Bolivia punishes unlawful cannabis possession with three to five years

People holding cannabis without being able to justify its lawful origin faced three to five years in prison under Bolivia’s narcotics law promulgated on 10 January 1962. The same law ordered compulsory admission for drug misuse, placing people who used cannabis under both criminal and medical control.

Indian hemp appeared alongside other narcotics

The law expressly included Indian hemp and preparations made from it in its list of narcotics. It also covered opium, cocaine and several other substances, bringing cannabis within a common set of offences.

Its rules reached beyond street sales. They covered possession, manufacture, supply, prescribing and the premises where drugs were made, sold or used. Medical professionals and pharmacists also had reporting duties, tying lawful handling to supervision by the health authorities.

For someone carrying cannabis, being able to explain its lawful origin mattered directly: possession without that justification was itself punishable by imprisonment.

Supplying another person carried prison and a fine

Unlawful manufacture, trade or supply carried three to ten years in prison together with a fine. A person who knowingly provided premises for manufacture, trade, supply or use faced the same penalties.

The law increased punishment in circumstances including organised activity, involvement by officials responsible for drug control, and supply to minors or vulnerable people. It also punished medical prescribing without therapeutic need or in excessive quantities.

Fines were part of this system alongside prison. Judges were instructed to consider the scale of the activity, the offender’s means, profits and the harm caused when setting the amount.

Treatment could continue until a judge agreed to release

People who misused narcotics were to enter a public-health or social-assistance institution until considered cured. Release depended on judicial review informed by psychiatric experts.

A person could request that review, and a judge could also initiate it. The law set the endpoint through a medical assessment of recovery, leaving the duration of confinement dependent on that decision.

This made compulsory treatment part of Bolivia’s cannabis restrictions decades before the better-known drug law adopted in 1988.

Later legislation kept compulsory treatment

The 1988 drug law again required confinement for treatment, this time expressly covering dependent and occasional users found with a minimal amount for immediate personal consumption.

It also assigned possession above that amount to trafficking, with a ten-to-twenty-five-year prison sentence plus a fine. Those later rules became central to the distinction between personal possession and trafficking in Bolivia.^[1][2]