Disposable CBD vapes banned in France: the 2025 law

The law consists of one article, which inserts article L3513-5-1 into the French Public Health Code. It prohibits holding for sale, selling, distributing or giving away vaping devices "which are prefilled with a liquid and cannot be refilled, whether or not they have a rechargeable battery". Its last sentence carries equal weight: "This ban does not apply to cartridges."

The text, published in the Journal officiel of 25 February 2025, has applied since the next day: Légifrance shows article L3513-5-1 as in force since 26 February 2025. It began as a private member's bill, adopted by the National Assembly on 4 December 2023 and by the Senate on 7 February 2024. After a joint committee of both chambers, the Senate voted the final text on 13 February 2025.

A CBD puff falls under it because the code defines vaping devices as products used to inhale a vapour "containing nicotine where applicable". The presence of nicotine is therefore not a condition, and the same article covers a flavoured puff, a CBD puff and a puff with no active ingredient at all.

Two formats can still be sold: the tank kit, which you fill with an e-liquid yourself, and the pod that takes prefilled cartridges, since the law expressly exempts cartridges. The battery makes no difference. A puff whose battery charges over USB is still banned if its liquid cannot be replaced.

A dry-herb vaporiser heats a flower or a resin without burning it and uses no liquid. How to use one is explained in our guide to vaporisation temperatures. For e-liquids, the dosage in mg/ml is what lets you compare bottles, and our article on choosing your hardware covers coil resistance and power.

All other vaping rules continue to apply to CBD. Under article L3513-5 of the same code, no vaping product may be sold to under-18s, with or without nicotine in the liquid. Other products are covered in our article on CBD and minors.

Penalties apply along the commercial chain. Article L3515-3 of the Public Health Code sets a €100,000 fine for manufacturing, holding for sale, selling, distributing or giving away a disposable vape, and €200,000 for a repeat offence. Under the Penal Code, a company's fine can be multiplied by five, up to €500,000, as the Réunion prefecture points out.

The DGCCRF's consumer-fraud officers are among those who carry out checks, and the law expressly empowers them to record these offences. A foreign website that ships puffs to France is selling in France, so the ban on offering them for sale applies to it as it does to a physical shop.

Consumers are not the target. The text does not punish owning a puff for your own use, or using one bought before 26 February 2025. Handing one to someone else, even free of charge, does count as distribution.

Lawmakers gave two reasons: young people's health and waste. According to the Senate social affairs committee report, disposable vapes accounted for 30% of notified products at the end of 2023, up from less than 4% at the end of 2021. The report cites a survey in which 15% of 13-16 year olds had already used a puff. On waste, it points to lithium batteries that are thrown away with the device and are hard to recycle.

The molecule is absent from this text. CBD has its own framework in the order of 30 December 2021, which allows hemp provided the finished product contains no more than 0.30% Δ⁹-THC. That threshold, and how it is measured, are explained in our article on the legal THC level. A CBD e-liquid has to meet it, whether it sits in a disposable device or in a kit.

From 2022 to 2024, puffs were a frequent vehicle for semi-synthetic cannabinoids sold as "alternatives" to CBD. France's medicines agency, the ANSM, classified HHC and two derivatives as narcotics from 13 June 2023, and H4CBD, THCP and other molecules from 3 June 2024. Any device containing them is banned, refillable or not, and possessing one now comes under narcotics law.

You cannot tell from the label. Only a certificate of analysis for the batch, with these molecules among those tested, can confirm what the device holds. These classifications are traced in our timeline of the HHC ban, and our guide to reading a certificate of analysis shows where to look for them on the document.