Debate
Bills and drafts, reports and commissions, campaigns and marches, referendums and failed votes.
399 entries, 1798–2026 · 0 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Debate entries per decade
13.2 today, from 99.1 in 1860
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202644 entries0 score changes
🇸🇽 Sint Maarten Debate ✓
Sint Maarten’s health minister seeks regional advice on cannabis reform
Health minister Claret Connor said he had sought help from the Pan American Health Organization to assess cannabis policy and comparable Caribbean experiences. He stressed mental health, treatment capacity and protection of vulnerable residents alongside possible economic benefits. He called for a comprehensive review of advantages and disadvantages before decisions on legislation.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Debate ✓
Nigeria’s president proposes replacing its two main drug laws
President Bola Tinubu sent the Senate a bill to replace the NDLEA Act and Indian Hemp Act with a consolidated drug-enforcement law. The Senate referred the proposal for legislative work; the existing laws continued to apply.
🇯🇪 Jersey Debate ✓
Jersey plans new oversight of medical cannabis prescribers
A written ministerial answer announced plans for legislation regulating doctors who prescribe medicinal cannabis, with commencement expected in early 2027. The Jersey Care Commission's remit would not be extended while it prepared for other new responsibilities. This was a statement of intended reform, not confirmation that new prescribing rules had taken effect.
🇮🇪 Ireland Debate ✓
Ireland expects its medical-cannabis access review to take about a year
In a written parliamentary answer, the Health Minister said the review was expected to take roughly twelve months from its first meeting on 27 May 2026. It will examine the Medical Cannabis Access Programme, possible additional conditions where evidence supports them, and individual ministerial licences. The answer reports a review timetable, not an adopted expansion of access.
🇨🇦 Canada · Manitoba Debate ✓
Manitoba proposes visibility and staffing changes for cannabis stores
Bill 56 would remove the provincial requirement that outsiders cannot see inside age-restricted cannabis stores and authorise regulations setting minimum staffing levels, including during specified hours. It does not remove the separate federal restriction on displaying cannabis products to people outside. The bill reached second reading on 6 October and committee hearings on 8 October; the reviewed legislature catalogue listed no enacted version. No operative staffing number or new consumer possession limit was established.
🇰🇾 Cayman Islands Debate ✓
Cayman expects cannabis reform proposals in November or December
Premier André Ebanks told Parliament that the final cannabis-reform report and supporting legislation were expected to reach the Attorney General for government consideration in November or December 2026. The July consultation had asked about possession limits, home growing, administrative penalties and clearing old minor convictions, following the 2025 referendum. Adults remained subject to the existing criminal law while the review and preparation of legislation continued.
🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article
A DEA judge pauses the broader cannabis-rescheduling case
The chief administrative law judge stayed the post-hearing proceedings while the federal government answers a request to add a new Government Accountability Office report to the record. The pause delays his non-binding recommendation on moving cannabis generally from Schedule I to Schedule III; the April order covering state-licensed medical cannabis and FDA-approved products remains in force.
🇨🇦 Canada Debate ✓
Canada proposes simpler cannabis tracking reports
Health Canada opened consultation on a proposed order that would remove capacity and book-value reporting, consolidate inventory categories, and repeal federal tracking-report obligations for provincially or territorially authorised distributors, retailers and public bodies. Provincial and territorial oversight would continue. Comments close on 10 November 2026; the proposal is not an operative reporting exemption.
🇺🇸 United States · Virginia Debate ✓
Virginia releases its initial retail cannabis regulation draft
The Cannabis Control Authority's implementation timeline records release of an initial regulation draft in September. It schedules final rules for December, their effectiveness for January 2027, and retail sales for 1 July 2027. The draft and timetable do not establish that adult-use shops were already operating.
🇲🇺 Mauritius Debate ✓
Mauritius receives a national cannabis-policy reform report
The National Agency for Drug Control presented its cannabis-policy reform report to the Prime Minister after consultation involving around 1,800 contributors, including patients and people affected by drug use. The official announcement confirms delivery of recommendations; it does not establish adoption, a new possession allowance or legal recreational sales.
🇹🇿 Tanzania Debate ✓ Article
Tanzania moves to make holding cannabis seeds a crime
The Attorney General presented a bill amending the Drugs Control and Enforcement Act. It would make it an offence to hold or distribute seeds of prohibited plants, cannabis among them, whatever they are meant for, and would extend the law to drugs in liquid form. The report gave no penalties and no vote.
