Poland: Supreme Court rules that hemp flowers and leaves are legal

Poland's Supreme Administrative Court ruled this week that unprocessed products made from the flowers and leaves of the hemp plant are legal, contrary to the decisions of the Inspectorate General Sanitary (IGS), the Polish equivalent of Infarmed, announced the Hemp today.

The Polish health authority had banned the hemp plant capsules introduced on the market by Kombinat Konopny in 2019, but the Supreme Court judge ruled just the opposite, opening another gap for what the hemp flower market could represent in Europe.

Speaking to Hemp Today, Maciej Kowalski, CEO of Kombinat Konopny said that “this is probably the first case in Poland – or in Europe – in which the court did not just carelessly rewrite the authorities’ position, but became familiar with the case in a practical way. Employees who deliberately abused, concealed and misrepresented reality will now be held personally accountable,” he said.

Although noting that extracts based on flowers, such as CBD (cannabidiol), fall within the European Union's food safety rules, the court said that the interpretation of these rules by the IGS was fallacious, namely with regard to the flowers of plants in the its raw state, and pointed the finger at the health authority for gross procedural errors in sanctioning Kombinat Konopny.

The court decision, quoted by Hemp Today, reads that “IGS first misinterpreted the provisions of the Novel Foods Regulation. . . and then carried out incomplete and minimized evidentiary procedures, ignoring the documentary evidence presented by the applicant, as well as the evidence produced by the authority itself and of its ex officio knowledge. It was decided that foods containing parts of the hemp plant are not subject to regulation. . . in novel foods,” the court said of the 1997 law.

Beata Plutowska, a food chemistry expert, Kowalski's wife and business partner, gathered historical documentation of hemp flowers used as food in Europe before 1997, which served as her argument in the Kombinat Konopny case.

“The undoubted evidence presented by the party in the context of the proceedings in question indicated the history of consumption of hemp herb, both as food and as a supplement to a normal diet”, concluded the superior court.

In addition to failing to comply with the Novel Food Regulation, the court found that the IGS violated administrative procedure “by conducting incomplete evidence proceedings without any assessment of the evidence collected” and by “nominating an inappropriate opinion from an advisory body – resulting in the determination that Cannabis sativa L. herb powder is a new food.”