A woman vaping CBD oil | Spencer Platt via Getty Images Brussels’ weed wave hits new high Thanks to a lack of regulation, delivery services and shops selling cannabis-derived products are popping up in the EU capital.

For cannabis entrepreneurs in Brussels, business is blooming.

Fom Ly runs the Cannabis Social Club Brussels, distributing flowers and oils around the city whenever the club’s members place orders on his mobile app. He recently switched his delivery guy from a push bike onto an electric bike because the service is so popular.

Near Ma Campagne, a crossroads in Saint-Gilles popular with young professionals moving to Brussels, four shops within a 650-meter radius sell cannabis-based products to people looking to relax or to relieve pain or anxiety — frequently on the advice of their doctors, according to Grigor Sarkisov, the owner of one shop.

The prospering industry is a new but increasingly visible part of life in Belgium’s capital as businesses and non-profit social clubs exploit a legal gray zone. What they are selling is cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-psychoactive chemical component found in marijuana.

While national regulations are in place to restrict marijuana as an illicit drug or a medicine, EU farming laws allow for the sale of industrial hemp, a variety of cannabis grown to make fabrics or ropes, provided it contains only trace amounts of marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient THC.

“The problem for these CBD shops is they operate in a legal minefield” — Anton Buntinx, lawyer at Corbus Advocaten

Farmers in the EU are also allowed to grow industrial hemp if it contains less than 0.2 percent THC. But neither EU regulations nor Belgium’s national laws directly address these hemp-derived products being marketed as CBD in Brussels. Different forms can be smoked, ingested or applied to the skin, with users describing feelings of relaxation, happiness and increased energy.

Ly, a self-described “multientrepreneur,” founded his CBD delivery service in October, importing products from Switzerland and repackaging them in plastic bags for distribution (though he says he is planning to change to environmentally friendly glass jars in keeping with his ethos). “I was like, ‘Oh my god I can’t miss the high train on the CBD,’” he said.

The burgeoning industry is presenting a challenge to regulators, while the lack of legal clarity is prompting CBD sellers to get creative when it comes to marketing and labeling tactics.

“The people that sell products based on CBD use [the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy] legislation a bit as a shield to say, ‘Ah, but they have less than 0.2 percent THC, so legally we can sell it.’ And they are right,” said Olivier Christiaens, a spokesman for Belgium’s Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products.

But selling an agricultural product is different from selling a final product that's intended to be consumed or used as a medicine, which would fall under the oversight of Belgium's federal agencies for medicines or foods if shop owners were truthful about the intended purpose of the products.

“The problem for these CBD shops is they operate in a legal minefield,” said Anton Buntinx, a lawyer with the Belgium-based law firm Corbus Advocaten who advises clients on the cultivation and distribution of cannabis for medical and scientific purposes.

To skirt Belgium’s food and medicines laws, shop owner Sarkisov sells small jars of hemp flowers and CBD oils as potpourri and collectable trinkets at his Feeling Light CBD shop on Chaussée de Charleroi. The plastic bags of goodies that Ly sends out to his members carry the label “Do not consume and do not smoke” — despite the club’s logo featuring a marijuana leaf.

“What the customers do with that is not our problem,” Ly said, acknowledging: “We’re all lying.”

Legal gray area

StreetShop, the first CBD shop in Brussels, opened its doors near Place Flagey in July. A month later, the police came to confiscate stock, and followed up with two more raids in the following months, according to co-owner Kevin Goumet.

The authorities tested the products and found they contained less than 0.2 percent THC. In January, everything was returned to the store. Standing next to green LED-lit displays and stands of Bob Marley-themed rolling papers, Goumet said he was also warned by Belgium’s medicines regulator to stop selling CBD oils.

“It’s a bit difficult to say these products are sold legally” — Olivier Christiaens, spokesman for Belgium’s Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products

By the time StreetShop got its inventory back in January, other stores had popped up across the city, many of which sell CBD products alongside electronic cigarettes. There are now an estimated 100 shops in Belgium.

According to Ly, people were asking themselves: “‘Is this really happening? Is there really legal cannabis that you can buy?’” The authorities “tried to slow it down … but that didn’t really work,” he said.

The boom followed the government’s decision in September 2017 to pass a royal decree that clarifies that cannabis-derived products with less than 0.2 percent THC would fall outside the scope of Belgian drug law regulating psychotropic and other controlled substances.

As long as sellers don’t claim their products have health benefits, they fall outside the purview of the federal medicines agency. The Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain, responsible for food stuffs sold in Belgium, does not have oversight of CBD oils — which can be added to food and drinks — if they are explicitly labeled as not for consuming.

“Naturally, they sell these products as not for human consumption, but everybody knows the clients who go there will buy them and consume them at home,” said Christiaens, the spokesman for the medicines agency. “It’s a bit difficult to say they are sold legally.”

As countries across Europe reconsider their stance on marijuana, Belgium’s federal government is weighing new rules that would loosen controls on the cultivation and sale of cannabis specifically for medical purposes.

The parliament’s health committee advanced legislation last month designed to set up a medical cannabis office within the drugs agency, but any new regulations could be years in the making.

Hazy future

Many shop owners said they want more formal regulation, although they expressed concern that this would lead to big business taking over, driving them out of the market.

"In Belgium ... authorities are a little bit scared to take on the issue" — Eveline Van Keymeulen, lawyer at Allen & Overy

Eveline Van Keymeulen, a lawyer who heads the life sciences practice at law firm Allen & Overy and specializes in cannabis and hemp regulation, said she would “definitely advocate for a clearer framework on these products” at EU level.

“What we see for now in Belgium, but also many other member states, is that authorities are a little bit scared to take on the issue. They take a very, very restrictive position, as in trying to prohibit everything ... [but] then of course you create a lot of legal uncertainty, a lot of confusion and people start trying all kinds of things,” she said.

Keymeulen said the best path forward would be for the EU to take a “product category-specific approach” to regulating CBD. That would mean using existing EU-level regulation for cosmetics, medicines and food products to ensure consumer safety when it comes to CBD products, instead of having each country come up with their own rules.

Belgium is not the only country trying to figure things out. StreetShop’s Goumet said he owned five outlets in France but added that the shops in Bordeaux, Toulouse and Nantes are only allowed to sell accessories like bongs and vaporizers. His shops in Montpellier and Nice sell CBD-based products.

Goumet said that in Brussels, he would like outlets to be offered a formal license. That would serve to guarantee their right to sell products and give shop owners something to show to police. “Then there'd be no more confusion,” he said.