Smoking CBD in public in France: 8 banned places, €135 fine

Decree no. 2025-582 of 27 June 2025 rewrites article R3512-2 of the French Public Health Code, the list of places where smoking is banned. The new wording took effect on 29 June 2025. Enclosed covered places, public transport and playgrounds were already on the list, and article R3512-2 now adds:

• passenger waiting areas, including bus shelters, during service hours;
• the open-air areas of primary and secondary schools, plus a perimeter around their entrances, during opening hours;
• the same zones around facilities that receive minors, around libraries and around sports facilities;
• "beaches bordering bathing waters", during the bathing season;
• "public parks and gardens", at all times.

An order of 21 July 2025 fixes the perimeter around entrances at a 10-metre radius on public space. Around schools, facilities for minors, stadiums and libraries, the mayor may widen that radius and extend the hours. The text allows extensions only.

Tobacco only, or anything you smoke?

Article R3512-2 applies "the ban on smoking" set out in article L3512-8, whose wording is brief: "Smoking is prohibited in places used collectively". That article belongs to a chapter titled "Tobacco products", and the decree refers to "tobacco-free spaces". The rule itself targets the act and names no product. Nothing in the text excludes a cigarette of herbs, hemp or anything else.

We found no court decision on a CBD joint smoked in a park. The cautious reading is also the simplest: a CBD flower is banned wherever a cigarette is.

In the table below, "Banned" marks places where smoking is a petty offence, whatever is in the cigarette.

Outside the bathing season the beach leaves the national list. A town may still set its own rules, so check the sign at the entrance.

Since a decree of 25 January 2025, smoking in a banned place is a fourth-class petty offence under article R3515-2. France's National Consumer Institute states the amount: a €135 fixed fine, which can rise to €750 if the case goes to court. Smoking in a car with a minor is in the same class (article R3515-4).

Take a Saturday afternoon and a CBD flower smoked on a bench in a public garden. The product is legal and the place is not, so a fine would cost you €135. Smoke it on the pavement 20 metres from the park gate and you commit no offence.

Vaping has its own rule. Article L3513-6 bans it in schools and facilities for minors, in enclosed public transport and in enclosed covered workplaces. Beaches and parks come under the smoking ban alone, and vaping is not banned there. Our article on vaporisation temperature explains how heating a flower differs from burning it.

On a café terrace you may smoke if the terrace is genuinely outdoors. The Court of Cassation ruled on 13 June 2013 (no. 12-22.170) that a terrace falls outside the ban when it is fully uncovered, or covered and fully open at the front. Once tarpaulins close it in, it becomes an enclosed covered place where smoking is banned.

At work, every enclosed covered workplace is non-smoking, apart from a smoking room built to precise standards. Employers may also cover the subject in the internal rules and plan drug testing for some jobs. The THC in a legal flower can then cause trouble, as our article on saliva testing at work explains.

For the car, the rule is explicit. Article L3512-9 states: "All occupants of a vehicle are prohibited from smoking in the presence of a child under eighteen". With adults only on board, smoking is allowed. The driver faces a different risk: a flower at 0.30% contains up to 3 mg of THC per gram, which may be enough for a positive roadside drug test. Our article on smoking hemp quantifies that risk and the penalties.

Whether you own or rent your home, no text bans smoking there. Two limits apply.

The first concerns tenants, who have two relevant obligations under article 7 of the law of 6 July 1989. They must "use the rented premises peacefully", and they answer for "damage and losses" that occur during the lease.

The second concerns neighbours. Under article 1253 of the Civil Code, in force since 17 April 2024, whoever is "at the origin of a disturbance exceeding the normal inconveniences of neighbourhood" is liable. Fault does not have to be proven. The judge assesses the actual situation, and an occasional cigarette on a balcony weighs less than smoke that enters the neighbour's home every evening.

A CBD flower has the look and smell of a cannabis flower. The French State used that argument before the Council of State, saying the resemblance hindered the fight against drugs. The Council of State replied on 29 December 2022 that the THC content "can be checked using quick and inexpensive tests". Smell and appearance therefore decide nothing; the THC measurement does, against a legal ceiling of 0.30%.

Keep the flower in its original packaging, with its label and batch number. The legal line is the THC threshold: CBD is not a narcotic, and a product above that threshold is one. Our article is CBD a drug? details that framework. Our catalogue lists its flowers in the CBD flowers category, each with its displayed content.