come from?

Entirely from imports. The Chief Pharmaceutical Inspector states this in one sentence: cannabis other than fiber used for medical purposes comes entirely from imports (Health Market, 2025, for GIF). There is no domestic production on a commercial scale.

The GIF report shows the volume imported in subsequent years. In 2017, the year the law came into force, it was about 14 kg. In 2024, imports reached 7.8 tons, over 73 percent more than the previous year.

What does this table not include? A breakdown by countries of origin. The GIF report provides the total volume, so it does not mention the percentage shares of individual suppliers, even though they circulate in industry publications. If you are looking for information about specific products available in pharmacies, we discuss the current list separately in the entry about which medical marijuana strains are available in Poland.

The import volume is a measure of supply, not consumption. The raw material imported in a given year may remain in the warehouse of a wholesaler or pharmacy into the next year, and some batches do not pass quality control and do not enter circulation at all. The import curve clearly shows the direction and order of magnitude, but it does not replace sales data, which are not centrally collected for non-reimbursed raw materials.

Full dependence on imports has one practical consequence that patients often mention. A break in supply from a foreign manufacturer directly translates to the absence of a specific strain in a Polish pharmacy, and a substitute does not always have a similar profile. The Ministry of Health has previously acknowledged that shortages of pharmaceutical raw materials cannot always be predicted, as they depend on delays in deliveries and production problems at the manufacturer.

How does dried flower get from foreign cultivation to a Polish pharmacy?

Through a marketing authorization granted by the President of the Office for Registration of Medicinal Products. The raw material does not enter the Polish market as a finished drug, but as a pharmaceutical raw material for preparing prescription medications in the form of cannabis herb, extract, pharmaceutical tincture, or another extract from non-fibrous cannabis.

The scale of this procedure was small at the start. By the end of March 2019, nine applications for the marketing authorization of such raw materials had been submitted to the Registration Office (Rynek Aptek, 2019). Each application concerns a specific raw material from a specific manufacturer, so the number of strains available in pharmacies directly depends on the number of issued permits.

The chain then looks like it does for other narcotic substances. The raw material goes to a pharmacy that handles such substances, the pharmacist prepares a prescription medication according to the prescription record Rpw, and the patient receives the finished form. The name of the raw material is not arbitrary. The communication from the President of the Registration Office dated July 16, 2019, stipulated that the name must include a Latin designation, such as Cannabis flos, along with the declared cannabinoid content, and fanciful names will not be accepted (Rynek Aptek, 2019).

This arrangement explains why a change in manufacturer is noticeable for the patient. The withdrawal of one permit or a break in supply does not automatically mean that the raw material will be replaced by another, as the doctor must write a new prescription for a strain that has its own permit and profile. The pharmacy does not have the freedom to substitute, as it does with finished drugs from the same group.

Is medical marijuana reimbursed?

No. Hemp flower is not on the list of reimbursed drugs, so the patient bears the full cost of the raw material and the cost of medical visits. This situation has been in place since the beginning, that is, since 2017, and none of the subsequent amendments have changed it.

The basis for the refusal was the negative assessment of the Agency for Medical Technology Assessment. The Ombudsman for Citizens' Rights described this issue back in 2018: the agency then recommended not to finance cannabis preparations from public funds, citing insufficient scientific evidence for refractory epilepsy, chronic pain, and nausea after chemotherapy (Ombudsman, 2018).

The Ombudsman then formulated a reservation that remains relevant: the cost of such therapy is so high that without reimbursement, the patient cannot actually start treatment. This is not a problem of a single pharmacy's pricing, but of the system's structure. Chronic therapy without reimbursement selects patients based on their financial means, not on medical indications.

It is important to distinguish between raw material and finished medication, as these two things are often mixed up in discussions about reimbursement. In the situation described by the Ombudsman for Citizens' Rights, the only cannabis-based medicinal product approved for sale in Poland as a finished drug was Sativex, and it was this product, not prescription flower, that had a clear path to the reimbursement list. Hemp flower remains a pharmaceutical raw material and does not have that path.

There are exceptions that are resolved individually. The Ombudsman for Citizens' Rights described the case of a patient who obtained approval for the reimbursement of a cannabis-based preparation after a ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court. However, this path requires legal proceedings and is not a systemic solution. This report does not provide specific amounts per gram of raw material, as there is no public price list from which they could be read.

