France
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| France | |
|---|---|
| République française | |
| A hemp-drying oven at Chanteloup, Vivoin, in the Sarthe | |
| Capital | Paris |
| Continent | Europe |
| Subregion | Western Europe |
| Cannabis Status | |
| Legal Status | Illegal (use a criminal offence, usually met by a fixed fine; hemp of registered varieties licensed) |
| Status Since | 1970 |
| Enforcement | Use and supply prosecuted; fixed fine of 500 euros for use since August 2026 |
| Documentation | |
| Growing Regions | 0 |
| Growing Areas | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
France is a country in Western Europe. It grew hemp on a large scale for its navy, its rope-works and its cloth: the crop covered about 176,000 hectares in 1840, fell to 26,000 hectares by 1900 and to 632 hectares in 1960, by which time it survived mainly in the Sarthe and the Loire valley.[1]: 139 Breeding of monoecious fibre varieties and new uses brought the crop back. In 2024 France grew 22,600 hectares, more than half the hemp area of Europe.[2]
The first French measure against the drug was an order of General Menou, issued in occupied Egypt on 9 October 1800, which forbade drinking hashish and smoking hemp seed.[3] In Paris in the 1840s the physician Jacques-Joseph Moreau studied hashish and gave it to the writer Théophile Gautier, whose account of an evening at the Hôtel Pimodan appeared in 1846.[4][5] A law of 1916 brought hashish under the rules on narcotics; the law of 31 December 1970 made the use of drugs an offence.[6][7] Use remains a criminal offence; since August 2026 it can be settled by a fixed fine of 500 euros.[8][9]
Geography
In 1913 French hemp grew chiefly in the departments of the Sarthe and Ille-et-Vilaine, in the valley of the Loire.[10] From the First World War to the 1960s the Sarthe was the leading producer, rivalled only by the neighbouring departments of Maine-et-Loire and Indre-et-Loire.[11] By 1961 the crop had left most French regions and held on in two districts: upper Maine, centred on the Sarthe, and the Loire valley, where it grew on the flood-prone alluvium below Tours, around Bréhémont at the confluence of the Indre.[1]: 139
The 18th-century navy drew its home-grown hemp above all from Burgundy, Champagne and Auvergne, which supplied more than 20,000 quintals a year between 1723 and 1792. Brittany, Anjou, Maine, the Agenais and the Dauphiné also grew it but sold the dockyards more finished cordage than raw hemp.[12] In Brittany flax and hemp supported the province's trade from the 16th century, declined in the 19th and had gone entirely after 1950.[13] The present crop is grown for industry. The processing cooperative La Chanvrière is based in the Aube in Champagne.[14]
Demographics
Communities with cannabis relationships
In the Sarthe, hemp was long a small-farm crop. Until the early 19th century it was grown on a well-manured plot called a cloteau, for local cordage, string and cloth. Seed was sown at the end of April, once frost was past. About four months later, around the feast of Saint Louis, gangs of day labourers came from the towns to pull the crop. About 500 of the ovens in which the crop was dried still stood in the department at the end of the 1990s.[11]
A second community formed around hashish in Paris in the 1840s. Gautier described a December evening at the Hôtel Pimodan on the Île Saint-Louis, where a club of which he had recently become a member met once a month and a doctor handed out a greenish paste on Japanese porcelain saucers.[5] Moreau, physician at the Bicêtre hospice, had supplied Gautier with dawamesc, a hashish preparation, at the writer's request.[4]: 20–21
Agriculture
French hemp declined from 1840, when it covered about 176,000 hectares. The area was still above 100,000 hectares in 1862, fell to 26,000 hectares in 1900 and 12,500 in 1914. It then stayed between 2,000 and 3,000 hectares, except in crisis years, until 1953, before falling to about 1,500 hectares in 1954–1958, 935 in 1959 and 632 in 1960.[1]: 139 In the Sarthe the area had risen from 3,000 hectares in 1811 to 8,000 in 1837, and the department's share of the national crop from under 2 per cent in 1811 to more than 10 per cent half a century later.[11] The Sarthe grew 37 per cent of French hemp in 1914 and about two-thirds of the area from 1930 to 1959. For that reason the national hemp committee, the Comité national interprofessionnel chanvrier, created on the eve of the Second World War, had its seat at Le Mans.[1]: 139 By the early 1970s only 33 Sarthe farmers grew hemp, on 83 hectares in all.[11]
The growers' federation, the Fédération nationale des producteurs de chanvre (FNPC), was founded in 1932. Since 1964 its seed has been multiplied by a cooperative, the Coopérative centrale des producteurs de semences de chanvre.[15] Until the 1960s cigarette makers used rag paper from old clothes; when cloth blending synthetic and natural fibres made rags unusable, makers of cigarette paper, tea bags and coffee filters turned to pure plant fibre, hemp among it.[15] A cooperative of Aube growers, La Chanvrière de l'Aube, was formed after the closure of the Bolloré pulp mill at Troyes, their main customer. The cooperative dates its founding to 15 February 1973; Sylvestre Bertucelli gives 1974.[14][15] From 1970 to 2000 mechanical extraction of pulp fibre for paper was almost the only hemp process in Western Europe.[16]
