Réunion
Africa
14/100
Not ranked: French overseas department
would rank #59 among countries
French prohibition applies: cannabis use, possession and growing are criminal offences, and the only patient route is the restricted national French medical framework. Locally the plant is known as zamal and grows wild in several regions.
French overseas department. Réunion is a French overseas department. French national drug law, including the Code de la santé publique prohibitions, is the applicable regime; there is no Réunion-specific cannabis statute. See also 🇫🇷 France.
In short all countries →
- Can I carry it?NoIt is a crime
- Can I grow it?NoIt is a crime
- Can I buy it?LimitedOn prescription only
- Can I use it in public?NoNot in public, and even at home the law does not protect it
- What if I'm caught?Fine or prisonUsually a fine; prison is possible
A rough guide read from the scores and the rules below, not legal advice. The details and the exceptions are in each segment: select an answer to jump to it.
- Past-year share
- about 3.07%
This site’s estimate
Source Past-year cannabis use among people aged 15–64 (assumed). This site's figure: there is no national survey, so the median rate of surveyed countries in Africa is applied to people aged 15–64.Survey ages and years vary, and some surveys include children. Rates are not age-standardised; do not compare countries directly.
A median computed on this site from surveyed countries in Africa, using UNODC World Drug Report 2026 figures. The whole dataset →
CultureThe atlas →
Score breakdown ▏world average
Select a segment to show or hide the exact rules and sources. How the scores are made →
Possession · 25%1/10adds 2.5 of 25 points
Illicit use and possession fall under article L3421-1 of the Code de la santé publique: up to one year in prison and a €3,750 fine, with a national fixed-fine procedure for ordinary use cases.[1][2]
| Amount | What happens | Punishment | Fine |
| Ordinary illicit useNational fixed-fine procedure applies to ordinary use cases | Criminal | Up to 1 year | Up to €3,750 |
Personal cultivation · 25%1/10adds 2.5 of 25 points
Growing cannabis is treated as production of narcotics, a serious crime with sentences far above those for use, even for a few plants.[3]
Punishment & enforcement · 20%3/10adds 6.0 of 20 points
Sharing & gifting · 10%1/10adds 1.0 of 10 points
Giving cannabis to someone for their personal use is a specific offence with up to five years in prison under the national regime.[3]
Consumption · 10%1/10adds 1.0 of 10 points
Legal access · 10%1/10adds 1.0 of 10 points
No Réunion-specific patient route exists; access follows the restricted national French medical framework, limited to patients carried over from the 2021 experiment during the transition to a permanent regime.[4]
References
- Légifrance — Code de la santé publique, article L3421-1, in force 20 August 2026One year and €3,750 for ordinary illicit use of a scheduled narcotic.
- French government Service Public — drug-use penalties
- CIDJ — Détention de cannabis, je risque quoi ?
- Service-Public.fr — Therapeutic cannabis
More context not part of the score
There is no legal recreational supply on the island. Zamal grows wild in several regions and is smoked despite the ban; ordinary illicit use is a criminal offence carrying up to one year in prison and a €3,750 fine, with the national fixed-fine procedure for ordinary cases.[1][2][3]
No Réunion-specific patient route exists; access follows the restricted national French medical framework, limited to patients carried over from the 2021 experiment during the transition to a permanent regime.[4]
CBD flower and products under 0.3% THC are lawful to sell under the national French regime; there is no other lawful cannabis product on the island.[5]
CBD flower and products under 0.3% THC are lawful to sell under the national French regime; there is no other lawful cannabis product on the island.[5]
Cannabis (zamal) grows wild in several regions, particularly the mid-altitude zones of the west, and is planted in cane fields and gardens; all of it is outside any legal production regime, and cultivation is a serious offence.[1][3]
There is no legal recreational supply for anyone on the island. Ordinary illicit use is a criminal offence punishable by up to one year in prison and a €3,750 fine.[2][3]
Use and possession convictions carry up to one year in prison and a €3,750 fine under the national provisions, with convictions recorded under national criminal-record rules.[2]
Zamal — the local name, apparently of Malagasy origin though absent from present-day Malagasy — probably arrived with enslaved Malagasy; the word jamala appears in Drury’s 1729 vocabulary, and the term seems to have been rediffused to Madagascar through Réunion immigration.[1] It is smoked at Malagasy-descended feasts and by Tamil priests as ciga in possession rites, while countryside smokers prepare pressed honey-and-alcohol cigars — see zamal and zamal on Réunion.[1]
Taking cannabis into or out of Réunion is a separate offence from possessing it, normally charged as smuggling or trafficking, with far heavier penalties. That holds almost everywhere, including between two places where cannabis is legal.