🇦🇩 Andorra Debate ✓ Article
Andorra prepares a licence for growing medicinal cannabis
The government presented a reform of the Agriculture and Livestock Farming Act that it called the most important step towards allowing cannabis to be grown for medicinal purposes, creating the legal structure for a single cultivation licence.
🇸🇽 Sint Maarten Debate ✓
Sint Maarten’s prime minister warns against rushing cannabis sales
Prime minister Luc Mercelina told parliament that cannabis legislation should follow a settled policy choice and the capacity to supervise it, rather than a deadline within his government’s term. He distinguished legalisation from a commercial market and called for health services, youth safeguards, legal and treaty review, and coordination across the island’s French border. He left options ranging from continued prohibition to medical or broader regulated models open.
🇻🇮 US Virgin Islands Debate ✓ Article
US Virgin Islands say cannabis sales must wait for a testing laboratory
Cannabis regulator Joanne Moorehead told lawmakers that commercial sales needed a working product-testing laboratory, with stakeholders targeting October readiness. Her office had conditionally approved growers, manufacturers and dispensaries, and hoped at least two dispensaries could open before year-end. By September, she reported that the laboratory was operational and the first St. Croix commercial grow had a certificate to operate.
🇦🇺 Australia Debate ✓
A Victorian bill asks for a vote on legalising cannabis
David Ettershank of Legalise Cannabis Victoria moved the second reading of the Cannabis Legalisation Plebiscite Bill 2026 in the state's Legislative Council. It would require a non-binding plebiscite, held within two years, on legalising cannabis for personal use. Debate was adjourned for two weeks without a vote.
🇧🇲 Bermuda Debate ✓
Bermuda prioritises hemp and medical cannabis reform
National Security minister Ryan Robinson Perinchief said drafting instructions had been issued for hemp and medical cannabis reforms, with initial implementation targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026. The hemp changes were intended to clarify compliance for products already being sold, while the medical work aimed to improve patient access. He said a wider regulated adult-use regime would take longer because of Bermuda’s constitutional relationship with the UK and the need for further coordination.
🇪🇸 Spain Debate ✓ Article
Spain's cabinet backs a tobacco law that would hit cannabis clubs
The Council of Ministers approved a draft overhaul of the 2005 tobacco law that would remove the exemption for private smokers' clubs, one of the legal props the cannabis clubs rely on. It had not completed its passage by October.
🇨🇴 Colombia Debate ✓
A Colombian bill would put adult-use cannabis in the constitution
On 20 July members of the House filed Proyecto de Acto Legislativo 017/2026, a constitutional amendment to Article 49. It would let adults use cannabis and put production, processing, distribution and sale under public licences, health controls and local taxes. The Chamber lists it as still in committee. The Supreme Court's July digest of congressional gazettes records it as Gazette 863 of 2026. It is a proposal.
🇲🇪 Montenegro Debate ✓
Montenegro’s cabinet proposes early drug warnings and wider advertising bans
The cabinet approved proposed drug-law amendments creating an early-warning system for new psychoactive substances and closer information sharing with the EU drugs agency. The draft also widened the drug-advertising ban and added an individual advertising offence to the existing €100–€2,000 fine band. The Official Gazette later recorded a drug-law amendment taking effect on 7 August 2026.
🇰🇾 Cayman Islands Debate ✓
Cayman consults on 30 grams, four plants and clearing old convictions
Cayman’s Law Reform Commission opened consultation on replacing criminal penalties for personal cannabis possession and use, asking about limits of 30 grams of dried cannabis, 150 grams of wet cannabis and four plants per household. It also asked whether old minor convictions should be cleared, arguing that criminal records can limit people’s economic opportunities. The review followed the 2025 referendum and invited comments by 1 September 2026; in October the premier expected the final report and supporting legislation in November or December.
🇹🇳 Tunisia Debate ✓
Tunisia's parliament hears the interior ministry on amending Law 52
The general legislation committee of parliament heard representatives of the interior ministry on a members' bill to amend Law 52 of 18 May 1992 on narcotics. The ministry reported about 15,253 drug cases in 2025 involving about 27,338 people, nearly 89% of them aged 19 to 40. It said a commission drawn from all the ministries and bodies concerned would prepare a text for an overall revision of the law, and proposed updating the schedules of substances annexed to it.
🇮🇪 Ireland Debate ✓ Article
An Irish parliamentary committee recommends decriminalising possession
The Oireachtas committee on drugs use, chaired by Gary Gannon, published a final report with 161 recommendations. It called for repealing Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, so that possessing any drug for personal use would no longer be a crime. The government had committed to a health-led approach but had shown little sign of preparing such a law.