Why do we not know the exact number of patients in Poland?

Because such a register does not exist. The Ministry of Health responded directly that due to the lack of reimbursement, it does not have the tools to analyze the number of prescriptions filled for this raw material (Rynek Aptek, 2020). Reimbursement is the mechanism in the Polish system that enforces reporting.

The consequence is that every number of patients reported in the media is an estimate, not a reading from a register. Estimates are usually made by dividing the number of prescriptions or sales volume by an assumed average monthly dose. The result therefore depends on the assumption made, not on measurement, and two studies using the same source data can differ by a factor of two.

Distinguishing three concepts organizes the rest of the discussion. A prescription issued is a record in the e-prescription system. A prescription filled is the dispensing of raw material in a pharmacy, which is not centrally counted for non-reimbursed products. A patient is a person who has received raw material at least once during a given period. Only the first of these three quantities is publicly available.

Additionally, there is a variable that estimates usually remain silent about: the average dose. An oncology patient in the terminal phase of the disease and a patient with chronic pain in stable therapy consume quantities that differ several times within a month. When dividing the sales volume by the assumed dose, this difference directly affects the result and determines whether the same tons will yield one hundred or three hundred thousand people.

Therefore, in this report, you will not find a statement about "over three hundred thousand Polish patients" or any similar number. Not because the market is small, but because there is no document from which it could be read. We discuss more broadly how the lack of transparency impacts the quality of cannabis products available outside the pharmacy circuit in the text about regulations of CBD products in Poland.

Who can grow cannabis for pharmaceutical raw material in Poland?

Only a research institute supervised by the minister responsible for agriculture, after obtaining permission from the Chief Pharmaceutical Inspector. This is determined by Article 49a, paragraph 1 of the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction, added by the Act of March 24, 2022 (Dz.U. 2022 poz. 763), which came into force on May 7, 2022.

This solution is narrow by design. An entrepreneur cannot apply for such permission independently, as the law specifies a circle of entities entitled by their legal status. The permit is issued for a specified period, not exceeding five years, and the application must describe the area and address of cultivation as well as the security of the facility.

The technical conditions from paragraph 9 show why starting such cultivation is not an agricultural undertaking. The institute must conduct cultivation in a suitably secured location, mark the plants with an RFID system that allows their data to be read, employ a qualified person with at least two years of experience with a holder of a permit for the production of medicinal products, and have its own laboratory for assessing the quality of the harvest.

The law has been in effect since 2022, and imports have continued to grow during that time: from 1.65 tons in 2022 to 7.8 tons in 2024. This is the simplest test of how well this path has responded to market demand.

The reason does not lie solely in the regulations. Cultivation meeting the requirements of Article 49a requires a facility, staff with pharmaceutical experience, and its own analytical background, meaning investments of a manufacturing nature, not agricultural. Publicly funded research institutes rarely have such capital, and an entrepreneur who would have it does not fall within the circle of eligible entities. This discrepancy between financial capability and legal eligibility explains the state of domestic production better than any forecast.

How does medical marijuana differ from legal hemp flower?

By the THC content threshold and the method of sale. Medical marijuana is cannabis other than fiber hemp, in which the sum of delta-9-THC and tetrahydrocannabinolic acid exceeds 0.3 percent. Store-bought hemp flower comes from fiber hemp, where this same sum does not exceed that threshold. The former is dispensed only with a prescription, while the latter can be purchased without one.

The basis is two definitions from the same law: Article 4 point 5 describes fiber hemp, and Article 4 point 37 describes cannabis other than fiber hemp (the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction, Dz.U. 2023 poz. 1939, as amended by the law of March 24, 2022). The current wording came into effect on May 7, 2022; previously, the threshold was 0.20 percent.

One detail changes the result of a laboratory test and is often overlooked. The threshold is counted as the sum of delta-9-THC and THCA, not just delta-9-THC alone, and is then rounded to one decimal place. A plant with low delta-9-THC but high THCA can therefore exceed the threshold, even though the measurement of delta-9-THC alone would appear innocent.

