Insights from a cross-party panel at PTMC (Portugal Medizinisches Cannabis) on 11 September 2026.
Panellists: Jorge Miguel Teixeira MP (Iniciativa Liberal, IL), Francisco Themudo MP
(Partido Socialista, PS), Joana Seabra MP (Partido Social Democrata,
PSD), Karla Pinto (Partido LIVRE) and Alfredo Pascual, CFA (Cannamedical).
Moderated by Laura Ramos, CannaReporter. Cristina Vieira Henriques MP
(Chega) was billed on the programme but did not attend.
TL;DR
- Every party on stage supports medical cannabis. Nobody on stage was willing to push adult-use legalisation in the current parliament, because they judge the risk of a right-wing backlash higher than the reward.
- The single, cheapest, fastest fix everyone converged on: INFARMED updating the frozen list of conditions for which cannabis can be prescribed. It has not been touched since 2019 and does not need a change of law.
- Portugal is the world’s second-largest exporter of medicinal cannabis, yet only around 5,000 domestic prescriptions are written each year, so Portuguese patients are still routed to the illegal market.
- Alfredo Pascual walked the room through what Germany’s April 2024 reform actually delivered, and where it stalled, as the closest live case study for Portugal.
- IL’s Jorge Teixeira has submitted formal parliamentary questions to the ministries of Justice, Economy and Health on hemp, CBD (cannabidiol) and medical licensing. Answers are due within 60 days.
Setting the stage: 25 years of decriminalisation, no domestic supply
Portugal decriminalised the personal use of all drugs in 2001[1], a policy still cited internationally as a public-health success. Laura Ramos of CannaReporter opened the panel by drawing the line the industry keeps tripping over: decriminalisation covers personal use, but growing, buying, selling or sharing cannabis remains a criminal matter, and there is no legal domestic supply route for adults. In practice, that means the illegal market is still where consumers, and, by extension, most patients, actually source product.
The panel then turned to the question in the session title. Is Portugal, once a global reference for progressive drug policy, now falling behind?
One voice though was missing. Cristina Vieira Henriques MP of Chega, Portugal’s far-right party and the only political force in parliament openly opposed to any form of cannabis regulation, was scheduled to take part but did not make it to the panel. Chega party leader André Ventura has publicly said he wants to “clean up all of Portugal’s cannabis”[5], and Chega’s parliamentary group has explicitly rejected further regulation in Assembly of the Republic debates. Her absence removed the built-in tension that PTMC 2025 generated when a Chega representative was in the room, and turned much of this year’s exchange into a discussion among broadly aligned pro-reform voices rather than a genuine debate across the whole spectrum.
💡 FUN FACT
Portugal was the first country in the world to decriminalise the personal use of every controlled substance. That policy, adopted in 2001, is now 25 years old and still in force across left- and right-wing governments alike.[1]
Where the four parties stand
Iniciativa Liberal: fly low, make cannabis boring
Jorge Teixeira MP (IL), back on the PTMC stage for the second year, argued the political weather makes any radical push counter-productive right now. In his framing, giving cannabis reform high visibility would invite the far-right party Chega to weaponise it, and the industry would emerge worse off than it went in.
His preferred posture is to keep the file technical, treat medical cannabis as a boring administrative product, and separate it cleanly from CBD, from hemp, and from any conversation about adult-use legalisation. He has since put the theory into practice, submitting written questions to three ministries on licensing timelines, non-renewals and the CBD regime, with replies expected inside the statutory 60 days.
Partido Socialista: build the coalition, don't wait for one
Francisco Themudo MP (PS) agreed that this parliament will not deliver adult-use reform. His read is more structural: with a centre-right minority government supported by a hard-right party, only a progressive coalition can move the file, and that coalition does not currently exist.
Themudo pushed part of the responsibility onto the industry itself, arguing that operators licensed in Portugal have been too quiet on the domestic market and too focused on the German export trade to help build political cover at home.
