At EU level the reference figure for hemp is 0.3 per cent THC, set for agricultural purposes by Regulation (EU) 2021/2115, and separate maximum levels apply to hemp seed foods as contaminants.

Sweden has no equivalent figure for finished products, and the absence is deliberate rather than accidental. The Swedish food authority states in terms that Swedish narcotics legislation contains no concentration limits for THC, unlike some other EU countries.

The controlling authority is the Supreme Court's judgment of 18 June 2019. It held that CBD oil containing THC is a preparation within the meaning of the psychotropic substances convention and is therefore narcotics under the narcotics criminal act, and that the industrial hemp exemption does not extend to preparations at all. The exemption in the Swedish schedules is drafted by reference to the plant variety and to whether an agricultural support application has been made - it is conditioned on cultivation, not on concentration - and so it says nothing about the THC content of a finished product. In the case itself the THC level could not be determined, and the product was narcotics regardless.

Sweden considered introducing a threshold for preparations and declined. A 2021 government memorandum records the medicines agency advising against adopting the kind of exemption in force in Denmark, and a further government commission reported in 2024 without proposing one.