Cannabis in France is a plant considered indigenous, although currently illegal for personal use except in cases of varieties or products containing low amounts of the main active compound, ∆⁹-THC. but remains one of the most popular illegal drugs. Limited types of cannabis-derived products are permitted for medical uses.

Cannabis is cultivated in France since the late Neolithic. Documentation suggests that French hemp was not entirely deprived of ∆⁹-THC. For example, in 1570, Mathias de l'Obel documented traditional uses of hemp in the Cévennes region, which included medicinal and psychoactive ones. He noted that hemp "promotes sleep; yet excessive use overwhelms with troublesome drowsiness." In the nineteenth century, a professor of medicine in Lyon explained:

The hemp seeds “chènevis” of our fibrous hemp (Cannabis sativa) do not seem totally deprived of inebriating properties; hempseed oil, which is part of the food regime of the poorest people, is said to sometimes produce a sort of excitation or hilarity which recalls that of haschich.

In early French pharmacopoeias, cannabis appeared used in different ways, from "emulsion" (similar to almond milk) to "sparadrap" (bandaid) and later on "haschish" and "tincture."

Hemp was, for long, extensively cultivated in France, with the primary output being the fibers used in the production of industrious and military materials (the national Corderie Royale remaining the best example). Nevertheless, French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck documented in 1780 that "Hemp plants grown in pots upon windowsills or cultivated in neighboring gardens". Today, France remains among the main producers of hemp for industrial (fiber) purposes, although only a limited number of varieties can be legally cultivated.

During Napoléon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798, the troops got to try different preparations of hashish, which they found to their liking. As a result of the conspicuous consumption of hashish by the troops, the smoking of hashish and consumption of drinks containing it was banned in October 1800, although not by Napoleon but by Jacques-François Menou, one of his officers. Upon the end of the occupation in 1801, French troops reportedly brought supplies of hashish with them back to France. More than hashish, which historians have shown was a minor preoccupation for Napoleon, taking control of the vast fields of non-psychoactive hemp for fiber production of the Russian Empire was one of the main drivers of Napoleon's campaign in Russia.

More critically with regards to psychoactive hemp, the invasion of Algeria by France and its integration into the country as a department brought sustained and prolonged contact the French pharmaceutical industry with farmers, climates, and cultivation knowledge which were taken advantage of to create increase production capacity for France's internal market.

A new interest in the plant and its effects, both medicinally and for non-medical purposes. In the mid-1800s, following travel and studies in Asia, French psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau studied hashish extensively and created the 1845 work of Du Hachisch et de l'aliénation mentale (Hashish and Mental Illness).