Canna Reporter
The Court of Appeal of Évora has ordered the Lidl supermarket chain to compensate a worker who was fired after being caught smoking “a substance” during a work break. The judge considered that the company failed to identify the product consumed and that the substance had no impact on the employee’s professional performance, ordering Lidl to pay him more than €14,000, according to the newspaper PÚBLICO.
According to a news report from SPECTATORSAccording to a report published on February 4, 2026, the incident occurred in the summer of 2024 at the Lidl logistics center in Marateca, Palmela municipality. The worker, a specialized warehouse operator for nine years, was caught smoking a roll-your-own cigarette during his 16:00 PM break, to which he had added a substance he claimed was ‘THC-free hashish’, or CBD flowers derived from hemp, a product that does not contain tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive compound in the cannabis plant. Hemp flowers, despite some controversy regarding their legality, are freely sold in numerous stores in Portugal.
Despite the worker himself assuring that it was a hemp-based product and not a narcotic, Lidl did not confirm this information: it did not carry out any tests on the substance or the employee, even though it had internal means to assess its nature and potential influence on the central nervous system. Nevertheless, the company proceeded with the immediate suspension of the worker, initiated disciplinary proceedings, and dismissed him based on the consumption of hashish. But the Court considered it an act with “evident intent to dismiss without cause”.
According to PÚBLICO, Lidl refused to explain, either to the court or to the newspaper, why neither the worker nor the substance were tested. “It omitted all procedures foreseen in its internal regulations for determining the substance consumed and its influence on the worker’s central nervous system,” quotes PÚBLICO, despite “having effective means” to reach an objective and scientifically sound conclusion, the judges criticized in their ruling last month.
The Court of Appeal of Évora recognizes the uses of hemp and its availability in supermarkets.
In the ruling, the judges of the Évora Court of Appeal emphasize that the Cannabis sativa It is a plant with multiple legitimate uses, including industrial, food and cosmetic, noting that hemp-derived products are widely available on the Portuguese market: “it is a plant that can have various uses, having even been essential in the naval industry, when ship rigging was made from hemp fibers,” quotes PÚBLICO.
Read More
