Residents in the tiny Dordogne commune of Petit Bersac, on the border with Charente, joined forces to fight plans to construct a medicinal cannabis production facility, built 70m from an EU-protected conservation area, known as a Zone Natura 2000.

On a plot of 6.2 hectares, the project is for two hermetic glass and metal greenhouses – covering 2.2 hectares of land – to cultivate plants above ground, a laboratory, a leaf-pulling workshop, a drying room, and a storage and conditioning room. 

The developer hopes to obtain one of just 10 licences to produce medical cannabis in France, under a trial scheme to legalise cannabis for medical use in France. Recreational use of cannabis remains illegal.

Cecile Willgoss, 66, who lives in the village, told The Local: “We were not informed officially until the 19th of October, and we had two months to raise objections, which we’ve done. There is a legal action against the commune and the company.”

The Association Sauvegarde de la Vallee de la Dronne was formed rapidly in response to the scheme. Within weeks, a petition had about 650 signatures, while some 60 residents attended a meeting hosted by the mayor in the town hall in mid-November. Only 15 residents, whose homes were closest to the planned development, had been invited to the gathering.

Willgoss said that the association’s main concerns were ecological: “It’s right next to a zone Natura 2000. In the initial planning document on which everything is based, the porteur de projet said that it was not that close.

“The initial project was to grow cannabis for hemp in the soil. This will all be hydroponic. The buildings will cover 3.2 hectares in concrete, plus all the other materials, and there will be quite a large circuit of roads.”

She added that irrigation was a third concern. “Their calculations for holding and using rainwater [are] inaccurate. They plan to use the drinking water network when they run out of water.”

“The carbon footprint for the construction will be huge, and that appears nowhere in the permit.

“It just seems that this is a kind of project which you shouldn’t be doing now, especially in a sensitive ecological zone. It’s not the time.”

France’s relationship with cannabis is … complicated. It has some of the toughest anti-drug laws in the European Union, and yet also has the largest number of cannabis users in Europe.

The French government finally gave the go-ahead for two-year medical trials of cannabis in October 2020. Those trials were initially extended through to March 2024. With that deadline looming, and no apparent definitive news from the study, the government has proposed an amendment granting “temporary status” to medicinal cannabis drugs for up to five years, pending possible marketing authorisation.

Meanwhile, CBD oil, made from cannabis plants, is available after France’s highest administrative court temporarily overturned a ban on the sale of cannabidiol (CBD) flowers and leaves in France.

Willgoss said that the protesters had no problem with medicinal cannabis or the growing of hemp to make CBD oil.

“I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “It clearly works to relieve pain and to calm people down.

“What I’m against is the size of this project. And the fact that it’s artificial – you can grow cannabis in the ground. It grows really well. 

“There are CBD plantations around here – they have to control their levels of THC really carefully. It works really well. This project started off as a young farmer from the village wanting to do a CBD plantation and wanting it to be official.”

Ironically, opposition to the plans has had a galvanising effect on the community.

“That’s something that’s been really nice,” Willgoss said. “It’s brought together a lot of people from different walks of life and also the different communities.

“A lot of people, local people who lived here all their lives will say, oh, you know, it’s just the English. It’s not true. I’m half English, half French. I’ve been living here on and off since I was six years old. 

“In fact, we had a meeting on Monday evening which one of the people who lived here all his life said, ‘this is really nice, I hope we keep up this kind of thing once this is done’, because it’s given him a different perspective on the people who live here. There are all sorts of different people. And it allows them to expand her horizons and perhaps drop a few of their prejudices.”