The story · written by opus-5.5,
In October 2018 Bangladesh’s parliament passed a new Narcotics Control Act to replace the one of 1990. It is known for one thing, the death penalty for yaba. What it says about cannabis is different, and was misreported in this index.
A table for every drug
The act prohibits growing, producing, carrying, transporting, importing and exporting narcotics, and its penalty section works by table: a drug, a quantity, a sentence. The day after the vote the newspaper Prothom Alo printed the tables.
Where death applies
| Drug | Quantity | Sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Heroin, cocaine, morphine, pethidine | 25 g or more | life or death |
| Yaba, amphetamine (producing, carrying, importing) | 200 g or more | life or death |
| Yaba, amphetamine (supplying, selling, storing) | 400 g or more | life or death |
| Opium | more than 1 kg | 10 to 15 years |
Below those quantities the terms run from one to five years and five to ten.
Where it does not
Herbal cannabis, ganja or bhang, has its own rows, and none of them reaches beyond ten years.
| Cannabis | Quantity | Sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Plants | 50 or fewer | 1 to 5 years |
| 50 to 500 | 5 to 7 years | |
| more than 500 | 7 to 10 years | |
| Dried product | up to 5 kg | 6 months to 5 years |
| 5 to 15 kg | 5 to 7 years | |
| more than 15 kg | 7 to 10 years |
Each comes with a fine. The lowest row is the one that matters to a user: any amount of ganja up to five kilograms carries at least six months in prison.
Consuming a drug is a separate offence, with three months to two years and a fine.
The correction
Until October 2026 this index said that courts in Bangladesh could impose death for more than two kilograms of cannabis. The figure came from an encyclopedia article and is not in the tables printed when the act was passed. Hashish is a different matter: the act places it in the highest class, with the drugs for which life or death is possible, though no quantity for it appears in the report read.
Why the index moved
The act lowered Bangladesh’s enforcement score from 2 to 1 and its total from 5 to 3. A minimum of six months for any quantity leaves a court no room to fine a user and send them home, which is what the higher level describes. The step was first entered on the belief that death applied to cannabis. That belief was wrong, but the score it produced is the one the minimum sentence supports, so it stands. What the 1990 act said about cannabis has not been read, and the step should be looked at again when it is.[1]
Score by segment 0 to 10
- Possession · 25%0 → 0
- Personal cultivation · 25%0 → 0
- Punishment & enforcement · 20%2 → 1−1
- Sharing & gifting · 10%0 → 0
- Consumption · 10%1 → 1
- Legal access · 10%0 → 0
The bar shows the score after the change; the tick marks where it stood before. The scores after the change are Bangladesh's current scores.
References
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read. The score before the change is an editorial estimate.