🇲🇺 Mauritius Debate ✓
Mauritius consults the public on cannabis reform
The National Agency for Drug Control held public consultations from 8 to 12 June 2026 and was to report at the end of July on the legal framework, medical use, industrial hemp and support for users. L'Express reported that the recommendations were expected to centre on changes to the Drug Users Administrative Panel, the diversion scheme created in 2022, not on wider legalisation. Critics said the law sets no quantity separating a user from a trafficker. The report was delivered in September.
🇨🇿 Czechia Debate ✓ Article
Czechia's new government announces a tougher drug policy
Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said after a cabinet meeting that he would not run a liberal drug policy and announced 18 measures across four laws. As reported by ČTK they include cutting the THC limit for hemp from 1% to 0.3%, banning CBD products, taking kratom off sale and making some conduct a crime again. The former drug coordinator Jindřich Vobořil called it a return to before 1989. None of it had been adopted.
🇬🇱 Greenland Debate ✓
Greenland's government puts customs and prevention first on hash
Greenland’s government backed stronger customs controls and prevention in its response to a parliamentary debate on reducing hash use. It pointed to funding for three to five additional customs officers in the 2025 budget and Allorfik’s expanding cannabis treatment and counselling since 2016. Its response linked action to children and families and the national public-health strategy.
🇮🇲 Isle of Man Debate ✓
Tynwald turns down a citizens' jury on a regulated cannabis market
Tynwald rejected Dr Alex Allinson's motion for a citizens' jury to consider timelines for a regulated recreational cannabis market. An amendment reaffirming the 2024 policy principles on drug harm passed instead, and the government said an action plan would be published that summer.
🇫🇲 Micronesia Debate ✓ Article
A bill in Micronesia's Congress would set minimum fines for trafficking
Congressional Bill 24-153 would amend the trafficking section of the national code to add a minimum fine of 5,000 dollars for Schedule I and II narcotics, alongside up to ten years in prison. It keeps the rule that giving away an ounce or less of marihuana for no payment is treated as simple possession.
🇨🇴 Colombia Debate ✓ Article
A Colombian House committee backs a legal cannabis market
The First Committee of the House of Representatives approved in first debate a bill to regulate adult use: sales to adults through dispensaries, clubs of 10 to 350 members, up to 20 plants per adult at home, a 20% tax, and most cultivation licences reserved for peasant and ethnic growers. It was the ninth such bill since 2020; the earlier ones were all shelved. It still needed the full House and the Senate.
🇦🇲 Armenia Debate ✓
An Armenian bill would double the fine for a small amount
Hayk Sargsyan, of the governing Civil Contract party, presented amendments in second reading to a parliamentary committee. The fine for making, acquiring or keeping a small quantity for personal use would rise from 200,000–400,000 drams to 400,000–800,000, and to as much as 1.6 million for a repeat within a year. Selling through Telegram would bring five to ten years where it now brings three to six, and selling to minors eight to fifteen.
🇨🇭 Switzerland Debate ✓ Article
Swiss committee continues work on the cannabis market bill
The National Council health committee voted 16–8, with one abstention, to continue work on its cannabis-market bill despite divided consultation responses. It asked a subcommittee to revise the draft's most disputed points during 2026 and rejected, by 17–8, a proposal to suspend the work pending full results from the pilot trials.
🇺🇾 Uruguay Debate ✓
Uruguay publishes its second evaluation of legal cannabis
The government's second evaluation of Law 19,172 found that classic trafficking of pressed cannabis, the main source in 2014, supplied only 6.7% of users in 2024. Pharmacies had 74,583 registered buyers at the end of 2024, but only 20 to 40% of them bought in any month, and the report said supply and distribution problems keep the legal market at about half its potential. It also said the law had reduced police and court action over minor cannabis conduct.
🇨🇱 Chile Debate ✓ Article
Chilean deputies ask the Constitutional Court to stop a tougher drug law
Thirty-seven opposition deputies challenged a reform of Law 20.000 that Congress had passed. It would let trafficking penalties apply to small amounts when a substance is judged capable of serious harm, weighing potential harm and not only quantity. The deputies argued it would treat users and medical growers as traffickers. The law had not yet been promulgated.
