Is CBD legal in France?
Known as “legal cannabis” in France, CBD benefits from a legal vacuum in the interpretation of texts on the consumption of cannabis products. French and European law consider a THC concentration of less than 0.2% to be legal without specifying whether this barrier applies to the cultivated plant or the finished product.
For its part, the Mildeca (Interministerial Mission for the Fight against Drugs and Addictive Behaviour), whose opinion issued in July 2018 is only advisory, specifies that the products must not contain any trace of THC. As for the ANSM (Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament), it makes no distinction between the different cannabis molecules and classifies them all as narcotics.
As far as marketing is concerned, presenting CBD as a therapeutic product or remedy is prohibited by law in France. Indeed, only doctors and pharmacists are allowed to prescribe and market therapeutic products.
Nevertheless, the democratisation of CBD has taken place in Europe, benefiting from this regulatory uncertainty. This vagueness is also maintained by practices that differ from country to country, making it difficult to trace finished products. The main stumbling block is the level of THC, whose maximum authorised threshold is different at European level: 0.2% in France and Germany, 0.6% in Italy, 1% in Switzerland.