Industrial hemp covered close to 11,000 hectares in 2014.[17] In 2024 about 1,550 producers grew 22,600 hectares, which yielded 140,000 tonnes of decorticated straw and 11,000 tonnes of seed. The area had doubled in ten years. France ranked first in Europe and second in the world after China. The sector is organised through the interprofessional body InterChanvre, which brings together the growers' federation and the processors' union.[2]
Cannabis in France
History
Fibre for cloth and ships
At Al Poux, in the Boulou valley in the Lot, an estimated six uncharred hemp achenes were found in a waterlogged layer dated by its pottery to the end of the second or the beginning of the first century BCE. Laurent Bouby, who identified them, called them the oldest hemp seeds then recorded in France and judged that hemp was most probably grown there in the Late Iron Age.[18]: 91–93 At Vimont in Calvados, Normandy, large oblong pits and ditches were used to ret hemp in the 13th and 14th centuries; pollen from one pit was very rich in hemp.[19] In the 16th century the merchants of Vitré in Brittany held a monopoly of canevas, hemp cloth used for packing and sails; their trade with Spain peaked in 1586.[20] In the closing chapters of the Tiers Livre, first published in 1546, François Rabelais described an imaginary herb, the Pantagruelion: a single round hollow stem five to six feet tall, a plant with male and female forms, sown when the swallows arrive and retted in still water for five to twelve days.[21] His editor Charles Marty-Laveaux identified it as hemp, Cannabis sativa.[22] John Humbley calls the passage the fullest botanical description in Rabelais, inspired by hemp.[23]: 63
The navy's hemp
From the 17th century to the first half of the 19th, warships consumed hemp in great quantities; after timber and artillery it was the third largest cost of building a 74-gun ship.[12] The fibre went into sails and rigging, the oakum used to caulk hulls, drying-oil paints, the paper of artillery cartridges and sailors' hammocks.[24] When Louis XIV and his minister Colbert set out to rebuild the fleet in 1661, the new arsenal at Rochefort needed a rope-works. The marine intendant Colbert de Terron ordered it built on 25 March 1666. The Corderie Royale, completed in 1669, was the first building of its kind in a French naval arsenal, before those of Toulon and Brest.[25] The Rochefort arsenal rarely used more than 6,000 quintals of hemp a year, but took 16,000 in 1745, during the War of the Austrian Succession.[12] At Brest hemp processing was the dockyard's second-largest activity.[26]
The Baltic countries and Italy supplied half the navy's purchases of hemp in the 18th century; the rest came from within the kingdom.[12] The state pressed for home supply. In 1775 the intendant at Rochefort reported that French hemp, full of shives and roots, needed two more workers at each scutching wheel than northern hemp but held that it still had to be used in the king's ports.[24] On 15 May 1779 the finance minister Jacques Necker asked every généralité of the kingdom how much of its land was suited to hemp, after the merchants of Nantes complained of how much the country had to import.[27]: 35 The rope-works and hemp stores of the naval arsenals were taken out of service from the 1850s as iron and steam replaced sail.[24] The Corderie Royale declined until the arsenal of Rochefort closed in 1927.[25]
Hashish in Egypt and Paris
Bonaparte's army in Egypt encountered hashish use there. On 9 October 1800 General Menou forbade, throughout Egypt, the strong drink that some Muslims made with the herb hashish and the smoking of hemp seed. The order, which Erwan Pointeau-Lagadec calls the first French ban on cannabis, had little effect: a few months later the French left Egypt.[3]
In 1845 Moreau, a physician at Bicêtre and a member of the Société orientale of Paris, published Du hachisch et de l'aliénation mentale, a study of hashish and mental illness.[4] Gautier's Le Club des Hachichins appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes on 1 February 1846.[5] The poet Charles Baudelaire published Les Paradis artificiels, opium et haschisch, whose first part is Le Poème du haschisch, in 1860.[28]
Controls on the drug
When bills on opium were debated in 1913, the rapporteur Arthur Mille left hashish out of the stricter rules because he had found no trace of any appreciable consumption of it. Senator Catalogne's bill of 1915 covered cocaine and hashish with opium. Both chambers passed it unanimously, and the law of 12 July 1916 punished breaches of the rules on narcotics with three months to two years in prison and a fine of 1,000 to 10,000 francs. Its decree of 14 September 1916 listed the narcotics in table B of the poisonous substances, which included "Haschich et ses préparations" (hashish and its preparations).[6]