🇪🇨 Ecuador Debate ✓ Article
Ecuador's Assembly admits a citizens' cannabis bill
With 142 of 151 votes the National Assembly admitted a proposal from cannabis organisations to allow growing for personal use and sales in state-regulated shops. Its backers must now collect at least 35,000 signatures for the electoral council to verify; the Assembly then has three months to debate it.
🇧🇴 Bolivia Debate ✓ Article
Bolivia considers medical cannabis prescriptions and licensed supply
A bill from deputy Sandra Hinojosa Núñez would let registered patients obtain prescribed cannabis derivatives through authorised pharmacies, supplied by licensed growers and manufacturers. It also proposes closing prosecutions for proven medicinal cannabis-oil possession where there is no indication of illicit selling. Parliament received the proposal in April and still listed it among pending bills in October 2026; recreational use would remain prohibited.
🇵🇱 Poland Debate ✓ Article
A bill to stop punishing 15 grams and one plant is filed in Poland's Sejm
The bill came out of a cross-party parliamentary team on decriminalisation led by Ryszard Petru and Klaudia Jachira, and was filed by the Centrum club. It would add an exception to article 62 of the drug act so that possessing up to 15 grams of cannabis for personal use is not punished, and change article 63 so that growing one plant is not either; selling would stay a crime. It received print number 2672 on 11 June and was moved from the health committee to the justice committee on 1 July. By early September 2026 it had not had a first reading.
🇩🇴 Dominican Republic Debate ✓
A Dominican senator proposes ending prison for drug users
The Senate took up a bill by Senator Edward Espiritusanto of La Romana to amend Article 75 of Law 50-88. Under the law in force, simple possession carries six months to two years in prison and a fine of 1,500 to 2,500 pesos. The bill would remove prison for possession or consumption and have the authorities refer the person to evaluation, treatment, rehabilitation or harm-reduction programmes under health ministry protocols. Penalties for distributors (3 to 10 years), traffickers (5 to 20 years) and financiers (30 years) would stay as they are.
🇸🇽 Sint Maarten Debate ✓
Sint Maarten’s MPs hear a proposal for a regulated cannabis industry
Native Nations SXM presented its proposed cannabis framework to a parliamentary committee, including an independent oversight commission, licensing and product-safety controls. Its promoters argued that regulation would support local economic development and protect health and young people. Parliament later announced a continuation of the meeting after the March hearing was adjourned.
🇧🇼 Botswana Debate ✓
Botswana plans to ban driving under the influence of drugs
The assistant minister of transport, Keoagile Atamelang, announced proposed Road Traffic Act amendments at a consultative meeting in Kgomokasitwa, describing existing provisions as targeting drunk drivers while leaving drug impairment largely unaddressed. That is the announcement's characterisation, not an accurate statement that drug driving was lawful: published section 46(2) already prohibits driving while unfit through drugs, with penalties under section 46(4). No commencement date or enacted replacement was established by this report.
🇸🇧 Solomon Islands Debate ✓ Article
Solomon Islands MPs examine tougher general drug-offence penalties
A parliamentary committee examined the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Bill 2025, No. 9 of 2025. Its official call for submissions set a deadline and announced an inquiry start of 17 February 2026; contemporary reporting on 20 February described proposed life sentences and larger fines. The proposal is not counted as enacted law. Existing section 8 already expressly criminalises cannabis possession, growing and giving; reports of wider gaps in drug legislation should not be read as an absence of cannabis offences.
🇫🇮 Finland Debate ✓
Finland's parliament rejects a citizens' initiative to legalise cannabis
Parliament voted 145 to 18 against an initiative that would have legalised the use, possession, home growing, production and sale of cannabis with age limits. The Legal Affairs Committee had advised rejection, saying a legal market could raise consumption and harm across the population. Two members, from the Greens and the Left Alliance, dissented.
🇲🇽 Mexico Debate ✓
Mexico's Supreme Court falls one vote short of ending the 5 g limit
Five of nine justices voted to strike the 5 g limit from the health law with general effect, one fewer than the six needed. The man in the case, a homeless person held in Ciudad Juárez in 2021 with 14 g, won individual protection: the judge must weigh whether the cannabis was for his own use. The limit stays in force for everyone else.
🇯🇪 Jersey Debate ✓
Jersey puts off its cannabis reform debate until after the election
The States Assembly debate on three cannabis reform options from the health minister, set for 3 February 2026, was cancelled and deferred until at least after the June election. The options ranged from ending prosecution for small amounts to a state-run sales pilot; none would have changed the law immediately.
🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓
South Africa publishes draft limits for private cannabis
The justice department gazetted draft regulations under the 2024 Cannabis for Private Purposes Act and invited comments until 5 March 2026. They would cap an adult's possession at 750 grams, in private or in public, and private growing at five plants of any size or strain, and set rules for carrying cannabis in a vehicle out of sight and for expunging old convictions. Until they are made final the Act is not in force.
202524 entries0 score changes
🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓
An executive order tells the DEA to speed up rescheduling
President Trump signed Executive Order 14370 requiring the DEA to expedite the rescheduling of cannabis. On 22 April 2026 the acting attorney general ordered medical cannabis products moved to Schedule III.
🇼🇸 Samoa Debate ✓
Samoa's follow-up review of the Narcotics Act stalls
The Samoa Law Reform Commission reported that its follow-up review of the Narcotics Act 1967 had been delayed pending the appointment of a lawyer in the Ministry of Health, which administers the Act. The Commission had taken stock of the recommendations in its earlier final report, sent the ministry a copy and proposed consultations with its management, and was waiting for the ministry to confirm them.
🇨🇭 Switzerland Debate ✓
Most Swiss cantons reject the draft cannabis law in consultation
The consultation on the National Council health committee's draft Cannabis Products Act ran from 29 August to 1 December 2025 and drew 162 responses. Fifteen cantons rejected or leaned against the draft and ten approved or leaned towards it; of the parties in parliament four were for and four against. Addiction, business and civil-society organisations mostly welcomed it. The results report was published in April 2026.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Debate ✓
Vanuatu MPs back financial checks for licensed cannabis businesses
Vanuatu’s national broadcaster reported parliamentary support for changes aimed at overcoming the bank-account and international-transfer barriers facing licensed cannabis and hemp businesses. The published bill proposed financial-intelligence checks on applicants’ money and key people, a coordinator’s office and a system of penalty notices. Agriculture Minister Ian Wilson said licences issued in 2023 had been held up by banking problems; opposition MPs supported the changes while stressing security.
🇨🇾 Cyprus Debate ✓
Cyprus’s Volt party proposes a regulated cannabis market for adults
Volt Cyprus called for legal adult possession and a licensed cannabis market overseen by an independent regulator. Its proposal included controlled production, retail and clubs, taxation, and easier medical access through the national health system. The party argued that criminalisation burdened courts, harmed young people and strengthened the illicit market, and invited public discussion.
🇩🇪 Germany Debate ✓
Germany's cabinet moves to restrict medical cannabis prescriptions
The cabinet adopted an amendment that would require an in-person consultation for a new prescription and ban mail-order delivery of flower, aimed at telemedicine platforms. It passed first reading on 18 December 2025 and went to a Health Committee hearing on 14 January 2026.
🇧🇿 Belize Debate ✓
A Belizean island votes against a regulated cannabis industry
Voters on Caye Caulker were asked whether the government should legislate for a regulated cannabis industry, with part of the revenue kept for the island. A majority said no. Supporters had pointed to money for schools, health care and tourism jobs; the 'Hope Not Dope' campaign opposed it.
🇲🇳 Mongolia Debate ✓
A Mongolian MP drafts prison terms for drug users
MP O. Amgalanbaatar announced a draft of an updated Law on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances under which drug users would be charged under criminal law, not only the law on misdemeanours, with five years in prison for a first offence and eight for a repeat one. He sent it to the government for comment, planning to submit it to parliament afterwards.
🇸🇮 Slovenia Debate ✓
Two Slovenian coalition parties table a personal-use bill
The Freedom Movement and the Left submitted a bill to carry out the 2024 referendum: four plants per adult and six per household, 7 g in public and 150 g at home, unpaid sharing of small amounts, and no sales. The Social Democrats had not endorsed it and it has not been enacted.
🇰🇾 Cayman Islands Debate ✓
Cayman’s premier asks for cannabis limits and penalty options
Premier André Ebanks told Parliament that small-scale cannabis reform would be referred to the Law Reform Commission after voters backed decriminalisation. He asked for recommendations on possession limits, administrative penalties, enforcement, international obligations and the protection of vulnerable people. The commission’s later discussion paper dates Cabinet’s referral to the same day and opened those questions to public consultation in July 2026.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Debate ✓
Nigeria's president declines to sign the drug agency bill
President Tinubu refused assent to the NDLEA Amendment Bill, 2025. His letter, read in the House of Representatives, objected to letting the agency keep part of the proceeds of drug crime, which the law requires to be paid into a central forfeiture account.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓ Article
A London commission calls for decriminalising cannabis possession
The London Drugs Commission, set up by Mayor Sadiq Khan and chaired by Lord Falconer, made 42 recommendations. It proposed moving natural cannabis from the Misuse of Drugs Act to the Psychoactive Substances Act, so that holding a small amount for personal use would no longer be a crime while supply stayed illegal. It did not call for legalisation. The mayor backed it and urged the government to consider it.
