Is CBD legal in France in 2026? What is still on sale

The same molecule answers to three sets of rules, and the way the product is presented decides which one applies. Hemp law fixes the THC threshold. Food law decides whether a product may be swallowed, and cosmetics law covers anything applied to the skin. The table gives the position in September 2026.

What the label says counts as much as what the bag holds. Sold in a bag "for infusion", a flower becomes a foodstuff and is caught by the withdrawal. Sold raw, with no food claim, the same flower stays under hemp rules. The 0.30% threshold is explained in our article on the legal THC level.

On 15 April 2026, the Directorate-General for Food (DGAL), which belongs to the French Ministry of Agriculture, informed the industry unions of a national control plan to run from 15 May. The Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur chamber of agriculture lists what it targets: sweets, sublingual oils labelled "food supplement", capsules, softgels, chocolates, drinks and infusions made from flowering tops. The label decides. Any food product that mentions CBD, THC or another cannabinoid is covered, whatever it actually contains.

The ministry set out its position on 20 May 2026: food products containing CBD are illegal and must be withdrawn from the market, since the safety of CBD has not been demonstrated. According to the ministry, targeted checks have run since 2023 and now extend to every sales channel, online shops included. It also reports a marked rise since 2024 in poisonings linked to CBD foods.

The withdrawal rests on Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 on novel foods. Any food not consumed to a significant degree in the Union before 15 May 1997 falls under it, and only authorised novel foods may be sold. No CBD ingredient holds that authorisation, a point the Belgian Federal Public Service for Health repeated in a warning dated 5 May 2026. One of the formats hit hardest is covered in our article on CBD gummies.

The withdrawal concerns CBD's status as a food. The molecule itself stays lawful, inside a framework set by two court rulings.

The first ruling came from Luxembourg. On 19 November 2020, in the Kanavape case (C-663/18), the Court of Justice of the European Union held that a Member State may not ban the marketing of CBD lawfully produced in another Member State. That holds even when the CBD is extracted from the whole plant. A State may still restrict sales, but only to protect public health and no further than necessary. On current knowledge, the Court added, CBD is not a narcotic drug within the meaning of the 1961 UN Single Convention. The effects of the decision are covered in our article on the Kanavape ruling.

The second came from the Conseil d'État, France's highest administrative court. The order of 30 December 2021 authorised hemp varieties with no more than 0.30% Δ⁹-THC and, in the same text, banned the sale of raw flowers and leaves to consumers. The Conseil d'État suspended that ban on 24 January 2022, then annulled it on 29 December 2022 as disproportionate. It upheld the 0.30% threshold. The full sequence is told in the article on the order that tried to ban flowers.

In June 2022, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that the data available did not establish the safety of CBD as a novel food. On 9 February 2026 it published a provisional safe level: 0.0275 mg of CBD per kilo of body weight per day, or about 2 mg a day for an adult of 70 kg. A safety factor covering the uncertainties is built into that figure.

The level has three limits. It covers only food supplements made from CBD of at least 98% purity, without nanoparticles. It does not establish safety for people under 25, during pregnancy or breastfeeding, or for anyone on medication. And EFSA will judge each application on the applicant's own data, so a safe level authorises no product on its own.

EFSA issued its first favourable opinion on 18 September 2026. It judged synthetic CBD at least 98% pure safe under set conditions of use: dissolved in MCT oil, sold as a food supplement, no more than 2 mg a day, for adults over 25, outside pregnancy and breastfeeding. For people on medication, safety is not established. Two hemp-derived dossiers went the other way on 21 September. For a CBD isolate and a hemp extract, safety "cannot be established", because the applicants did not supply the data requested. Even the favourable opinion allows no sale yet, since the decision belongs to the European Commission and the member states. Nothing changes in France for the moment: the Ministry of Agriculture's position of 20 May 2026 still governs CBD foods and supplements.

To give a sense of scale, an oil titrated at 10% holds roughly 100 mg of CBD per millilitre, so the 2 mg reference is one fiftieth of a millilitre. Our article on the EFSA reference dose does the same sum for other strengths.

Another file runs alongside. On the basis of animal studies, ANSES, the French food and health safety agency, proposed on 21 March 2025 to classify CBD as toxic for reproduction, category 1B. According to the Belgian health authority, the Risk Assessment Committee of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has given an opinion in favour. This is a hazard assessment. The European Commission has not decided yet, and the opinion bans no product. Our article on the classification proposed by ANSES has the details.

Article 23 of the draft 2026 finance bill dealt with the taxation of smoking and vaping products. With it came the idea of treating CBD flowers as manufactured tobacco, Le Monde du Tabac reported on 20 January 2026. On 20 November 2025, the National Assembly had already adopted amendment I-1277, which deleted the article.

On 21 January 2026, Article 23 no longer appeared in the text on which the government engaged its responsibility under Article 49.3 of the Constitution. The 2026 finance act, promulgated on 19 February 2026, brought in no excise duty specific to CBD flowers by this route. How smoked CBD should be regulated is still being debated.

A product's legal status tells you nothing about what it actually contains. In 2023 the addiction-monitoring centres of Paris, Lyon and Montpellier ran a study backed by MILDECA, the French inter-ministerial drugs agency, on 223 samples sold over the counter. In 81% of them the CBD content differed from the label, and 6% held undeclared semi-synthetic cannabinoids such as HHC or H4CBD. 87% stayed within the 0.3% Δ⁹-THC threshold.

In June 2025, ANSES and ANSM warned of several hundred poisonings recorded since early 2024 among people who had used products sold as containing CBD. Most were caused by a banned substance added without the buyer's knowledge, or by THC above 0.3%. ANSM put HHC on the narcotics list on 13 June 2023, followed by H4CBD and THCP on 3 June 2024.

As a buyer, the one check you can make yourself is the batch certificate of analysis. Its batch number should match the product's, and it should show Δ⁹-THC below 0.30% and, ideally, no HHC, H4CBD or THCP. Our guide to reading a certificate of analysis takes each line in turn, and the laboratory page describes the measurement methods. The CBD flowers in the catalogue come under hemp rules; food law does not apply to them.