Gorilla Glue 4, Cinderella Kush, and Tropicana Cookie. He picked the three strains. “It didn’t take even 15 minutes, and then everything was ordered,” his friend recently told him, let’s call him Paul. It was his first online cannabis order. To be precise: he redeemed his first prescription for medical cannabis and is now a patient. Only as such can one legally obtain cannabis flowers online in Germany.
A trip to a doctor is not necessary; everything is online and hardly more work than ordering pants. That’s why online providers like Bloomwell, Dr. Ansay, or Candoc are booming. Paul ordered from Candoc, and with his 15 minutes he was apparently still slow. Candoc, for its part, welcomes everyone on its site with the line: “Become a cannabis patient in 3 minutes.” Currently, there is also a “Winter Deal” offered: 0 euro prescription fee. It costs him ten euros there. “Since I started ordering there, I’ve been inundated with emails from them,” Paul says, showing a few. Price drops, reminders for due reorders, coupons.
Choose a Symptom and Continue
The order starts with a questionnaire. Of the 13 symptoms available, Paul chose “sleep disturbances”: “You get them occasionally; I could have chosen stress as well,” he says. There are also options such as Tourette syndrome, cancer, or recurrent headaches.
The questions continue with inquiries about existing illnesses, medications you take, anxiety disorders or delusions. If you check anxiety or delusions, you cannot proceed; you are advised to consult a doctor, it says. However, you can change the selections as often as you like until you find the right answer.
When Paul had filled everything correctly for the platform, it was 1:30 PM. “Your medical data will be forwarded to our doctor for review,” Candoc writes to him; he could order already. Paul chooses a pharmacy in Leipzig. “I liked their logo,” he says. On the same day at 10:30 PM comes the email: “Your prescription has been approved,” and it was sent directly to the selected pharmacy.
Strains Sorted by Effect
They offer more than 50 varieties—sorted by effect from “uplifting” through “relaxing” to “sedating.” “Sedating was out of the question; I wouldn’t be able to do anything,” he says. “Uplifting” he didn’t want either: “Back when I used to smoke, I often got palpitations, I don’t want that again.” So Paul chose three relaxing strains of five grams each.
By the way, the black market hasn’t collapsed since the option of medical cannabis on prescription emerged, and at the same time the share of people dependent on medical cannabis has not dramatically risen by coincidence. Instead, a new target group has emerged, made up of people like my friend Paul.
People like him — 41, a family man, employed full-time, who enjoys baking bread and pizza, who in the evenings sits in his grandmother’s chair watching Netflix series, and who goes running regularly — did not previously buy cannabis in bags at the Hamburg harbor stairs and are now switching to medical cannabis from the pharmacy. People like Paul have not consumed for a long time and are now taking the opportunity to smoke something or bake cookies again, conveniently and safely.
These conclusions are also supported by figures published by the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices. They show that in the first quarter of 2025 a total of 37 tons of cannabis were legally introduced, about four and a half times higher than in the same period the previous year. Reimbursements by health insurers have not grown nearly as much. It is fairly clear that this disparity stems from self-payers with private prescriptions like Paul.
The cannabis here, you can be sure, is definitely clean, and the prices are very similar to those on the black market.
“I don’t actually smoke anymore,” Paul says. “Back then, yes, I used to, a lot, with friends. Today I’m a non-smoker anyway, and it’s out of the question to buy dope on the black market. Even if that weren’t a problem in Hamburg where I live. “But it’s illegal and besides I have no idea what that junk is made of,” he says.
Different with medical cannabis, it is clean and the prices are very similar to those on the black market. Paul paid about 150 euros for 15 grams in total. Once, he baked hash cookies from it; with friends on a cycling trip they smoked a joint. He still has twelve grams at home, in brown pharmacy containers.
The current federal government wants to do away with the easy method of ordering. Cannabis should, according to a draft amendment to the Medical Cannabis Act, henceforth only be prescribed after personal contact between doctor and patient.
Paul from Candoc has already received emails about this, along with a petition to sign: “Let’s stop the new Cannabis Act – for fair patient care.” Paul did not sign.
