Business of Cannabis report
Thousands of French medical cannabis patients will continue to receive their treatment for the foreseeable future, as the highly anticipated full generalised framework edges towards reality.
France’s Ministry of Health announced yesterday that patients currently enrolled in the country’s long-running medical cannabis programme will receive another extension beyond the March 31, 2026 deadline, though exactly how long this latest extension will last is unclear.
The announcement, made during a temporary scientific committee meeting of the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety (ANSM), aims to ensure thousands of patients receiving medical cannabis through its pilot programme are not suddenly cut off on April 01, 2026.
While this is a critical move by the French government, it fails to address the wider issue of inaction regarding the country’s incoming generalised framework.
“We really hope that this will come out now,” Hugues Péribère, CEO of French medical cannabis company Overseed, told Business of Cannabis. “We absolutely need a new extension for the patients who are included in the process. But what we are really hoping is that new patients could have permanent access as soon as possible.”
The rapidly evolving situation, and the opportunities it creates, will be examined in rigorous detail next month at Cannabis Europa 2026, organised in partnership with medical cannabis trade organisation UIVEC, where policymakers, healthcare leaders, and industry executives will convene to assess what France’s transition to permanent medical cannabis means in practice.
Regarding yesterday’s news, UIVEC’s President Ludovic Rachou welcomed the extension, but warned it ‘cannot indefinitely replace the expected regulatory decisions…There is no longer any room for ambiguity: the Government must now publish the texts allowing for a lasting exit from the experiment.’
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