The law of 31 December 1970 on drug addiction and the repression of trafficking and illicit use made the use of narcotics an offence. In the debate the health ministry, under Robert Boulin, opposed punishing personal use and treated the user as a patient, while the justice ministry saw the user as an offender.[7]
Decline and return of the fibre crop
Hemp was widely grown in France in the 17th and 18th centuries, declined from the 1880s and seemed abandoned by about the 1930s, according to Sylviane Llinares.[24] Hemp growers already received subsidies in 1880.[16] Production and the mills collapsed after the Second World War, as ships went over to motors and textiles to cotton and then synthetic fibres.[2] Breeding began in the early 1950s at the national agricultural research institute (INRA) in Montpellier with the growers' federation, which took the work to Le Mans and has been the only French hemp breeder since INRA stopped in the early 1970s.[17] Bertucelli dates the partnership with INRA to the 1960s–1980.[16] In the early 1970s fibre hemp was moving from textiles to paper, the public linked it with drug cannabis and growing had to be mechanised, and these three changes led to new crop systems and varieties.[17] From the 1990s hemp found new uses in textiles, hempcrete, insulation, food oil, animal litter and composites.[2]
Cultivation
Varieties
Hemp is naturally dioecious, and a field of male and female plants is hard to harvest by machine, so monoecy was one of the first aims of French breeding.[17] From the 1950s the monoecious hemps the Sarthe growers called boubiques greatly simplified the work.[11] The first varieties of the growers' federation, among them Fédora 19, Félina 34 and Fédrina 74, kept THC near 0.1 per cent. Fédora 17, Félina 32, Epsilon 68 and Futura 75 were registered in 1998 for the lower limit of 0.2 per cent that applied from 2000. Santhica 27, registered in 2002, contains no Δ9-THC.[17] Thirteen certified varieties were available in France in 2026.[2] The seed cooperative supplied 95 per cent of the hemp seed sown in the European Union in 2015.[16]
The 18th-century navy graded hemp by its origin. A table it used, credited to Duhamel du Monceau, rated the hemp of northern Brittany good for cordage but too coarse for sail yarn, that of Champagne good, that of Auvergne too short and that of Burgundy rough and too long.[12] French seed was among the seed of nine strains grown for research by the University of Mississippi and described in 1971.[29]
Unlicensed cultivation
Preparations and consumption
In the Tiers Livre the herb is prepared by stripping the stem of leaves and seed, steeping it in still water, drying it in the sun and peeling it in the shade.[21] The hashish of the Paris circle was eaten as a paste or confection, the dawamesc Moreau supplied.[4][5] In 2023, 50.4 per cent of adults aged 18 to 64 had used cannabis at least once and 10.8 per cent in the past year. Seizures reached a record 128.6 tonnes in 2022 and 124.7 tonnes in 2023, of which 87 tonnes were resin and 37.7 tonnes herbal cannabis.[30]
Trade and commerce
The 18th-century navy bought much of its hemp abroad; the merchants of Nantes complained in 1779 that the country paid very considerable sums for it each year.[12][27]: 35 In 2024 France had seven hemp-processing plants.[2] The French cannabis market is among the largest in Europe, with five million users in a year and a turnover of 1.2 billion euros in 2017.[30]
Legal status
The use of a substance or plant classed as a narcotic is punished by up to one year in prison and a fine of 3,750 euros.[8] Prosecution can be ended by payment of a fixed fine. The fine was set at 200 euros when the scheme was applied nationwide on 1 September 2020[32] and raised to 500 euros by law no. 2026-798 of 18 August 2026, published in the Journal officiel of 19 August 2026.[9][33]
Hemp may be grown only from varieties in the European or French catalogue with no more than 0.3 per cent THC, from certified seed and by active farmers; hemp extracts and products may contain no more than 0.3 per cent.[34] In 2020 the Court of Justice of the European Union held, in a case brought over the e-cigarette liquid Kanavape, that a member state may not ban the sale of cannabidiol lawfully produced in another member state from the whole plant unless the ban is needed to protect public health.[35] An order of 30 December 2021 limited hemp to varieties with no more than 0.3 per cent THC but banned the sale of raw flowers and leaves to consumers.[36] The Conseil d'État suspended the ban on 24 January 2022[36] and annulled it on 29 December 2022 as disproportionate.[37]
A trial of medical cannabis, begun on 26 March 2021, admitted no new patients after 27 March 2024 and ended on 31 December 2024, when Parliament did not extend it. The health ministry has continued treatment for the patients already enrolled beyond 31 March 2026, until a framework for medical cannabis comes into force.[38][39] France acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 19 February 1969.[40]
Growing Regions
Landrace cannabis growing regions currently documented on the wiki: No growing regions documented yet.
