This report from MMJ Daily, published on 22 July 2026.
The debate around EU GMP certification being misused to bypass compliance measures is heating up in Germany. Following the recent call by the state of Hesse for a ‘greenwashing’ crackdown, leading German pharmacologist, Dr Markus Veit (pictured here) of Alphatopics, has added his voice to the need for more transparency.
Quoted in MMJ Daily, Dr Veit said that cannabis flower that has never passed through a genuine GMP process keeps reaching German patients as medicine. He says what is required is a ‘certicate of conformity’ across the entire value chain. Dr Veit is one of Germany’s leading experts in pharmacognosy, pharmaceutical quality control, and the regulatory affairs of medical cannabis.
“We have a GMP database where you can see the certificates issued by EU authorities, and there’s not a single license in Thailand, so every flower coming from Thailand is GMP washed,” Dr Veit says. He says the EU database holds no Thai site, meaning that any cannabis flower that arrives from Thailand carrying GMP status must have acquired it somewhere after leaving the country.
Cannabis flower that never passed through a genuine GMP process keeps reaching German patients as medicine, according to Dr Markus Veit of Alphatopics. He has been tracking EU GMP washing (aka ‘greenwashing), the practice of routing imported flower through a European facility to acquire a certification the original material could not carry on its own.
“We have a GMP database where you can see the certificates issued by EU authorities, and there’s not a single license in Thailand, so every flower coming from Thailand is GMP washed,” says Dr Veit.
According to Dr Veit, the database holds no Thai site, which is the whole of the claim, since flower that arrives from Thailand carrying GMP status must have acquired it somewhere after leaving the country.
“There are people claiming it’s up to the manufacturer to apply similar standards under GACP, but from my point of view it’s never similar to GMP, because in GMP you have control from the authorities, you need to fully validate your processes and to qualify your equipment, and this is a very important part of the quality assurance that is needed,”
Under GACP the grower self-applies good practice, while under GMP a regulator evaluates and inspects, so flower that clears only the lighter cultivation standard and collects its GMP certification at the end of the chain passes through the stages that determine contamination with no authority watching. He says the June guidance letter from the Hessian state office treats the complete drying as exactly that kind of GMP step, one that cannot be certified through a GACP origin.
Pharmacies and patients rarely see the defect
“From a formal viewpoint, pharmacies are responsible to have flowers manufactured under GMP. It’s not allowed to distribute non-GMP flowers, and this is even more important after the statements of the authorities in Germany,” Dr Veit says.
German rules put the responsibility for GMP-manufactured flower on the pharmacy that dispenses it. The pharmacy holding that responsibility has little means to act on it, because the detail needed to verify a supply chain does not travel with the product.
“Pharmacies have no influence on GMP washing, because often this washing isn’t transparent. From my perspective there should be a certificate of conformity, with every detail in the whole value chain provided to pharmacies, including the GACP or GMP status of any person or company involved in manufacturing the flowers,” he says.
“It’s difficult to distinguish mouldy flowers from flowers with dense trichomes, it’s not easy to identify. You only see it if it’s really mouldy. If there’s a little mould, for patients it’s difficult to see. In pharmacies you don’t break down the flowers, and very often this mould appears in the inner part of the flower, in that cavity you have the mould,” says Dt Veit who points out that a pharmacist handling sealed product and an untrained patient are both looking at the outside of a bud whose defect sits on the inside.
“If you bring back a mouldy flower to the pharmacy, the obligation for the pharmacy is to make this official. We have a committee, AMK, that collects patient complaints. If this notification isn’t done, only the wholesaler is informed, and the wholesaler normally responds that the pharmacy should send back the material and be refunded. But this flower should be recalled from the market,” says Dr Veit.
“Settling a mouldy return as a quiet exchange between pharmacy and wholesaler leaves the rest of the batch on the shelf,” which he says is illegal where the mould is obvious.
Price keeps the grey market supplied
“If pharmacies don’t supply these flowers to patients, they go back to their doctors, and in the end they go to another pharmacy. There are pharmacies acting in a grey zone, they are interested in earning money, and you will find pharmacies where you get the flower you want,” says Dr Veit.
He says that refusing to hand over non-GMP flower does not remove the demand for it. Flower routed through countries with no EU GMP processing after harvest runs cheap, and a patient paying out of pocket has reason to keep moving until a prescription gets filled.
“It’s a question of price, flowers coming from Thailand are cheap, for instance.”
Portugal is the conversion point
“There’s a case with flowers coming from Canada, released in Portugal with a high microbial count. For this batch there are complaints on social media that it’s contaminated, and there was no recall at all,” says Dr Veit who believes certain Canadian producers are offloading their lowest-grade flower into the European market, and Portugal is where the conversion happens.
“There’s cannabis coming from Portugal that is fine, but it’s a major hub for GMP washing,” he says. German labs retests Portuguese-released material in Germany and often lands on a higher bioburden count than the Portuguese test results show.
“At the moment we have a clear commitment from a couple of authorities in Germany that don’t accept flowers not processed after harvest under GMP. It will be increasingly difficult for suppliers to sell those flowers, and to bring them to the market is not in line with local requirements, which is a very good situation,” Dr Veit concludes.
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