Who supervises cultivation and manufacture?

Licences from Swissmedic

Cannabis for medical purposes is a controlled narcotic listed in Verzeichnis a, the list of substances subject to all control measures (BetmVV-EDI, Annex 2). Like other narcotics used in medicine, its cultivation, processing, manufacture and trade are subject to the licensing and control system of Swissmedic (Art. 4 para. 1 and Art. 5 para. 1 BetmG; Art. 22a and 22b BetmKV):

• Anyone who cultivates, manufactures, processes or trades narcotics needs a Swissmedic licence.
• Each cultivation additionally needs an individual cultivation licence.
• Every import and export of controlled narcotics needs a Swissmedic permit.

Swissmedic sets out the details of the required licences in its factsheet ‘Cannabis für medizinische Zwecke’ (version 2.0, valid from 1 June 2026). Its page ‘Cannabis Agency’ deals with licences to cultivate cannabis for medical purposes.

Authorised medicines and magistral preparations

Ready-to-use medicinal products may be placed on the market only with a Swissmedic authorisation (Art. 9 para. 1 HMG). Swissmedic publishes a list of the authorised human medicines that contain narcotics.

A magistral preparation (Formula magistralis) is a medicine that a public or hospital pharmacy prepares on a medical prescription for a specific person or group of persons. It needs no authorisation, may be prepared ad hoc or in small batches, and may be dispensed only on a medical prescription (Art. 9 para. 2 let. a HMG). According to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH, German: BAG), cannabis medicines exempt from authorisation must also be manufactured according to the principles of good manufacturing practice.

The supply chain of a magistral preparation

Swissmedic describes how this chain must be organised (Swissmedic factsheet MU105_00_809, sections 4.3.1 and 5, Appendix 3):

• The manufacturing chain must include a company that holds a Swissmedic manufacturing licence for active substances and carries out the technical release.
• A pharmacy may not take cannabis directly from the grower and make preparations from it.
• Trade in magistral preparations, and their import or export, are not allowed.
• Import and export of the active substance are reserved to licensed companies with a Swissmedic permit.

The factsheet is addressed to the authorities. It does not itself create rights or duties for private persons, but it reflects Swissmedic's enforcement practice.

Pharmacopoeia and cantonal pharmacists

Medicines placed on the market must meet the requirements of the pharmacopoeia (Art. 8 HMG). According to Swissmedic, a monograph of the European Pharmacopoeia for cannabis flowers has applied since 1 July 2024 and replaced the former monograph of the Swiss Pharmacopoeia (CH 311). The FOPH FAQ of 4 March 2025 and the cantonal pharmacists' position paper of 2022 still refer to the Swiss monograph; Swissmedic's statement from 2026 is the more recent one.

The cantonal pharmacists supervise pharmacies (KAV, job profile). According to the FOPH, they are responsible for determining whether specific preparations can be prescribed. Their association, the KAV, classifies cannabis flowers as a rule not as medicines for direct use but as pharmaceutical starting materials from which medicines are prepared (KAV position paper 0021). This is a position paper, and cantonal provisions may differ. The office responsible in each canton is named on our canton pages.