Is CBD legal in Denmark?

Situación formal

No EU member state has authorised CBD as a novel food. That's been the position since January 2019, when Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 brought CBD ingestibles under novel food law.

The Danish food authority states that position unusually directly. Cannabidiol is a novel food requiring authorisation before marketing; extracts of hemp and other cannabinoid-containing plants, and synthetically produced cannabinoids, are likewise novel foods; no authorisations have been granted; and they are therefore not lawful to market as foods, including as food supplements. The same page adds a sentence aimed squarely at cross-border sellers: many foreign companies write that their CBD oil is legal, and this is not correct.

Cannabidiol is not a controlled substance in Denmark. It appears nowhere in the lists annexed to the order on euphoriant substances. Denmark is in fact more permissive than most of Europe at the narcotics layer, because that order places outside its scope any hemp drug and any preparation of it containing no more than 0.2 per cent THC, with preparations defined to include solutions, dilutions, extracts, concentrates and tinctures.

The constraint sits in medicines law instead, and it is dose-independent. The Danish medicines agency states that oral products containing active cannabis constituents such as CBD can have a medicinal effect through pharmacological action on central nervous system receptors, and answers the dose question expressly: there are no fixed upper or lower limits, and classification depends on a concrete assessment of the individual product. Its conclusion is that the only lawful CBD products for oral use in Denmark are prescription-only.

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The Danish position deserves a straight answer rather than a comfortable one. Denmark's food authority is explicit that CBD is an unauthorised novel food and cannot lawfully be marketed as a food supplement, and it says so while noting that many foreign companies claim otherwise. Its medicines agency treats oral CBD as capable of being a medicine, assessed product by product, with no low-dose exemption.

That is the grey zone every CBD company in Europe operates in, and no country has granted the authorisation that would resolve it. What we weighed for Denmark is that its enforcement has consisted of classification decisions and of action against businesses inside Denmark, and that comparable European sellers continue to supply Danish customers, in some cases for years after being named.

We are not claiming this is settled. We review Denmark weekly and will update this page if the position changes.

Perspectivas

Denmark maintains a public list of products it has classified as medicines that may not lawfully be sold in the country, and updates it. That list already includes cannabinoid products sold by companies established elsewhere in Europe. The most likely development is further additions to it.

What would change our assessment is the step Denmark has not yet taken: converting a classification into an actual measure against a foreign seller. Nothing on the record suggests that has ever happened, but the instrument is unusually explicit that it applies to foreign webshops, so the step would be a short one.

Timeline

November 2022

Lægemiddelstyrelsen classifies a CBD capsule product sold by a company established in Spain as an unauthorised medicinal product, on both the presentation and the function limbs of the medicines definition, and adds it to the published list of medicines that are illegal to sell in Denmark.

Lægemiddelstyrelsen, liste over lægemidler som er ulovlige at sælge i Danmark

March 2024

Lægemiddelstyrelsen classifies a CBD sleep product sold in softgel and drop form by a Netherlands company as an unauthorised medicinal product by function, and adds it to the published list of medicines illegal to sell in Denmark. The list states that it applies whether the product is sold from a Danish or a foreign webshop, and that sale can carry a fine or up to one and a half years' imprisonment.

Lægemiddelstyrelsen, liste over lægemidler som er ulovlige at sælge i Danmark

March 2026

Denmark issues a new consolidated order on euphoriant substances, BEK nr 405 af 26/03/2026, in force 29 March 2026 and repealing the 2021 order. Cannabis is liste B nr. 83 and tetrahydrocannabinol is separately listed. Paragraph 1(3)(7) continues to place outside narcotics law any hemp drug and any preparation of it containing no more than 0.2 per cent tetrahydrocannabinol, with preparations expansively defined to include solutions, dilutions, extracts, concentrates and tinctures.

Retsinformation, BEK nr 405 af 26/03/2026