The highest administrative court had been seized by various actors in the sector, wishing to obtain the urgent suspension of the decree issued by the government.
While waiting for the Council of State to rule definitively on the merits of the legality of the contested decree, the judge in chambers provisionally suspended on Monday the ban contested by many producers and traders in the sector, on the sale of flowers and raw hemp leaves containing cannabidiol (CBD).
“The judge in chambers of the Council of State considers that there is a serious doubt about the legality of this general and absolute prohibition measure because of its disproportionate nature” specifies the Council of State.
On December 30, 2021, an order published in the official journal announced that the government had decided to regulate the industrial and commercial use of CBD, the non-psychotropic molecule of cannabis to which relaxing properties are attributed and, at the same time, prohibited the sale to consumers of raw flowers or leaves for smoking or herbal tea.
The hemp plant must have a THC content (the psychotropic molecule) of no more than 0.3%, compared to 0.2% in the draft decree published in July 2021. These varieties must also be registered in the common catalog of varieties of agricultural plants or in the official catalog of species and varieties of plants cultivated in France.
The flowers and leaves of these varieties “can only be harvested, imported or used for the industrial production of hemp extracts”, details the decree.
In November 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the ban in France on CBD (authorized in several other European countries) was illegal, in the name of the principle of free movement of goods. European justice also considered that it had “no harmful effect on health” and could not be considered a narcotic, unlike its twin highly dosed in THC, the psychotropic molecule of cannabis.
The Cour de cassation – the highest court in France’s judiciary – followed suit in June, ruling that any CBD legally produced in the EU could be sold in France.