On December 31, 2021, the French authorities presented the country’s CBD sellers with a very unwanted gift, a ban on the sale of CBD flowers and leaves in all their forms.
The industry immediately fought with the CBD Professional Union file a lawsuit on Jan. 1 against the new ruling, working on New Year’s Eve to do so. His argument was that because the EU classified CBD as non-narcotic and because France is an EU member state, CBD should not be treated differently in their country.
On Friday, January 14, the French Supreme Court ruled in favor of the CBD industry by temporarily suspending the ban while the Conseil d’État (Council of State) investigated further.
The Council of State the decision is read“The judge of the Council of State considers that there is a serious doubt about the legality of this measure of general and absolute prohibition due to its disproportionate nature.
“Indeed, at the end of the contradictory investigation and the exchanges that took place during the public hearing, it does not appear that the flowers and leaves of cannabis sativa L. whose THC content is less than 0.3 percent they present a degree of damage to health that justifies a measure of total and absolute prohibition: this threshold is precisely what maintains the same contested decree to characterize cannabis plants authorized for cultivation, import, export and industrial use.
The French CBD industry, which includes about 1,800 vendors, celebrated the suspension of the ban. One of the main arguments put forward by the industry when the ban was announced was that CBD flower sales accounted for the majority of sales in these specialty stores.
Talking to BusinessCannBenjamin-Alexandre Jeanroy, of the Paris-based cannabis consultancy Augur AssociatesHe said: “This result is great news for all the companies that were facing government action that took away their livelihoods. But it is by no means the end of the road. We will have to see how it goes. “But if the government wants to prove that it is” tough “with drugs, whatever that means, we can make any rational, given, or even legal argument. “It won’t make them change their position. Not during an election campaign.”
In the UK, CBD flowers are not legalas indicated in Drug Abuse Act of 1971, which does not distinguish cannabis with a low THC content and a high CBD content:
“Cannabis” (except the term “cannabis resin”) means any plant of the genus Cannabis or any part thereof (by its designated name), except that it does not include cannabis resin or any of the following products after the separation of the rest of the plant, that is,
(a) mature stem of any of these plants,
(b) fiber produced from the mature stem of any of these plants, and
(c) seed of any of these plants;]
“cannabis resin” means a separate resin, whether raw or purified, obtained from any plant of the genus Cannabis;
Although the UK has a CBD industry worth an estimated £ 690 million, the current law means that farmers in the UK who legally grow hemp for the CBD and fiber markets currently have to destroy up to one 80% of its harvest. In a report entitled Nice LandActivists have called on the government to adopt a Swiss-style model that would allow farmers to grow hemp crops with THC levels of up to 1%, with the ability to extract CBD from the entire plant, not just the stems and seeds.
