Cannabis in Poland

Poland runs a medical cannabis system and nothing else. Since 1 November 2017, under the amendment of 7 July 2017 to the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction, pharmacies can compound dried cannabis flower (Cannabis flos) on a prescription marked Rpw. Any physician except a veterinarian may write it. There are no dispensaries, no clubs, no coffeeshops and no legal adult-use market, and possession of cannabis for any other purpose remains a criminal offense.

The patient side is more permissive than the law suggests and more expensive than patients expect. Under the Health Minister's regulation of 11 September 2006 a prescription must be filled within 30 days of issue and may cover up to 90 days of use. Flower is filled by pharmacies that are authorized to handle Rpw preparations, and Medicover and MedCan report that the National Health Fund does not reimburse it. A monitoring reading of 27 August 2026 by MedCan Clinics, using pharmacy availability data from the GdziePoLek service, found Cannabis flos at prices from 18.67 to 83.99 zloty per gram, a spread of more than four to one between the cheapest and the most expensive listing across the eight products it tracks.

Access got narrower in late 2024. A regulation of the Minister of Health dated 29 October 2024 (Dz.U. 2024 poz. 1600), in force since 7 November 2024, requires the prescriber to examine the patient personally before prescribing cannabis flower, extracts or resin. Only family doctors under an NFZ primary-care contract who are continuing an existing treatment are exempt. The practical result is that a prescription needs an in-person visit, and purely online prescribing is no longer available. Verify that a clinic offers a physical appointment before you pay.

Supply is imported. The Chief Pharmaceutical Inspectorate (GIF) reported imports of about 7.8 tonnes in 2024, up roughly 73% from 4.5 tonnes in 2023, and about 14 kg in 2017, the first year. A 2022 amendment (Dz.U. 2022 poz. 763) allows cultivation for pharmaceutical raw material only by a research institute supervised by the agriculture minister, under a GIF permit, but the flower named in the August 2026 pharmacy reading carries foreign producers' labels such as Tilray, Canopy Growth and Aurora.

On the criminal side, Article 62 of the Act punishes possession of any amount of a controlled substance with up to three years in prison, one to ten years for a significant quantity, and a fine, restriction of liberty or up to a year for a minor case. Article 62a lets a prosecutor or court discontinue proceedings when the amount is insignificant and meant for the person's own use. The discretion is real and unpredictable: nothing in the text defines a number of grams.

That is what a bill filed in the Sejm on 27 March 2026 (print 2672, signed by 17 MPs and represented by Ewa Szymanowska and Ryszard Petru) would change. It proposes that possessing up to 15 grams of cannabis herb in a single quantity, solely for own use, is not a crime, and that growing one plant for own use is not a crime unless it is in a public place or freely accessible to others. A public consultation that ran to 29 April 2026 drew nearly 20,000 opinions, according to Forsal. The Sejm's record shows the bill referred for a first reading on 11 June 2026 and moved to the Justice and Human Rights Committee on 1 July, with no first reading recorded as of 29 September 2026. Until it passes, the law is what Article 62 says.

Hemp-derived CBD is a separate, murkier matter. CBD extracts are an unauthorized novel food under EU Regulation 2015/2283, so oils sold as supplements sit in an enforcement gray zone that Polish inspectors and courts have not settled, while dried CBD flower is sold as a herbal smoking product. The line that separates hemp from cannabis herb in the drug act is a sum of THC and THCA of 0.3% of dry weight since 7 May 2022; the original 2005 text said below 0.20% THC, which is why older pages still cite 0.2%.

Verdex lists no Polish sellers. We found no official list of which Polish pharmacies or clinics handle medical cannabis, only commercial availability trackers, so we do not publish a directory of them until a register exists.