The Bundestag voted on Friday to remove the cannabis flower from statutory health insurance, passing the chamber 319 to 286 with four abstentions after a closing debate in which the AfD, Greens and Left jointly attacked the substance of the rules and the speed of the procedure as part of a funding law.

The vehicle is the GKV-Beitragssatzstabilisierungsgesetz, designed by the government to close 15.3 billion euros by 2027 and around 40 billion by 2030. The law relieves 16.3 billion euros in 2027 and 3801.03 billion euros and more than 3801.03 billion euros in 2027. reduce spending on the other hand. The cannabis flower takes a line in that package, along with the exclusion of homeopathic and anthroposophic medicines from supplementary fund benefits, and the end of billing for whole-body skin cancer screening ordered without clinical indication. Co-payments increase by 50 percent, from a minimum of 7.50 euros to a maximum of 15.

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Nina Warken, Federal Health Minister (CDU), says that the law is a milestone in the long road to secure the finances of the statutory funds, and that what is at stake is nothing more than a paradigm shift in the health system. The account of the meeting of the Bundestag. Spending has recently grown at roughly twice the rate of income, Nina says. “We want to go out with the money we have in the future.”

The manufacturer’s rebate more than doubled from 7% to 15.5%. The dynamic component that would have replicated long-term incremental revenue was missing from the committee’s deliberations. Britta Haßelmann, parliamentary leader of the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen group, stated that promises of one billion euros were made to the pharmaceutical industry while the savings proposals of government experts remained unimplemented. Heidi Reichinn, leader of the parliamentary group of Die Linke, says the reform takes the ax to the health service in Germany, stating that the whole legislative process was a disaster, because the professional associations had almost no time to settle on the rules.

The full account contains the exclusion of flowers and nothing about cannabis
Arnau Valdovinos, founder of Cannamonitor, says: “Austerity has come to the German cannabis market. The drive to save health has overtaken the patient and industry cases of therapeutic continuity, prescriber autonomy and patient-specific formulations. But there is a twisted logic with the mandatory six-month product savings rather than the de facto monopoly of more expensive approved drugs like Exilby, even when there are already much cheaper compound alternatives, if savings are really the goal, The self-pay market shows that the answer is more competition, not less.

The six-month trial of therapy that Arnau mentions is nowhere to be found in the Bundestag’s published account of the seat, which stops short of registering the exclusion of flowers. Its operative text is contained in the committee’s amendment document, and the full summary is not reproduced. Exilby, Vertanical’s full-spectrum cannabis extract, received German marketing authorization in June. It has not reached the market, and the funds have not agreed on a price.

“This is exactly the kind of change that Cannamonitor is here to see coming,” says Arnau. “After the approval of Exilby, before the correction surfaced, we pointed out that a licensed finished product like Exilby could ‘sleep’ most of the master formulations and make the reimbursement of flowers politically questionable. We follow the picture of the German market to the end, GKV Gamsi was returning sales data, open market prices and our customers read the regulations months in advance, and not therefore in the morning.”

“The question of creating a therapeutic access program for psilocybin is not how it will be implemented, but how it will be implemented.”

By Jessica Nielson, Minnesota Psychedelic Medicine Task Force, via Minnesota Reformer

Minnesota Legislature in 2023 He founded the Psychedelic Medicine Task Forcewas tasked with assessing access to psychedelic drugs to help address the mental health crisis here.

Background: Promising therapies like psilocybin-assisted treatments for depression, addiction, and trauma are gaining momentum for Food and Drug Administration approval, and other states like Oregon and Colorado have already legalized therapeutic access.

Wait, what are psychedelics you might ask? They are a class of drugs made illegal (Schedule I status) by the Nixon administration in 1970. From the 1950s to the 1970s, they were gaining traction in psychiatric clinics, where they were being used to treat mental health conditions and alcohol abuse. At the same time, they were also used by hippies protesting the Vietnam War and as part of the countercultural movement for the Civil Rights Movement.

The Controlled Substances Act effectively launched the War on Drugs and halted decades of promising research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics—like magic mushrooms or psilocybin—and criminalized anyone who used them.

In recent years, however, there has been increased interest in psychedelic medications because of their potential to alter brain function, thereby ameliorating some of the more challenging mental health conditions that are byproducts of neurological patterns stuck in a pathological cycle.

Psychedelics are capable of altering the brain, a term known as neuroplasticity, and many researchers and clinicians are excited about their therapeutic applications for neurological and mental health disorders.

Fast forward to 2026, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order to speed up access to psychedelic drugs. It also included a section directing the federal agency to develop a framework for state-federal cooperation, which was a response to the surge in psychedelic-focused legislation we’ve seen across the country in recent years.

All of this last moment resulted in a very fruitful legislative session on psychedelics. Several bills were moved in the legislature, although we were few our ultimate goal was to create a therapeutic access program with psilocybin mushrooms. We managed to get a directive from the Office of Cannabis Management to set up a feasibility study and statutory report by January 15, 2027. The report will outline a framework for implementing a therapeutic psilocybin program with screened and healthy patients.

In the coming months, the Office of Cannabis Management will be working on its report on what the regulatory landscape will look like for the development and implementation of a state-regulated therapeutic psilocybin program.

Thanks to those in charge who participated The Psychedelic Medicine Task Force, Minnesota, already has a 200-page guidebook Legal, regulatory, scientific, cultural and ethical considerations for incorporating psychedelic medicine into our society. It is the result of 14 months of work by 23 members, and can also serve as a national resource to help all states develop policies and programs related to this important work.

The point is: the Office of Cannabis Management doesn’t have to start from scratch. It already has the report, the policy framework advanced by the House, the testimony of patients, veterans, clinicians and families, and a clear signal that there is broad interest in getting it right.

The question of creating a psilocybin therapeutic access program is not how it will be implemented, but how it will be implemented. We demonstrated at this session that there is broad bipartisan support at the local, state and federal levels. Many states are considering legislation to determine how their states will address the integration of psychedelic drugs into their systems of care, and Minnesota has the opportunity to be a leader and pioneer in this effort.

With so much research and promising support for psychedelic drugs, we should see the passing of this session as a planning phase for action in 2027, to help the Legislature pass this access program and help many of our friends and family recover from the most difficult mental health conditions that affect them.

Jessica Nielson, PhD, is the chair of the Minnesota Psychedelic Medicine Task Force. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Minnesota. He is also the founder and president of the Minnesota Psychedelic Society.

This piece was first published by the Minnesota Reformer.

user photo Mark Groeneveld.