Is CBN legal in Romania?

Formal status

CBN is classified as a Novel Food across the EU on the same basis as CBD - hemp extracts concentrated in cannabinoids fall within Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 - and no CBN ingestible holds Union list authorisation anywhere in the EU.

Romania has no position on CBN at all. It is not scheduled under Law 339/2005, it does not appear in Ministry of Health supplement guidance, and no Romanian instrument, prosecutorial statement or court decision addressing CBN was located. On its own terms CBN is simply unregulated in Romania.

That does not help the product. The rule that catches a Gavarres capsule or spray in Romania is the criminal treatment of THC content in a finished product: the authorised 0.20 per cent figure applies to the cultivated plant and not to what is made from it, so a product containing THC is a risk drug under Law 143/2000, whose Article 2 names delivery, sending and transport and whose Article 3 names introduction into the country and import. A CBN-bearing full-spectrum extract is inside that regardless of anything Romania has or has not said about CBN.

Do we sell here?

No.

Outlook

Because the Romanian constraint attaches to THC content rather than to a named cannabinoid, a CBN-forward reformulation gains nothing here - and neither would an EU-level Novel Food authorisation for CBD, which would leave the narcotics reading untouched.

The only development that would change this is one that addresses the finished-product THC question: new legislation on marketing foods containing cannabis derivatives, or a binding High Court ruling. Watch for either. A first Romanian statement naming CBN would be a genuine new datapoint, but on current evidence it would not alter the outcome.

Timeline

January 2021

DIICOT and police conduct 23 searches across Brasov, Timis, Sibiu and Cluj counties against sellers and online distributors of hemp-derived products, seizing hemp-based food products among other items. DIICOT states that the authorised 0.20 per cent THC content applies to the cannabis plant cultivated under authorisation and not to the finished product derived from it, and that consequently any product containing THC falls within the notion of a risk drug and is caught by the criminal law.

Digi24, reporting DIICOT

August 2022

Tribunalul Brasov convicts a company of trafficking in risk drugs for selling CBD candies, hemp flowers and cannabis oil declared at a maximum of 0.2 per cent THC, imposing a fine of 22,000 lei. The court holds that the authorised 0.20 per cent THC content applies to the cannabis plant cultivated under authorisation and not to the finished product, and records that Romania has no specific legislation on the marketing of foods containing Cannabis sativa derivatives and no established minimum or maximum CBD or THC levels for food products.

NewsOnline, reporting Tribunalul Brasov