It may not be Switzerland’s political capital, but it could easily be its cannabis capital. We’re talking about Zurich, one of the country’s largest cities and its main financial hub. Given its influence, it makes sense that cannabis-related developments there to draw attention. And this latest one is significant. Following a vote held in March, the government decided to take a key step: extending the scientific pilot program for regulated cannabis in order to keep gathering data before moving into the debate over national legalization.
Zurich launched Züri Can – Cannabis with Responsibility, a scientific initiative designed to study how consumer behavior changes when people have access to legal cannabis within a regulated system. The results were so robust and consistent that the country chose to double down on the initiative.
What Is Züri Can, Why Does It Matter, and Why Is It Working?
Although Switzerland still prohibits the general commercial sale of cannabis for adult use, the country has been adopting an increasingly pragmatic stance toward the plant. In recent years, the federal government has authorized a series of scientific pilot programs to study what happens when access to cannabis is regulated in a controlled manner.
The logic behind the strategy is, forgive the pun, logical: before drafting a final law, real data is needed. It also requires acknowledging that certain behaviors already exist among the population and that, rather than simply banning them, governments should determine the safest way to regulate them. This is the view of Andreas Hauri, Zurich’s Director of Health, who acknowledges that “thousands of people consume cannabis in Zurich. We must acknowledge this reality and act accordingly.”
Zurich was one of the first cities to move forward with this approach and today leads one of the most closely watched cannabis experiments on the continent.
With this new authorization, the government can continue studying changes in consumption patterns, impacts on public health, effects on the illicit market, user behavior under regulated access, and which sales model works best. After all, it is impossible to create good laws without understanding who they affect and how those laws impact the population in practice. “The scientific findings emerging from the study will form the basis for discussions concerning an evidence-based and practical future implementation of a responsible cannabis policy in Switzerland,” stated the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) when asked about the study.
And we’re not just talking about allowing citizens to buy legal cannabis. Zurich chose to study participant behavior across three different distribution channels in order to compare their effectiveness and efficiency:
- Pharmacies
- Cannabis social clubs
- Municipal centers specializing in drug and harm reduction
This is key because the goal is not merely to determine whether regulation works, but—if it does—to figure out how it should be implemented.
The Numbers Behind the Program’s Two-Year Extension
After evaluating the preliminary results, the government decided to continue this pilot program for another two years, through October 2028. So far, the study has already yielded highly significant figures for a restricted-access scientific program.
In total, 2,456 registered users participated—0.56% of the city’s total population—through a network of 21 access points offering selected products grown under controlled conditions and in compliance with strict regulatory standards, typically sold in 5-gram packages. Over the course of the program, 110,500 sales were recorded, and 940 kg were distributed, showing that demand is both real and sustained.
What could this mean for Europe?
Alongside Germany, the Netherlands, Malta, and the Czech Republic, Switzerland appears to be moving faster on cannabis reform than much of the rest of Europe. If these pilot programs continue to show reductions in the illicit market, stable, non-problematic use, and improvements in traceability and public health, they could become compelling evidence that national legalization makes sense on multiple fronts.
As the logic behind the program makes clear, forcing people to rely on unregulated, illegal access that may be riskier than what the state itself could provide is not a policy Andreas Hauri appears willing to defend: “An uncontrolled black market with contaminated products is not an option,” the official summarized. It’s hard to argue with that.