The history of this threshold is also often misrepresented. Until May 6, 2022, it was 0.20 percent, and the current 0.3 percent was introduced by the law of March 24, 2022 (Journal of Laws 2022, item 763). Separately, and independently of national law, the 0.3 percent threshold for varieties eligible for support under the Common Agricultural Policy was introduced by EU Regulation 2021/2115, effective from January 1, 2023. The previous Regulation 1307/2013 set the threshold at 0.2 percent and has been repealed. The Polish threshold corresponds to the EU one in value, but does not derive from it: these are two separate regulations.

The distinction has practical significance when shopping. If you are looking for legal flower without a prescription, you will find it at the category of dried flower, not at the pharmacy. No store product replaces therapy with a prescription product.

What numbers does this report not provide and why?

You will not find here a forecast of the value of the Polish market in euros, the shares of countries of origin of the raw material, the number of doctors issuing Rpw prescriptions, or the price per gram of flower at the pharmacy. Each of these figures circulates in industry journalism, but none can be read from a public document that could be opened and verified.

This is not pedantry. A market report without indicating the source of each number becomes a collection of someone else's assumptions, later repeated as fact. A previous version of this text provided, among other things, the market value in 2030 and the structure of imports with an accuracy of one percentage point. None of these figures could be confirmed with the indicated source, so they disappeared along with the sentences that carried them.

The same principle applies to citing organizations. One of the sources referenced by the previous version of the text in ten separate claims does not exist under the given name, and the domain indicated with it does not resolve in the domain name system. An institutionally sounding name is not proof that the institution stands behind the number. Verification takes a minute and is worth doing with every market report, including others'.

Where to realistically look for data if you need it for your own analysis? The volume of imports is published by the Chief Pharmaceutical Inspectorate in responses to media inquiries. The number of prescriptions issued in the system is known by the e-Health Center. The legal status can be read in the Journal of Laws through the ELI register, where each act has information about its status and the consolidated text.

The picture that remains after this sifting is more modest but verifiable. The market has been growing since 2017 at a rate visible in import volume, relies entirely on foreign supplies, has no reimbursement or patient registry, and from November 2024 will require a physical visit from the patient before the first prescription. We have gathered more about the barriers on the patient side in the entry about how medical marijuana looks in Poland, progress and barriers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is medical marijuana legal in Poland in 2026?

Yes. The basis is the law of July 7, 2017, amending the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction, published as Journal of Laws 2017, item 1458, effective from November 1, 2017. The ELI register states the status of this act as "in force". The raw material is issued only with a prescription marked as Rpw.

Can a prescription for medical marijuana be obtained through a teleconsultation?

Not during the first qualification. From November 7, 2024, a prescription can only be issued after a personal examination of the patient. An exception is the continuation of treatment with a given preparation when the prescription is issued by a doctor providing services under a primary health care agreement (Patient Rights Ombudsman, 2024).

Does the NFZ reimburse medical marijuana?

No. Hemp flower is not covered by reimbursement, so the patient bears the full cost of the raw material and visits. The Agency for Health Technology Assessment recommended not to finance cannabis preparations from public funds, as described by the Commissioner for Human Rights in 2018. Individual exceptions were decided by the courts.

Where does the hemp flower sold in Polish pharmacies come from?

Entirely from imports. The Chief Pharmaceutical Inspectorate states that cannabis other than fiber used for medical purposes comes entirely from abroad. The volume increased from about 14 kg in 2017 to 7.8 tons in 2024, which is an increase of over 73 percent year on year.

How many patients in Poland use medical marijuana?

No one knows for sure, as there is no register. The Ministry of Health stated that due to the lack of reimbursement, there are no tools to analyze the number of prescriptions filled. Only the number of prescriptions issued is publicly available, for example, 313 thousand in 2023.

Is it legal to grow cannabis for pharmaceutical raw material in Poland?

Yes, but the circle of entities is narrow. Article 49a of the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction allows such cultivation only for a research institute supervised by the Minister of Agriculture, after obtaining a permit from the Chief Pharmaceutical Inspector valid for up to five years.

The article is for informational and educational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. The legal status described in the article is valid as of the publication date: regulations regarding hemp may change. Before making a decision, consult a lawyer or current legal acts.

Author: Michał Waluk · Opublikowano: 2026-05-11 · Aktualizacja: 2026-08-10