LIVRE: patients first, doctors trained, Portugal as a research hub
Karla Pinto (LIVRE), a veterinarian, cannabis prescriber and researcher, brought the clinical voice. She pointed out that Portugal already has EU-GMP (European Union Good Manufacturing Practice) licensed producers, that it exports flower internationally, and that patients are still the group being left behind.
Her benchmarks were Germany and Czechia, where up to 90% of prescribed cannabis-based medicines are covered by the public health system, and Denmark, which does not restrict prescribing to a closed list of conditions. She also made the research case: Portugal’s small size is an asset for clinical trials, and the Endocannabinoid-System belongs in undergraduate medical curricula, not a weekend course.
PSD: better regulation, not less regulation, starting with doctor training
Joana Seabra MP (PSD), a serving family doctor, was measured. Portugal was one of the first countries in Europe to build a legal framework for medical cannabis, so in her view the country is not falling behind on structure. It is falling behind on execution.
Her single biggest lever is medical education: if doctors are not trained to prescribe, changing the rest of the framework achieves little. She invited cross-party work with IL on a joint push, and signalled openness to reviewing the framework on the evidence.
💡 FUN FACT
Only around 5,000 medical cannabis prescriptions are written in Portugal in a full year for a population of roughly 11 million.[2] The market is more accurately described as a rounding error, and Alfredo Pascual noted on stage that even that figure counts prescriptions, not distinct patients.
The industry reality: Alfredo Pascual on what Portugal is missing
Alfredo Pascual, CFA, of Cannamedical, was the panel’s designated pragmatist. He drew a clean line between the two markets. On adult-use he agreed political conditions are not ripe for commercial regulation, but noted that non-commercial routes, such as home-grow and cannabis social clubs (CSCs), are already operating in other European countries and can be discussed without triggering a culture war. On the medizinisch side he made the sharpest, most actionable proposal of the evening, and got audible agreement from every party on stage.
Die INFARMED list of conditions for which cannabis can legally be prescribed has not been updated since 2019. It contains roughly eight indications and requires cannabis to be a last-resort therapy after conventional treatments have failed. That list can be revised without changing the law. It is an administrative act by INFARMED (Autoridade Nacional do Medicamento e Produtos de Saúde), Portugal’s medicines regulator. Pascual’s ask was direct: get MPs to formally ask INFARMED to review it, expand it, and remove the last-resort clause. Doctor training only pays off if doctors are actually allowed to prescribe.
Themudo added the second half of the same argument. If the domestic market never grows past a few thousand prescriptions, there is no social coalition to defend or extend the sector. Operators exporting to Germany without lobbying in Portugal are, in his framing, part of the problem.
What Germany's April 2024 reform actually did
Because the German comparison came up repeatedly, Pascual walked the room through the state of play a year and a half after the reform. The CanG (Cannabisgesetz) law that took effect on 1 April 2024 did three things[3]. First, it created legal adult-use routes through home cultivation and cannabis social clubs, though clubs were regulated so tightly at the outset that few are operating at capacity. Second, it removed cannabis from the German list of narcotics (Betäubungsmittelgesetz), which is what actually moved the market. Prescriptions became easy to obtain, largely via telemedicine, and the medical channel exploded. Third, the promised commercial adult-use pillar, known as Säule 2, never materialised and is now effectively parked.
Pascual’s numbers: roughly 5 million annual cannabis users in Germany, with somewhere between 1 and 2 million now accessing legally through the medical channel, a share still growing month over month. Attempts to restrict telemedicine and mandate in-person pharmacy pick-up have stalled in parliament, partly because a European directive lets German patients obtain prescriptions from other member states, which would make a purely German restriction easy to route around. The government-commissioned EKOCAN consumption study, led by the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf on behalf of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health, published its first-year findings in late 2025[4]. Adolescent and adult use prevalence had not changed significantly, and a companion wastewater-monitoring programme (AMoCan) across 15 German cities detected no short-term consumption spike either.
