Swiss cannabis company CBD420 produces legal cannabis products and sells it throughout Switzerland and France. Now, it is targeting to supply the UK and other countries in Europe.
CBD420 owner and former banker, Jonas Duclos, supplies BlueDream, which is a strain of cannabis that is cultivated to ensure that it contains a low-enough level of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. THC is the main psychoactive component in cannabis and is what causes the “high.” A “low-enough” THC content means not more than 0.2%, which is the level legally allowed in most countries in Europe — except for the UK, where any trace of THC isn’t allowed at all.
While it has low THC content, BlueDream has high cannabidiol or CBD level. CBD is another cannabis compound, but it is non-psychoactive and has powerful medicinal properties. CBD is known to be anti-inflammatory, and has pain-relief qualities.
Unlike THC, CBD is not a controlled substance in the UK and in the rest of Europe.
BlueDream is sold in more than a thousand tobacco shops in Switzerland and in around 20 shops in France. Switzerland has a 1% TCH concentration limit for cannabis products while France has 0.2%.
Duclos now plans to take his product to other places in Europe, including Italy. While the company’s low-THC cannabis product is prohibited in the UK, it offers CBD balms and oils, which will be available in certain British shops before the year ends.
Duclos explains that there are loopholes in the cannabis policies of European countries that allow him to get around the law and bring BlueDream into other markets in the region. For instance, he just had to make sure that his CBD products are not marketed as medicines.
Meanwhile, BlueDream has a slow expansion in France. Duclos says that the reason for this is because there is uncertainty as to how the French government will respond. According to him, every shop in the country gets an order of a hundred jars in order to avoid any brush with authorities. He clarifies, however, that the demand is huge.
In case the French government goes against imported CBD, then CBD420 will comply and stop its distribution in the country, Duclos adds. However, there is no denying that the French people are now very pro-cannabis. For now, though, Duclos says all they can do is ensure that their products are within the country’s THC level limit and that they are not marketed as a medicine.
Generally speaking, Europe currently has cannabis prohibition laws that have left uncertain the legality of CBD as well as of other cannabis products that are non-psychoactive. For one, the British health authorities had recently permitted the sale of CBD products, yet backtracked just as quickly and made it a requirement for cannabis companies to apply for authorized permits to sell these products as a drug. Many British cannabis businesses are therefore circumventing this particular law by selling CBD products as health supplement and not as medicine. This is also the same thing that Duclos is forced to do.
Duclos points out that what is needed right now is a real regulation and law around the use of cannabis for everyone, and for the authorities in European countries to apply this law, as well as for all cannabis products to be entirely controlled. He suggests that a law covering all aspects of cannabis be put in place so that people will be sure to get the cleanest cannabis product possible. People should also be allowed to choose the THC and CBD level that they want and in accordance with their needs. He says that under controlled regulation, everyone will become better educated, black markets will decrease, and tax revenues for every state will increase.