Iraq restricts cannabis possession and trade to authorised channels

Iraq’s 1938 drug law restricted possession of cannabis and its resin to authorised professionals and people obtaining it through lawful prescription or pharmacy channels.^[1] Manufacturers and traders also faced licences, import and export permits, and records that health officials could inspect.^[1]

Cannabis was named alongside other controlled drugs

The law expressly included Indian hemp, its resin and preparations made from them.^[1] It covered official pharmaceutical preparations as well as other forms, and referred to names used for resin in different markets.^[1]

Its definitions linked control to the Geneva Opium Convention and the later convention limiting drug manufacture and distribution.^[1] Further drugs brought within those conventions could also come under Iraqi control with government agreement.^[1]

That approach connected the local rules with a wider international system while spelling out that cannabis products were included.^[1]

Possession depended on professional authority or a prescription

Doctors, dentists, veterinarians, licensed pharmacists and drug dealers, and other specially authorised people could hold controlled drugs within their lawful work.^[1] Other people needed to have obtained the substance from a licensed pharmacist on an authorised doctor’s prescription, or through the named pharmacy laws.^[1]

For someone holding cannabis, lawful authority therefore depended on the professional or medical route through which it had been obtained.^[1] The controls reached possession as well as buying and selling.^[1]

Paperwork followed the drug across borders

Manufacturing required a licence from the public-health authorities.^[1] Imports and exports needed permission, and an exporter had to provide authorisation from the importing country’s government before an export permit could be granted.^[1]

The law also addressed consignments passing through Iraq.^[1] Authorised traders and pharmacists had to enter receipts and supplies in official registers within twenty-four hours and make annual returns.^[1]

Pharmacists had to retain prescriptions for controlled drugs for at least three years, allowing later inspection of how the medicines had been supplied.^[1]

A later law brought the controls together

The 1965 narcotics law replaced both this law and the earlier cultivation ban.^[2] It kept unauthorised possession and cultivation restricted while permitting supervised crops grown exclusively for fibre and seeds.^[2]

That consolidated law was itself replaced in 2017.^[3] The history in Iraq moved from professional licensing and records towards a system that combined those controls with more detailed criminal penalties and treatment procedures.^[1][3]