5 key takeaways for operators
- The consensus fix is administrative, not legislative. Revising INFARMED’s list of prescribable conditions, and scrapping the last-resort clause, is the one item every party on stage supported. It requires no vote in parliament. If the industry wants a single unified ask for the next 12 months, this is it.
- Adult-use is off the table this parliament. Both IL and PS were explicit. Pushing a legalisation bill now would hand Chega a mobilising issue and make life harder for licensed operators, including on the medical side. Sequencing matters.
- Doctor training is a market-development lever, not a nice-to-have. Joana Seabra’s point was practical: prescribers who do not understand the endocannabinoid system will not prescribe, regardless of rules. Any Portuguese medical cannabis strategy that skips continuing medical education is building on sand.
- Portuguese operators need to lobby in Portugal, not just supply Germany. Being the world’s second-largest exporter without a working domestic market is politically fragile. Themudo’s warning to the industry was blunt: no domestic coalition, no long-term protection.
- Watch Jorge Teixeira’s parliamentary answers. Replies from the ministries of Justice, Economy and Health are due within 60 days and will disclose whether current friction on licences, renewals and CBD is driven by policy intent or by administrative drift. That answer changes the industry’s advocacy strategy either way.
💡 FUN FACT
Portugal is now the second-largest exporter of medical cannabis in the world, behind only Canada. Almost 80 tonnes were shipped out in 2025, roughly 156% more than the year before, with Germany taking around 46% of the volume.[6] The volume produced under EU-GMP in Portugal each year vastly exceeds what Portuguese patients themselves can legally access.
Notable quotes from the panel
Francisco Themudo MP, PS:
"Although cannabis is decriminalised, it's not legal. Portuguese people only buy any kind of drug in the illegal market. No quality, no research, no regard for age. A child can leave the high school and buy at the gates outside. We need to evolve to a more evidence-based policy."
"With this kind of law-and-order coalition, it is not possible to move any further. The 2001 decriminalisation was under a centre-left coalition. Medical cannabis legalisation was under a centre-left coalition. To develop further, we need a coalition of progressives."
"Portugal can be an agricultural hub, but it should also be a knowledge hub. We cannot just be agricultures of weed for export. We need to add value in research, in new products, and in the ecosystem combining academia, industry and society."
Jorge Miguel Teixeira MP, IL:
"If I put forward a full-regulation bill in this parliament today, the reaction would be absolutely toxic. It would make life harder, way harder, for everyone who works in this sector. That is a very good reason not to do it right now."
"One of the major issues for cannabis right now is that it's too special. You have to make cannabis boring. Medical cannabis should be a boring issue that you can solve with an administrative act."
"My impression is that most of what's happening on licensing and non-renewals is ignorance rather than intention. Until I get some confirmation otherwise, that's the working assumption, and it changes what kind of pressure the industry should apply."
Karla Pinto, LIVRE:
"Portugal was a pioneer a few years ago. We can be pioneers again. We have the plant, we have the industry, we have EU-GMP facilities, and now we export flower. What we're missing is listening to the patients."
"Denmark doesn't have a list. Any doctor of any specialty is allowed to prescribe cannabis. The physicians don't need a legal list to treat this or that. It's their clinical judgement, and it works."
"It's not a weekend course. We have to put the endocannabinoid system in the university degree, and in post-graduation for doctors already licensed. Every patient reacts differently. We have more than 100 molecules, not just THC and CBD."
Joana Seabra MP, PSD:
"I would not say Portugal is falling behind. We were one of the first countries to create a legal framework for medical cannabis. But we can and should do better: better access for patients, better medical training, and more medical guidelines."
"I am a family doctor as well as an MP, and I don't have much medical training on the use of cannabis. That is the first click. If doctors are trained and want to prescribe, everything else changes."
