Hong Kong replaces its drug law and keeps cannabis prohibition

Hong Kong’s Dangerous Drugs Ordinance received assent on 7 November 1968. It replaced an existing ordinance and reorganised offences around a distinction the government wanted to emphasise: drug supply and personal consumption should attract different responses.

This was a revision of an established system. The legislature had already passed Indian-hemp controls in 1928.

What the government wanted to change

Introducing the replacement bill on 9 October, the Attorney General said much of it reproduced existing law. Some provisions previously contained in regulations would move into the ordinance itself.

The new provisions had a harder edge. The government wanted more severe penalties for trafficking, stronger prosecution evidence rules and more lenient treatment of possession for personal consumption. The speech also acknowledged that a person could be both a consumer and a distributor, complicating that distinction in practice.

Those were legislative objectives. They do not establish that courts or police consistently achieved the intended separation.

Two possession offences

Section 7 concerned possession for unlawful trafficking, whether the intended trafficking was by the possessor or another person. On indictment, its statutory maximum included life imprisonment and a HK$100,000 fine.

Section 8 addressed possession otherwise than for trafficking and consumption, subject to the ordinance’s authorisations or a licence. The original maximum was three years in prison and HK$10,000. These are the 1968 text’s limits, rather than today’s penalties or evidence of a typical sentence.

The First Schedule included cannabis, resin, extracts and tinctures within its controlled categories.

A separate rule for growing plants

Section 9 prohibited cultivating cannabis plants. It also covered dealing in, supplying, importing and exporting plants, with separate provisions for possession and transit.

On indictment, the maximum was fifteen years and HK$100,000. The statute thus distinguished plant offences from the separate offence concerning possession of a dangerous drug for personal consumption.

Its general definition of cannabis referred to flowering or fruiting tops, while section 9 expressly addressed plants. The 1978 definition amendment belongs to a later stage of this legal history.

Assent was a separate date

The original printed ordinance records the Acting Governor’s assent on 7 November. Section 1 left operation to a later date appointed by gazette notice. This entry therefore records adoption rather than claiming commencement on the same day.

For Hong Kong’s timeline, the ordinance is a documented revision of drug control whose offence structure matters alongside the dates at which it was adopted and brought into operation.^[1][2]