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A Swiss Cannabis Company Is Using Legal Loopholes to Supply CBD to Europe
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Marijuana prohibition laws are still interfering with the availability of medical cannabis across the continent.
Published on November 27, 2017

Photo via Bim

The medical cannabis industry is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world today, and many entrepreneurs have been willing to risk bending the law to provide medicine to an increasing number of users. Swiss canna-business CBD420 is one such company which relies on legal loopholes to sell their low-THC CBD products in several European nations, reports The Guardian. The company’s BlueDream strain is for sale in 1,000 Swiss tobacco shops as well as a small handful of French shops, and has a low-enough THC content to escape the notice of most regulators—so far.

Almost every European country still has laws prohibiting cannabis on the books, but CBD420 founder Jonas Duclos told The Guardian that “there is a loophole that lets us bring it on the market.” By strictly limiting the quantity of THC in its products and not marketing CBD as a medicine, the company is able to get around laws prohibiting the sale of the product within the E.U. CBD420 is also testing the waters in France, sending small orders of 100 jars at a time to prevent a crackdown from French authorities.

“If the French government goes against [allowing CBD to be imported] then that is its choice, but the population there are now very pro-cannabis,” Duclos told The Guardian. “We will comply and stop any distribution in France if required. For now, all we can do is make sure our products respect the THC level under 0.2% and just like in Switzerland, we are not allowed to market hemp as a medicine.”

Cannabis prohibition laws have left the legality of CBD and other non-psychoactive cannabis medicines uncertain throughout Europe. In the U.K., health authorities recently allowed the sale of CBD products, but quickly backtracked and required companies to apply for licenses to sell the product as a drug. Many British canna-businesses are now circumventing this law by selling CBD as a health supplement, not a medicine, as CBD420 is forced to do.

“All we need now is a real law and regulation around the use of these substances for everyone, and for authorities to apply the law and for all products to be fully controlled,” said Duclos to The Guardian. “Under a controlled regulation, we can expect a better education for everyone, the black market to decrease and tax revenues for the state to increase as it has in the U.S.”

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Chris Moore
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Chris Moore is a New York-based writer who has written for Mass Appeal while also mixing records and producing electronic music.
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