Growing Areas
Landrace cannabis growing areas currently documented on the wiki: No growing areas documented yet.
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Conservation status
Recent news
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Dufour, J. (1961). "Une culture moribonde : le chanvre français". L'Information géographique (in français). 25 (4): 139–154. doi:10.3406/ingeo.1961.2085.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 FranceAgriMer (January 2026). Chanvre : fiche filière (PDF) (Report) (in français). Montreuil: FranceAgriMer.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Pointeau-Lagadec, Erwan (2024). "Cannabis prohibition (1)". In Guillemain, Hervé (ed.). DicoPolHiS. Le Mans Université. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Moreau, J. (1845). Du hachisch et de l'aliénation mentale : études psychologiques (in français). Paris: Fortin, Masson et Cie – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Gautier, T. (1 February 1846). "Le Club des Hachichins". Revue des Deux Mondes (in français). 13: 520–535 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Yvorel, J.-J. (2016). "De la loi « Lafarge » à la loi de 1916 : aux origines de la pénalisation des stupéfiants". Psychotropes (in français). 22 (2): 9–23. doi:10.3917/psyt.222.0009.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Basset, B.; Rigaud, A.; Savy, M. (January 2021). La loi de 70 sur les stupéfiants : 50 ans de répression (ou pas) (PDF) (Report). Décryptages (in français). Association Addictions France.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Penalties for drug law offences in Europe at a glance". European Union Drugs Agency. 4 September 2024. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Pénal – Sécurité et ordre public : ce que change la loi du 18 août 2026". Le Mag Juridique (in français). 26 August 2026. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Dewey, Lyster H. (1914). "Hemp". Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture 1913. Washington: Government Printing Office. pp. 283–346.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Bertin, S. (2020). "Les aspects ethnographiques et patrimoniaux du chanvre dans la Sarthe". Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest (in français). 127 (3): 167–178. doi:10.4000/abpo.6342.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 Plouviez, D. (2020). "Fournir du chanvre et des toiles à voile à la marine de guerre au xviiie siècle : aires d'approvisionnement, stratégies économiques et réseaux entrepreneuriaux". Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest (in français). 127 (3): 79–94. doi:10.4000/abpo.6293.
- ↑ Besselièvre, J.-Y. (2020). "Lin et chanvre en Bretagne : patrimoines vivants". Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest (in français). 127 (3): 179–191. doi:10.4000/abpo.6353.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Une histoire d'Hommes et de volonté". La Chanvrière (in français). Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Bertucelli, S. (2013). "Le volontarisme agricole et coopératif : un moteur d'innovation. L'exemple du chanvre industriel". OCL (in français). 20 (4) D408. doi:10.1051/ocl/2013012.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 Bertucelli, S. (2015). "La filière du chanvre industriel, éléments de compréhension macroéconomiques". OCL (in français). 22 (6) D602. doi:10.1051/ocl/2015047.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6 Thouminot, C. (2015). "La sélection française du chanvre : panorama et perspectives". OCL (in français). 22 (6) D603. doi:10.1051/ocl/2015044.
- ↑ Bouby, Laurent (2002). "Le chanvre (Cannabis sativa L.) : une plante cultivée à la fin de l'âge du Fer en France du Sud-Ouest ?" [Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.): a Late Iron Age cultivated plant in southwestern France?]. Comptes Rendus Palevol (in français). 1 (2): 89–95. doi:10.1016/S1631-0683(02)00015-5.
