OPEN LETTER

Subject: decision 460055 on the suspension of an illegal prohibition.


Dear Mr. Tabuteau, dear Sir,

Paka Chanvre’n Co, an association created to promote hemp and all its derivatives which I have the honor to preside, herewith has the pleasure to congratulate you on having arrived at the above-mentioned decision. By suspending the government ban on marketing the flowers and leaves of certain varieties of cannabis, known as 'well-being', in their natural state, your Judge of Chambers has confirmed that logic, consistency and respect of the rule of law can also be demanded of the executive branch of government in matters of cannabis policy.

Your decision only affects cannabis with a THC content of less than 0.3%, the threshold below which, according to the applicable European classification, this product is devoid of narcotic properties and cannot therefore be considered as a drug - qualification reserved for cannabis with a higher THC % -and thus cannot be prohibited as such.

It is clear that our policy makers nevertheless wanted to apply a restrictive regime to this non-narcotic product and, on the pretext that it is difficult to distinguish between the two varieties of flowers, intended to definitively banish from the public space any flower of cannabis, a plant once legal and essential in France. Just as the Islamist ayatollahs want to exclude every last bit of female nude from society by imprisoning women in their homes and clothes, in our country, our modern ayatollahs of the prohibition of biodiversity want to exclude every last tenth of THC %, punishing and terrorizing millions of citizens.

Both bans are in flagrant contradiction with fundamental rights and freedoms. But we notice that at a time that the democratic world is in the midst of deconstructing the drugs dispositif as a global enemy, our French government is backtracking and improvising makeshift barriers, such as the inclusion of a non-narcotic product among the prohibited substances, terrorizing its consumers, especially the sick among them.

Your provisional intervention fuels hope for normalcy. For cannabis users, from being denied this “well-being”. For a whole economic sector, operating within a European legal framework, from being destroyed. For the police, already submerged in an indefensible prohibition, from being opposed to a new group of innocent citizens, illegally criminalized. For our French image in Europe, at the time of our presidency of the Council of the Union, from being defiled by a lamentable cherry-picking of rights we choose to respect, or ignore, depending political advantage.

A follow-up intervention of your Council will decide on the merits of the legality of the ban, now suspended on a provisional basis only. In the meantime, the government, through the mouth of the Minister of the Interior, has already made it known that it "regrets" your decision to authorize the sale of prohibited products again, since "in general all substances relating to cannabis, drugs, are very bad for your health (Francetvinfo, 25.01.2022).” It seems that minister Darmanin wants to resort to recidivism and will once again seek an excuse to win his case. As it has been established in critical security studies that the drug prohibition regime itself induces a persistent and suspect habituation among its promoters, it is reassuring to note that your Council of State is incidentally making use of the law as an instrument to wean these addicts off their habituation to prohibition.

I would also like to congratulate you on behalf of our group for the splendid photo of dried cannabis flowers (with a THC content no doubt less than 0.3%), of remarkable expressiveness and which I intend to submit for its memorable composition for the "2022 Cannabis Photo" competition.

Screenshot of the site of the Council of State , February 1, 2022.
(English text:”The prohibition of selling unprocessed flowers and leaves from cannabis varieties without narcotic properties is suspended”)

While confident in your final verdict, Paka Chanvre'n Co is delighted with your decision 460055 which goes in the direction of a restoration of this long thread of hemp traversing the History of France and which can again underlie the future of the French people.

In this spirit I allow myself to send you for your information, under separate cover, the excellent book of our member Alexis Chanebau, " Mémoires du chanvre français : Département par département, du néolithique à la prohibition.” (“Memories of French hemp: Department by department, from the neolithic to prohibition.”

As for the future, as it easily lends itself to the metaphor, hemp yarn could well be transformed into an energy solution for ecological transition, likely to provide a higher quality, potentially lower cost substitute for a whole range of industrial, polluting or relocated activities: from forestry (paper pulp, construction) to oil (fuel, plastic materials, 3D printing with programmable biodegradability, etc.) via energy storage and  agro-food (from animal flour substitute to fashion magazine superfood, a champion of vegetable proteins). And all this, without even having mentioned the massive interest of pharmacological outlets, studied, no better: patented all over the world. But not in France.

This is the real background of any decision in the field of cannabis. It was also the real reason for its ban, hidden behind the folklore of cannabis smoking as the plague of Egypt. Not to be smoked out in this matter will be a matter of patriotism, economic among others, which will not go unnoticed.

Let us just assert: "The virtuous citizen, properly informed, can only aspire for the total legalization of hemp”

Sincerely yours,