Baudelaire Smoked Hash With Victor Hugo. A Hundred Years Later, His Country Banned It. A Hundred Years After That, Europe Is Smoking Again.

This article originally appeared in High Times’ 50th Anniversary print issue. It has been updated to reflect the Czech Republic’s January 1, 2026 cannabis legalization taking effect and the January 27, 2026 European Court of Justice ruling against Hungary on cannabis rescheduling. Get the print edition here.

Paris, Marseille, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin. Europe’s cannabis capital keeps moving. And a January court ruling against Hungary just changed who controls where it moves next.

Looking at France’s current crackdown on cannabis, it’s hard to imagine that back in the 19th century Paris was actually Europe’s cannabis capital, or more precisely, the capital of hashish. Shipments would arrive through the port of Marseille and fuel the country’s supply. The French have long been among the continent’s heaviest smokers, and back then the resinous elixir was part of social and artistic life. The most famous gathering spot was the “Club des Hashischins,” founded in 1844, where intellectuals, writers and artists, including Charles Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, came together in rituals of experimentation with the substance.

Year after year, France stays at the top of Europe’s weed charts. The European Drug Report 2025, Updated by the recently rebranded European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA, formerly EMCDDA), confirmed it: 45% of the French have tried cannabis at least once in their lives, despite the tough repression they face, which likely means many users didn’t even admit it. But even while leading in consumption, France hasn’t been the cultural and economic capital of cannabis in Europe for a long time. That title slipped away almost a century ago, when international prohibition came into play. In 1925, at the League of Nations treaty in Geneva, the plant was, for the first time, hit with global restrictions, a milestone that turned 100 this year.

Europe’s Cannabis Capitals Through Time

Paris, 1830s–1860s

Club des Hashischins. Hashish enters elite Parisian intellectual life. Baudelaire, Dumas, Hugo, Delacroix. Hashish arrives via Marseille from North Africa.

Marseille, late 19th to early 20th century

Port city becomes Europe’s main hashish entry point. Trade routes from Morocco and Lebanon feed continental supply.

1925

League of Nations treaty in Geneva brings cannabis under global restriction for the first time. Prohibition era begins. Europe has no clear cannabis capital for nearly half a century.

Amsterdam, 1968 to 2000s

First controlled sales at Paradiso and Melkweg in 1968. The coffeeshop model is born. Amsterdam holds the cannabis capital title for three decades.

Barcelona and Spain, 2000s to 2020s

Social clubs and tolerated home-growing make Spain Europe’s main exporter at 36 tons a year, around 40% of EU supply. Police raids and club shutdowns dent the scene in recent years.

Berlin, 2024 to present

Germany’s adult-use regulation takes effect in April 2024. Berlin becomes the new gravitational center. Mary Jane is set to overtake Spannabis as Europe’s biggest cannabis event by 2026.

For a few decades, Europe, and the rest of the world, was left dealing with the hangover of prohibition, and the continent no longer had a standout cannabis culture. That changed in the 1960s, when the Netherlands decided to make history and became, to this day, a global reference on the subject. “The first controlled recreational sales to private individuals took place between 1968 and 1970 at Paradiso and Melkweg,” recalls Arjan Roskam, owner of one of the most famous cannabusiness brands and one of the people who cemented the Netherlands, Amsterdam in particular, at the forefront of cannabis in Europe, and beyond.

Coffeeshops turned Amsterdam into Europe’s cannabis hub, thanks to a trailblazing tolerance policy. Still, the so-called “backdoor paradox”, where sales are tolerated, but cultivation remains illegal, kept the system in a gray zone of half-legality. That contradiction, however, didn’t stop the city from holding on for three decades as the beating heart of Europe’s cannabis culture. And there’s nothing to say it couldn’t reclaim that spot again.

“With its long history of tolerance and cannabis use, and its unmatched expertise as a global supplier of cut flowers like tulips, the Netherlands has everything it takes to reclaim a leadership position in Europe, so long as it doesn’t stumble politically,” says Jamie Pearson, an international market expert and cannabis consultant.