- ↑ Germain-Vallée, C.; Beauchamp, A. (14 March 2022). "Vimont – RD 613, déviation de Bellengreville et Vimont". ADLFI. Archéologie de la France – Informations (in français).
- ↑ Le Goué-Sinquin, G. (2020). "Du chanvre à l'argent : l'âge d'or toilier à Vitré (1550–1600)". Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest (in français). 127 (3): 49–60. doi:10.4000/abpo.6266.
- ↑ 21.0 21.1 Rabelais, F. (1870). "Le Tiers Livre, chapitres XLIX–LII". In Marty-Laveaux, C. (ed.). Les Œuvres de François Rabelais (in français). Vol. 2. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre. pp. 227–244 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ Marty-Laveaux, C. (1881). "Commentaire". Les Œuvres de François Rabelais (in français). Vol. 4. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre – via Wikisource.
- ↑ Humbley, J. (2020). "François Rabelais et le français de la botanique : trait d'union entre l'Antiquité et les Lumières" (PDF). In Arigne, V.; Pech-Pelletier, S.; Rocq-Migette, C.; Sablayrolles, J.-F. (eds.). Études lexicales : mélanges offerts à Ariane Desporte (in français). Université Sorbonne Paris Nord. pp. 61–71.
- ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 Llinares, S. (2020). "Introduction". Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest (in français). 127 (3): 7–19. doi:10.4000/abpo.6067.
- ↑ 25.0 25.1 "Histoire de la Corderie Royale". Corderie Royale – Centre International de la Mer (in français). Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Corre, O. (2020). "L'organisation industrielle du travail du chanvre au port et arsenal de Brest à la fin du xviiie siècle". Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest (in français). 127 (3): 95–113. doi:10.4000/abpo.6296.
- ↑ 27.0 27.1 Monguilan, J.-L. (1989). "Une enquête sur la culture du chanvre en Provence à la fin du XVIIIe siècle". Provence historique (in français). 39 (155): 35–53. doi:10.3406/prohi.1989.2711.
- ↑ Baudelaire, C. (1860). Les Paradis artificiels, opium et haschisch (in français). Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Fetterman, P.S.; Keith, E.S.; Waller, C.W.; Guerrero, O.; Doorenbos, N.J.; Quimby, M.W. (August 1971). "Mississippi-grown Cannabis sativa L.: preliminary observation on chemical definition of phenotype and variations in tetrahydrocannabinol content versus age, sex, and plant part". Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. 60 (8): 1246–1249. doi:10.1002/jps.2600600832. PMID 5127101.
- ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 "Cannabis (résine, herbe, huile, CBD) : synthèse des connaissances" (in français). Observatoire français des drogues et des tendances addictives. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Le Nezet, O.; Gerome, C.; Cherki, S.; Janssen, E. (2024). Drugs workbook 2024: France (PDF) (Report). Observatoire français des drogues et des tendances addictives.
- ↑ Assemblée nationale (2021). Proposition de loi élargissant la possibilité de dresser une amende à l'encontre des mineurs faisant usage de produit stupéfiant (PDF) (Report) (in français). Assemblée nationale. No. 3746.
- ↑ "Décision n° 2026-915 DC du 14 août 2026" (in français). Conseil constitutionnel. 14 August 2026. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Question écrite no. 11090 : Réglementation du CBD et du chanvre en France (réponse du 28 avril 2026)" (in français). Assemblée nationale. 28 April 2026. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Judgment of the Court (Fourth Chamber) of 19 November 2020, Case C-663/18, B S and C A". Court of Justice of the European Union. 19 November 2020. Retrieved 21 October 2026 – via Publications Office of the European Union.
- ↑ 36.0 36.1 "Suspension de l'interdiction de vente de fleurs et feuilles de chanvre". Le Monde du Droit (in français). January 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Cannabidiol (CBD): annulment of the order prohibiting the sale of cannabis flowers and leaves". Bird & Bird. 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Nos réponses à vos questions sur l'expérimentation du cannabis médical" (in français). Agence nationale de sécurité du médicament et des produits de santé. 20 April 2026. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Question écrite no. 07400 (publiée le 22 janvier 2026)" (in français). Sénat. 22 January 2026. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 15. Retrieved 3 October 2026.