Algeria lowers personal growing penalties while raising drug fines

Algeria’s May 2023 amendment created a lower prison range for growing cannabis for personal consumption: two to five years and a 200,000–500,000-dinar fine.^[1][2] The original 2004 law had imposed life imprisonment for unlawful cannabis cultivation without this personal-use exception.^[1][2]

The purpose of a crop matters

The amended cultivation article kept life imprisonment for the general offence of knowingly growing cannabis unlawfully.^[1] It then added the separate personal-consumption penalty.^[1] A grower’s purpose therefore became important to the difference between the two cultivation penalties.^[1]

The provision used personal consumption as its test.^[1] Personal cultivation remained illegal at every quantity.^[1] Even within the lower range, personal growing remained a criminal offence carrying prison and a fine.^[1]

The personal-possession fine rises

For illicit use, buying or possession for personal consumption, the prison range stayed at two months to two years.^[1][2] The fine became 20,000–50,000 dinars, with either the fine or imprisonment available alone.^[1][2] The original law’s fine had started at 5,000 dinars.^[1][2]

The amendment therefore combined a less severe cultivation rule for personal growers with a higher minimum fine for users.^[1] It also retained ten to twenty years for the basic wider production and supply offence and added a twenty-to-thirty-year range for certain people whose official or professional role facilitated it.^[1]

Treatment protections expand for minors

The amended law retained non-prosecution for people who underwent detoxification or medical supervision after the alleged use.^[1] It also required courts to exempt minors from the ordinary use penalties when a specialist assessment established that they had completed detoxification.^[1] Further medical supervision could be ordered for up to a year.^[1]

For people outside the treatment route, the ordinary use penalties remained.^[1] The law expressly addressed those who evaded an ordered course and cases where a specialist found that detoxification was not medically needed.^[1]

Further penalties follow in 2025

The law was promulgated on 7 May and published on 9 May 2023.^[1][3] The next major amendment, in July 2025, restored death penalties for specified aggravated supply offences and expanded other sentencing rules.^[1][3]

The personal-growing exception remained in the cultivation article.^[1][3] For personal growers in Algeria, that separate paragraph sets a two-to-five-year prison range and a fine.^[1]