Pearson is referring to the new guidelines rolled out in 2024, which allow a handful of government-licensed companies to grow cannabis and supply it directly to coffeeshops. Until then, and for decades on end, with commercial cultivation banned but home-growing of up to five plants tolerated, many citizens grew their own stash to resell to the clubs. That’s why coffeeshops were never able to guarantee consistency in strain availability or genetic quality.

Spain, in a Slump

If the Netherlands ruled unchallenged until the 2000s, by the start of the new century Spain had become the new epicenter of cannabis culture in Europe. The rise of social clubs and tolerated home-growing made possible by legal loopholes played a key role in normalizing the plant in society. Even without government support to boost the industry, Spain became a success story, becoming Europe’s main cannabis exporter with 36 tons a year (around 40% of the total), all while still not having regulated its own domestic market.

“The disobedience of the population and the permissiveness that followed Spain’s dictatorship made this whole universe grow a lot under deregulation,” explains Rubén Valenzuela, director of the Cannabis Hub and of the master’s program on cannabis at the University of Barcelona. He believes Germany’s legalization will spark a “domino effect” across Europe, but it will take longer in places where the pharmaceutical lobby is strong. “Once I explored the idea of bringing together different cannabis companies that would contribute a total of $5 million for advocacy efforts, the lobbyists I met with told me pharma money was 500 times bigger.” Talk about drama.

In recent years, Spain’s cannabis culture has taken some heavy hits with the crackdown on hemp, marked by abuses and wrongful arrests, the long wait for a medical cannabis law that, when it finally arrived, offered little new; and, to top it off, police raids and club shutdowns, especially in Barcelona, where unofficial estimates once counted more than 500 in operation. The result was a hard brake on a scene that had already established itself as one of the most vibrant in Europe.

Amid the widespread discouragement that swept through Spain’s cannabis scene, a new country stepped in with legalization plans. In April 2024, the first phase of adult-use cannabis regulation came into effect in Germany. “Germany is now leading the regulatory push, the Netherlands is re-professionalizing its supply chain, and Spain remains culturally relevant but legally fragile. So it’s undeniable that Germany has become the new gravitational center of cannabis policy in the EU, with a market of impressive scale,” says Pearson.

One Regulation, Two Secrets

Optimism has swept across Germany, more specifically in Berlin, where preparations to open cannabis clubs modeled after Spain’s are in full swing. Renan Martins, who travels across Europe and Latin America as an International Commercial Representative for a seed brand and attends an average of ten events a year, says he felt the movement start to take shape last year in Germany.

“Spannabis has always been considered Europe’s main cannabis event, but since it’s been around for years and is already consolidated, it’s become predictable. Mary Jane, in Berlin, on the other hand, has been surprising since last year, because it’s a fresh, early-stage market. Everyone’s excited, with high expectations for what’s coming,” says Martins, sharing his impressions of Germany’s top cannabis event, which by 2026 is expected to become the most important one in Europe.

Cannabis events are both indicators that a country’s scene is evolving and catalysts that bring people and ideas together around the plant, naturally fueling industry growth and broader social engagement with the issue. What’s happening now in Germany with Mary Jane once happened in Spain with Spannabis, and earlier in the Netherlands with the Cannabis Cup, organized by High Times between 1988 and 2014.

It’s impossible to pin down which country will become Europe’s next cannabis epicenter. But wherever it is, two conditions seem essential: the existence of clubs (or coffeeshops) that guarantee access to the plant, and large events capable of bringing different nations together around it. The only question is how long it will take.

If we look at the “dynasties” of the Netherlands and Spain, the guess would be at least two decades before another country reaches that status. Pearson, however, believes the wait will be much shorter. “Reform cycles are speeding up. The judicial setbacks in Spain, the pilot programs in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and Germany’s phased model all point to regulatory updates every 3–7 years, no longer in decades-long blocks.”