A prescription or medical card from another country is generally not recognised. Travellers who need a cannabis-based medicine should ask Réunion's embassy before travelling.[6]
General guidance that applies to almost every country, not a check of Réunion's customs rules.
References
- Jean Benoist, Réunion: Cannabis in a Pluricultural and Polyethnic Society, in Vera Rubin (ed.), Cannabis and Culture (Mouton, 1975), pp. 227–234
- Légifrance — Code de la santé publique, article L3421-1, in force 20 August 2026One year and €3,750 for ordinary illicit use of a scheduled narcotic.
- CIDJ — Détention de cannabis, je risque quoi ?
- Service-Public.fr — Therapeutic cannabis
- The Connexion — French court definitively allows sale of CBD flowers and products
- International Narcotics Control Board — Travellers carrying medicines containing controlled substances
History 3 of 3 checked against a source
Culture & science ✓
Police-committed youth smokers show Réunion's new pattern of zamal use
After Réunion became a French department in 1946, new milieus made the island more favourable to zamal use: Comorian labourers in shanty-towns around Le Port and Saint-Denis collected cannabis from the countryside with Mauritian vendors, and part of the crop was clandestinely exported to Mauritius. Alongside them, continental French youth and lycée students began smoking on the beach or outside schools, joined by dance-orchestra musicians, prostitutes and marginal figures; most were occasional users, some formed groups of habitual users. The authorities decided to deal quietly, judging the phenomenon no social menace. The psychiatric hospital received youthful smokers only twice: in 1971 a group initiated by members of a travelling Mauritian orchestra, harvesting zamal in the island's eastern fields, whom the psychiatrists declined to admit and placed under surveillance until they quit; and in 1973 a harder case, a community of 17- to 20-year-olds led by a Frenchwoman artist who was hospitalised for a psychotic episode, briefly hospitalised all together, then sent home under surveillance while still smoking daily. Benoist stresses that cannabis is completely overshadowed on the island by the far worse problem of alcoholism.
Enforcement ✓
A Malay assassin on Réunion reportedly smoked amale before a murder
The Réunion historian R. P. Meerlsman, in an unpublished parish history of Saint-Gilles-les-Hauts written around 1895, records a crime committed on the island in 1830 by a Malay: the assassin "had smoked Amale to get his head high" before committing it. The anecdote, preserved through Benoist's chapter, is the earliest dated individual cannabis-use report located for the island.
Culture & science ✓ Article
Zamal carries a Malagasy name to Réunion with enslaved labour
The name most often used for cannabis on Réunion, zamal, seems to be of Malagasy (Madagascar) origin, though it is not found in present-day Malagasy vocabulary: the word jamala appears in R. Drury's Vocabulaire de la langue de Madagascar, published in 1729 for western Madagascar, when the peopling of Réunion had only just begun. The plant was probably introduced to the island with the slaves brought in from Madagascar, and the term seems to have been rediffused to Madagascar through immigration from Réunion. Nearby Mauritius, by contrast, does not know the word at all: Mauritians use ganja, and the plant's traditional social functions there relate exclusively to the Indian domain, while on Réunion African and Indian currents meet.
Datasets not part of the score
What other organisations publish about Réunion, and where it stands among the countries each one covers. Every file is published in full on the sources page.
Use
UNODC
Cannabis use
3.07%of people aged 15–64 (assumed)
computed here: the median of surveyed countries in the region, or the figure of the country a territory is part of
Source Survey ages and years vary, and some surveys include children. Rates are not age-standardised; do not compare countries directly.
Society
CEPII
Former colonial rulers
Once ruled by France
Context
Our World in Data, World Bank · 2025
Population
882,405people in 2025
LowestHigher than 18% of 196 countriesHighest
All sources 6 cited in this profile
- Jean Benoist, Réunion: Cannabis in a Pluricultural and Polyethnic Society, in Vera Rubin (ed.), Cannabis and Culture (Mouton, 1975), pp. 227–234
- The Connexion — French court definitively allows sale of CBD flowers and products
- CIDJ — Détention de cannabis, je risque quoi ?
- Légifrance — Code de la santé publique, article L3421-1, in force 20 August 2026One year and €3,750 for ordinary illicit use of a scheduled narcotic.
- French government Service Public — drug-use penalties
- Service-Public.fr — Therapeutic cannabis
Last updated: · 6 sources