A byline by Falk Altenhöfer
I spent the three days at InterTabac in Dortmund, most of the time on the floor talking to retailers and wholesalers. One topic kept coming up: pre-rolls. The category is growing fast in CBD right now, and after this week I’m pretty sure it will become the main format. What’s holding it back in Germany is a legal situation that every authority reads differently.
On Wednesday evening, the CB Expo, which runs as part of InterTabac, had a panel on exactly that question: is cannabis becoming part of the tobacco category? Lisa Haag, CEO of MJ Universe and publisher of Krautinvest, moderated. On stage were Paul Portius of Sanaleo, lawyer Ferdinand Weis and Cyril Herben from Belgium.
Portius described how Sanaleo got customs to accept that its flowers belong under tobacco rules. His argument was simple: „Everybody smokes this product. Nobody’s making tea out of it.“ If you follow that thought, the pre-roll is the obvious product. It’s ready to smoke, every unit contains the same amount, the tax stamp is on the pack, and kiosks and tobacconists already know how to sell it. Sanaleo received Germany’s first tax stamp for THC-free flowers in May 2025 and now also sells CBD joints with a tax stamp.
North America shows how big the category can get. According to Headset, pre-rolls sold for about $3.2 billion in the US between September 2025 and August 2026, which makes them the third largest category there. In Canada they reached $1.5 billion over the same period and have overtaken flower as the largest category. In Q1 2026, pre-rolls made up 15.9 percent of tracked US sales, 9.8 percent more than a year earlier, and they gained share in every state tracked. Those are THC markets, of course, so the numbers don’t translate directly to CBD. They do show how people buy once a format is legal and properly regulated.
Prices are worth a look too. A pre-roll costs around $8 on average in the US, but per gram it’s more expensive than loose flower, because people pay extra for convenience. The average price has fallen by about 6 percent over the year as cheaper singles and multi-packs grow. Anyone who has worked in the tobacco trade will recognise the pattern: small units, a low entry price, bought at the till.
Switzerland tried this with CBD years ago. In 2017, Koch & Gsell put a cigarette containing hemp on the shelves of Coop and Spar under its Heimat brand. According to the company, demand was three to five times what it could produce. Two years later it launched what it describes as Europe’s first industrially produced pre-roll made of pure hemp in cigarette form.
Portius also explained why the stamp matters so much for retail. Supermarkets and tobacco wholesalers won’t touch unregulated goods, because they don’t want to risk customs shutting their warehouse for a day or two. With the stamp they feel safe, and some have started working with Sanaleo. Those are the channels that sell packaged units rather than loose flower.
Cyril Herben talked about Belgium, where tobacco tax on hemp flowers for smoking has been standard for a while. In his view, the tax makes the product hard to sell. What surprised him more was something else: „You can smoke it, you can have a combustion, but vaping CBD products is totally forbidden.“ The official reasoning is that vaping CBD is too attractive and could lead young people to nicotine. Herben thinks that’s nonsense, and I find it hard to follow as well, since vaping is the one option that doesn’t involve burning anything.
The part I remember most came when Lisa Haag asked whether a clear framework would help or whether more competition would make life harder. Portius admitted that more regulation could bring in bigger players. „But in general, I would say we need more consistent regulation, because right now we still don’t have real regulation.“ Sanaleo had found a way with customs to tax and sell its products, he said, but „some authorities go to our B2B partners, look at our CBD flowers and think the tax stamp isn’t real.“
That’s what bothers me. The stamp is supposed to give retailers certainty. If other authorities don’t accept it, it doesn’t help much, and each retailer is back to dealing with it alone. Whether industrial hemp counts as cannabis under the Consumer Cannabis Act (KCanG) still depends on which authority you ask. The Central Customs Authority told the BvCW that it would largely stick to its previous practice, even though a main customs office has issued stamps. The Düsseldorf Finance Court ordered customs to issue tax stamps, and that case went to the Federal Fiscal Court. In December 2025, a local court in Amberg acquitted a hemp retailer, and the so-called intoxication clause is still in the law.
So I think it’s up to the regulator now. We need clear laws, and they have to cover CBD pre-rolls. I’m not asking for more rules, just rules that customs, prosecutors, police and food inspectors all read the same way. In practice, that means a legal definition of the CBD pre-roll as a herbal smoking product made from industrial hemp, so companies don’t have to fight for every product separately. The THC limit should be the same for flower and pre-rolls. The BvCW wants tax stamps for hemp with detectable THC up to 0.3 percent, or the intoxication clause removed. Someone also has to decide whether a pre-roll in cigarette form is taxed like a cigarette or like smoking tobacco, because that makes a big difference to the shelf price. Lab testing, labelling and age limits can follow the tobacco model without copying every tobacco rule. Anyone who wants to get packaged products into supermarkets needs this kind of planning security.
There’s a quicker option until the law catches up. The Federal Ministry of Finance could simply instruct customs, which the BvCW already called for in 2025. Brussels matters too. The EU Tobacco Products Directive already covers herbal products for smoking, and the Commission wants to present a proposal to revise it by the end of 2026. The European Court of Justice also has references on industrial hemp from Italy and the Netherlands in front of it. The industry should get involved in Brussels now instead of waiting for the draft.
Once the rules are clear, I expect the pre-roll market to look a lot like the tobacco market, with distribution and brands deciding who wins. In the US, Headset says Jeeter alone takes about one in every twelve dollars spent on pre-rolls. Portius is right that clear regulation will attract larger companies, and at InterTabac the tobacco groups are already a few booths away. The companies building a brand and retail access now will be better placed than those relying on the grey zone.
I came back from Dortmund convinced that pre-rolls will become the main CBD format. For that to happen, a tax stamp has to mean the same thing to every authority. At the moment it doesn’t.
About Falk Altenhöfer
Falk Altenhöfer is an analyst, entrepreneur, and publicist focused on the European cannabis industry. Since 2019, he has supported founders, investors, and companies with market entry, building scalable business models, and strategically assessing regulatory developments.
Previously, he worked in the digital platform economy and the SaaS sector. He gained international experience at, among others, iCAN (CannaTech) in Israel. Today, he advises startups, family offices, business angels, and mid-sized companies across the entire cannabis market value chain.
Falk Altenhöfer publishes on Cannabis-Startups.com, a European B2B platform for the cannabis economy, market analysis, and entrepreneurship.
Disclaimer: Guest contributions do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial team.