"We need good regulation, not less regulation. If we have good evidence and good safety data for patients, we can work together across parties and change something for the better. I think that is possible."
Alfredo Pascual, CFA, Cannamedical:
"There are only around 5,000 prescriptions of cannabis in Portugal per year, in a country of 11 million people. And that's prescriptions, not patients, so the real patient number is lower. That is not a medical market. That is a rounding error."
"The list of conditions for which cannabis can be prescribed in Portugal has not been updated since 2019. INFARMED can change it tomorrow. You don't need to change the law. You just need the regulator to sit down, review the list, expand it, and remove the last-resort clause."
"The biggest single change in Germany in April 2024 wasn't the clubs. It was cannabis being removed from the Betäubungsmittelgesetz, the narcotics list. That is what made prescriptions easy, and that is what made the market explode."
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Portugal actually falling behind on cannabis?
The panel’s answer was nuanced. Portugal is not behind on legal framework. It was one of the first countries in Europe to legalise medical cannabis. It is behind on execution: only ~5,000 prescriptions a year, a list of conditions frozen since 2019, uneven doctor training, and no legal adult-use route beyond the 2001 decriminalisation. Germany, in the words of Alfredo Pascual, has moved further in 18 months than Portugal has in five years.
Who can prescribe cannabis in Portugal, and for what?
Any licensed doctor can in principle prescribe cannabis-based medicines, but only for a closed list of approximately eight conditions defined by INFARMED in 2019, and only as a last-resort therapy after conventional treatments have failed. Panellists across four parties supported expanding that list and removing the last-resort restriction as the fastest, non-legislative reform available.
Will Portugal legalise adult-use cannabis in this parliament?
Almost certainly not. Both Jorge Teixeira (IL) and Francisco Themudo (PS) said publicly on stage that raising the profile of adult-use reform now would give Chega a mobilising issue and risk rolling back parts of the existing framework. Their strategy is to keep medical, hemp and CBD advancing quietly while adult-use waits for a friendlier parliament.
What can Portugal learn from Germany's April 2024 reform?
Two lessons dominated the panel. First, moving cannabis off the narcotics list unlocked prescribing far more than any regulatory campaign. Second, over-regulating adult-use routes (Germany’s cannabis clubs) can make them functionally unusable, undermining the very case for reform. Pascual’s takeaway: whichever path Portugal eventually takes, administrative simplicity matters as much as the legal headline.
Where does Lumino fit into all this?
We help European cannabis companies hire the operators, quality leads, regulatory experts and commercial teams who make regulated markets actually work. Every conversation on this panel, from doctor training to traceability to lobbying, is a hiring conversation somewhere. That is the corner of the industry we sit in, and PTMC is one of the venues where we watch it evolve in real time.
Referenzen
- Transform Drug Policy Foundation. “Drug decriminalisation in Portugal: setting the record straight.” transformdrugs.org.
- Panel disclosure by Alfredo Pascual (Cannamedical) at PTMC 2026, Lisbon, 11 September 2026. Figure corroborated by CannaReporter reporting on the Portuguese medical cannabis market.
- Bundesministerium für Gesundheit. “Cannabisgesetz (CanG).” Federal Ministry of Health, Germany, in force 1 April 2024. bundesgesundheitsministerium.de.
- EKOCAN project (Evaluation of the Konsumcannabisgesetz), University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Health, first-year findings published late 2025. See DRKS00037301 and summary reporting at Das Geschäft mit Cannabis und Cannabis Health News.
- Cannareporter. “André Ventura says he wants to ‘clean up all cannabis in Portugal’.” 1 April 2024. cannareporter.eu. Chega’s parliamentary position confirmed in Cannabis in Portugal.
- CannaReporter. “Portugal is the world’s second-largest exporter of medicinal cannabis, surpassing 20 tons in 2024.” cannareporter.eu. 2025 export figures via The Portugal News und Prohibition-Partner.
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