Is THC legal in the Netherlands?

Situación jurídica

The EU's general threshold for THC in industrial hemp is 0.3 per cent (Regulation (EU) 2021/2115), applied to the crop rather than to a finished supplement.

The Netherlands does not answer the question that way. The operative Dutch mechanism for a hemp extract is not a percentage at all: it is the scheduling of hennepolie, defined as concentrate of plants of the genus Cannabis obtained by extraction of hemp or hashish, whether or not mixed with oil. That definition is extraction-based and sets no THC figure, so on its ordinary reading it catches an extract at any THC content, including none.

Articles 2 and 3 of the Opiumwet prohibit bringing a listed substance into or out of Dutch territory and selling, delivering, supplying or transporting it, with criminal penalties.

A figure of 0.05 per cent circulates as a Dutch tolerance. It is not a statutory limit. It has been described as an unpublished administrative tolerance operated by the medicinal cannabis bureau, and separately as a purity requirement meaning the CBD must be at least 99.95 per cent pure. Those are materially different tests, the second of which a full-spectrum extract fails outright. Its published source is no longer retrievable and it was last evidenced in 2023.

We were not able to read the current schedule text ourselves, so we set out the mechanism as it has been applied rather than asserting the listing as settled.

¿Vendemos aquí?

No.

We don't sell to the Netherlands, and THC is the clearest illustration of why the Dutch rule is different from everyone else's.

Almost every European country asks how much THC a product contains and sets a percentage. The Netherlands, for hemp extracts, asks a different question: was this made by extracting hemp? If it was, the extract is treated as a controlled substance in its own right, and the definition sets no THC figure at all. On that reading it would catch our product even if it contained no THC whatsoever.

Our batches test meaningfully below 0.2 per cent and we publish the certificates. That answers the question every other country asks. It does not answer the one the Netherlands asks, and no amount of testing or reformulation would, short of not using a full-spectrum extract.

A figure of 0.05 per cent is often quoted as a Dutch tolerance. We looked into it and could not stand it up: it is not in the statute, sources disagree about whether it refers to THC content or to how pure the CBD must be, and the document it traces back to is no longer available. That is not something we were willing to rely on.

The Dutch Supreme Court asked the EU courts in February 2026 whether this approach is compatible with European law. We will be watching the answer.

Perspectivas

The question referred to the Court of Justice of the EU in February 2026 is the one to watch, and it is squarely on this point: whether Union law permits the Netherlands to criminalise the possession and the import from another member state of hemp grown from certified seed with THC no higher than 0.3 per cent. An answer against the Dutch position would make the current mechanism hard to apply to goods lawfully produced elsewhere in the EU.

Separately, if the unpublished 0.05 per cent tolerance were ever formalised and published, that alone would improve matters considerably - not because the figure is generous, but because a written rule can be met and evidenced, and an unpublished one cannot.

Cronología

February 2017

Gerechtshof Den Haag convicts a Rotterdam operator in respect of EU-certified industrial fibre hemp, below 0.2 per cent THC and held with certification, intended for the production of CBD oil. The prosecution relied on the Opiumwet definition of hennepolie - concentrate of plants of the genus Cannabis obtained by extraction of hemp or hashish, whether or not mixed with oil - to treat hemp extract material as a controlled substance. Defence commentary criticises the court for holding that cultivating and processing fibre hemp is lawful while possessing it is not.

CNNBS, reporting Gerechtshof Den Haag

Febrero de 2026

The Hoge Raad refers questions to the Court of Justice of the EU on whether it is compatible with Union law to criminalise, under the Opiumwet, the possession and the import from another member state of hemp grown from certified seed and/or with a THC content no higher than 0.3 per cent. The referral puts the application of the Dutch narcotics framework to low-THC hemp lawfully produced elsewhere in the EU directly in issue.

Hoge Raad der Nederlanden