Is Marseille's CBD sausage legal?

Imagination knows no bounds. And if French patients still don't have access to the medical marijuana, barbecue lovers in Marseille can now buy «CBD sausage.».

The storytelling is perfect: gathered around a barbecue and a joint, a group of friends comes up with the outlandish idea of adding cannabis to their meat dish. Since the legality of the matter isn’t clear-cut, the project is forced to settle for a watered-down version, the CBD. After visiting all the CBD shops in Marseille and experimenting with numerous recipes, the sausage was named “Ouidi” and sold to customers for €4.50.

This is inevitably followed by the usual media frenzy, wavering between bad puns and odes to ingenuity: «a smoking hit,» «a young butcher with a green thumb,» «a modern-day hero,» «the alchemist»… Nicolas Flamel, who lived on Rue de Montmorency in Paris, would surely appreciate the comparison between an ingenious cook from Marseille who mixed herbs into ground pork and the inventor of the philosopher’s stone (who, in reality, never practiced alchemy). But enough with the jealousy—the most important question in our eyes is: is this sausage legal?

Luca Morand, the inventor of the sausage in question, says in Provence that he hasn’t changed the recipe from that of an onion sausage, and proudly poses with flowers that we hope are hemp with -0.2% THC, and not cannabis—otherwise, the question of legality wouldn’t even arise. The sausage would therefore be made with whole flowers, probably ground made with Herbes de Provence, not CBD isolate.

Several laws therefore come into play here. On the one hand, can CBD sausage be considered like a novel food ? Not if the whole hemp flower is used, without «modern» CBD extraction. And not if the CBD content of the finished product does not exceed that of the flower, which would hardly be the case here.

On the other hand, the french cannabis law Does it allow for the commercial and industrial use of hemp flowers? In any case, Luca Morand believes he is within his rights: «I’ve looked into all the restrictions regarding it: it must contain less than 0.2 % of THC. And while it’s illegal to smoke it, you can ingest it. In fact, it’s sold for herbal teas, chocolate bars, and even for vaping.»

French law does not, in fact, prohibit the cultivation of hemp containing -0.2% of THC; rather, it restricts the authorized varieties and specifies seeds and fibers as examples of the industrial and commercial uses of hemp, and allows CBD. Furthermore, European law does not restrict the use of hemp to any one of its parts. Nevertheless, the French authorities carried out a series of raids against hemp flower sellers, on the pretext of drug trafficking or the illegal practice of medicine. Could our butcher also be arrested for drug trafficking? If we follow the logic outlined above, yes. If we follow the law, no.

So this sausage would certainly be right at home in Marseille. The question remains whether it’s effective. The boiling point of CBD—the temperature at which it vaporization, ranges between 160 and 180°C. The temperature of a barbecue far exceeds 220°C (on a grill rack 10 cm from the flames), leaving little chance of any trace of CBD remaining by the end of cooking. And that’s what we call a real smoky treat!