Alex Kwon, the cofounder and CEO of California-based vaporizer hardware manufacturer Active, started selling his THC oil vape tech to cannabis companies in the United Kingdom about two years ago.
“We started with putting our toe into the European market, but now we have a swimsuit on and we’re walking in up to our belly,” says the 40-year-old Kwon, who cofounded the company in 2018. “Soon we will be diving in.”
Active, which Forbes estimates to generate more than $100 million in annual revenue, sells vaporizers made for oil to some of the biggest cannabis companies in the U.S., including Trulieve, Green Thumb Industries and Curaleaf. A few years ago, it did not have any business in Europe. Today, more than 5% of the company’s revenue is derived from cannabis companies in the UK, which legalized medical marijuana in 2018, and Germany, which legalized medical use in 2017 and opened a limited recreational market in 2024. Kwon is currently negotiating a deal with an EU brand that would expand Active’s European business even further. “Europe could easily grow to 20% of our sales,” he says.
Active’s expansion outside America is one Kwon is not taking lightly. The EU, where about 25 countries have some form of cannabis legalization or decriminalization, is poised to become a $50 billion (annual sales) market if reform spreads across the entire continent, according to Whitney Economics. And Kwon wants Active to be on the ground floor of this new burgeoning cannabis industry.
“I think Europe is the battleground where cannabis is going to be won—it’s the gateway to the rest of the world,” says Kwon.
The U.S. cannabis market is projected to grow from $32 billion in annual sales to about $46 billion in three years, a 44% growth rate, according to data firm BDSA. But the EU is expected to grow 115% over the same period. And while cannabis companies in the U.S. cannot transport product across state lines, EU business can grow the crop in one country and export products around the continent.
For now, the EU cannabis market is small. Annual sales this year are expected to reach $1.2 billion, according to a forthcoming report by Prohibition Partners. It is projected to reach $2.6 billion in 2028 and $6 billion in annual sales within a decade, or more than a 400% jump from this year. Germany, which is the EU’s largest economy and the continent’s largest legal marijuana industry with about $500 million in sales last year, is expected to generate just under $1 billion in sales at the end of 2025. The UK, which has not been part of the EU since Brexit in 2020, currently has a medical market with about $255 million in annual sales. The Netherlands and Switzerland both launched pilot programs to test recreational marijuana while Poland, Czech Republic, and other countries have launched medical programs. Malta and Luxembourg currently have adult-use programs and France has proposed medical legalization measures as well.
Compared to the U.S., where 38 states have some form of legalization that generated $32 billion in annual legal cannabis sales last year, Europe’s cannabis market is about the size of New Jersey’s marijuana economy, but the potential upside and practical regulations that allow cannabis to be grown in Spain and Portugal and exported to other countries legally, has created a solid investment thesis for some U.S. companies to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the EU.
Beau Whitney, the founder of cannabis data firm Whitney Economics, says that Europe is an emerging market that’s too important to ignore. While the U.S. has had a huge head start—California first legalized medical marijuana in 1996—the European market features government collaboration and financial incentives that the United States does not. (The barriers to entry in Europe are high, companies need to have EU GMP-certified facilities, but that’s a good thing for investors because it lowers potential competition. Some countries only allow pharmaceutical cannabis products.) In the U.S., only 27% of cannabis companies are profitable, weighed down by federal prohibition, over regulation and punitive taxes on the state and local level. While former President Joe Biden launched a federal review to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug—it is currently in the same category as heroin and LSD—the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has held up the review. And now with President Donald Trump in the White House, reform has come to a halt, despite the fact that he endorsed changes to the country’s marijuana laws while on the campaign trail.