Guesses for the Future

While it’s relatively easy and safe to access cannabis in some European countries where it’s still not legal, actual regulation only exists in Malta, Luxembourg, Germany and, most recently, the Czech Republic. Germany’s legalization carries special weight, reshaping the bloc’s cannabis policy and inspiring nations still hesitant to take the same step. The Czech Republic followed: on January 1, 2026, its new law took effect, allowing adults aged 21 and over to grow up to three cannabis plants at home and possess up to 100 grams in private spaces, or 25 grams in public. The Czech model is decriminalization rather than commercial retail, but it joins the small group of European countries to have moved beyond prohibition at the national level.

For Olivia Ewenike, a German lawyer specializing in cannabis and pharmaceutical regulatory law, beyond the Czech Republic the next natural candidate for progress would be Portugal. “It has had the most comprehensive decriminalization policy in Europe since 2001, and it has created broad social acceptance of cannabis use. On top of that, in recent years several political parties have introduced bills to establish a regulated recreational market and, although none have passed yet, the public debate there is active and ongoing,” she says.

Ewenike, who has advised more than a hundred clubs through the cultivation licensing process, foresees not only in Germany but across Europe the rise of a fully commercial cannabis industry, one comparable to tobacco or alcohol, and perhaps one day even rivaling them in market share. That’s already happening in places like Canada and parts of the United States, where regulated cannabis has begun to challenge traditional alcohol and tobacco markets, both in revenue and in consumer preference.

Among the challenges still not fully addressed in Europe’s regulations, Ewenike believes intellectual property will take center stage. “Plant variety rights and strain patents are about to become a major battleground in the coming decade,” she says. In the meantime, she’s confident that decriminalization will soon reach most of the continent.

Combining Hemp With Pleasure

It may not be long before EU countries lose their autonomy to decide individually on cannabis, and other drugs as well. “The Union is taking over a competence that has always belonged to the member states, and it’s doing so in a not-so-honest way. And this is probably the most important thing happening in Europe, countries are losing their sovereignty to regulate cannabis,” warns Kenzi Riboulet-Zemouli, a leading drug policy researcher in Europe. He points to the renaming and expanded mandate of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs, now the European Union Drugs Agency, as a significant sign of this shift.

And Hungary has a lot to do with it. In 2020, when the EU required all member states to vote in favor of cannabis rescheduling at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Hungary was the only one of the seven voters to break with the bloc. “So the EU decided to take Hungary to the European Court of Justice,” says Riboulet-Zemouli.

The case was for failing to meet the obligations set out in the Council’s decision, for violating the Union’s exclusive external competence, and for breaching the principle of loyal cooperation, according to the European Commission. Riboulet-Zemouli predicted in our conversation that “this deviant and poorly thought-out stance by Hungary will almost certainly lead the Court to validate that drug policy competence does, in fact, belong to the EU. And any country that wants to go further will have to face a legal monster.”

His prediction landed. On January 27, 2026, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Case C-271/23 that Hungary had broken EU law by voting against the EU’s common position on cannabis rescheduling at the UN. The judgment found that Budapest had failed to fulfill its obligations under Council Decision (EU) 2021/3, infringed the Union’s exclusive external competence, and failed to comply with the principle of sincere cooperation. Hungary was ordered to pay the costs. More importantly, the ruling cemented what Riboulet-Zemouli had warned about: drug policy is now firmly an EU competence, and member states no longer have the legal room to break ranks.

Nothing, however, that prevents Germany’s consolidation as Europe’s cannabis cultural hub in the coming years. Something other countries could also aspire to. “Europe has been cannabis-friendly since the Neolithic, and a hundred years ago cannabis was listed as a medicine in the pharmacopeias of 95% of European countries,” says Riboulet-Zemouli, citing a recent study of his. And completes. “For us to once again have a cannabis Europe, we need to reconnect with that past, when hemp and marijuana were seen as parts of the same plant, and people knew how to tell them apart and what to do with each. That’s popular wisdom, history, tradition, and it should guide the future of cannabis regulation in Europe.”