🇷🇼 Rwanda Debate ✓
Rwanda reports unfinished infrastructure for its medical cannabis project
Rwanda’s development board reported that off-site infrastructure for the Musanze cannabis project was 83% complete, with double fencing still outstanding, according to reporting on 15 May 2025. The public infrastructure project had spent over one billion of its 2.2 billion francs allocated for 2024/2025. The licensed producer’s planned launch had already been delayed, as the country worked to develop cannabis-oil production aimed mainly at export.
🇷🇺 Russia Debate ✓
Russia's Supreme Court proposes softer penalties for personal possession
The plenum of Russia's Supreme Court put forward a bill to soften the punishment for keeping drugs for personal use and, in some cases, to replace prison with treatment for addiction. In 2024 about 50,800 people had been convicted under Article 228, roughly one in ten of all convictions.
🇰🇾 Cayman Islands Debate ✓
Cayman voters back decriminalising small amounts of cannabis
Cayman voters backed decriminalising the consumption and possession of small amounts of cannabis in the referendum held on 30 April 2025. Premier André Ebanks later told Parliament that 55.64% supported the proposal and promised a Law Reform Commission review of possession limits, penalties and safeguards. The commission opened public consultation in July 2026, with possession and consumption still criminal offences under the existing law.
🇧🇾 Belarus Debate ✓
Belarus’s lower house backs sentence cuts for first-time drug offenders
Belarus’s lower house approved an amnesty bill that would cut a year from eligible first-time drug sentences. The proposal accompanied the eightieth anniversary of victory in the Second World War and still needed to complete the legislative process. The final law took effect on 8 May, widening eligibility while retaining exclusions and individual conditions.
🇵🇾 Paraguay Debate ✓
Paraguay's Congress tries to merge seven cannabis bills
A public hearing examined a draft law on the comprehensive regulation of cannabis. Senator Líder Amarilla said seven bills with the same aim were before the two chambers and should become one; medical and industrial use were already regulated, he said, and what mattered now was recreational use and trade, as a source of development for the departments where cannabis is grown.
🇭🇺 Hungary Debate ✓
Hungary's top court lets a cannabis rally go ahead
Six days after parliament wrote a ban on the 'promotion' of drugs into the constitution, the police tried to prohibit a 20 April cannabis gathering in Budapest. The supreme court overturned the ban, reasoning that it predated the amendment. It may have been the last such demonstration to be permitted.
🇨🇬 Congo Debate ✓
Congo's senators back a new law against illicit drug trafficking
Senators approved a drug-control proposal intended to combat trafficking and strengthen public security. Its sponsor, Yves Fortuné Moundele-Ngollo Ehourossia, linked illicit drugs to organised crime, money laundering, corruption and violence. The debate came more than twenty years after Congo approved accession to the UN drug conventions; President Denis Sassou-N'Guesso signed the new drug law in August.
202423 entries0 score changes
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Debate ✓
A Kyrgyz MP proposes legalising marijuana, then industrial hemp
At a session of the Jogorku Kenesh, MP Dastan Bekeshev proposed revising drug policy and legalising light natural substances such as marijuana, arguing that banning and destroying natural drugs only drives up their price and pushes young people to cheaper and more harmful synthetic ones. In February 2026, as parliament prepared to review a draft law allowing medicinal herbs to be grown on arable land, he proposed also allowing industrial hemp under stricter state supervision. The agriculture ministry's list of medicinal crops did not include it.
🇫🇯 Fiji Debate ✓
Fiji says a medicinal cannabis bill will come in 2025
Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica told Parliament the government aimed to table a medicinal cannabis bill in 2025, after delays in the legislative review. Cabinet had approved the initiative in August 2023 and a taskforce of 12 departments has worked on it since. Seventeen consultations held from 9 October to 28 November 2024 drew more than 500 people, 75 per cent of whom supported legalising cannabis for medicinal purposes. The industry is planned as export-only.
🇸🇷 Suriname Debate ✓
Suriname's president says drugs should be treated mainly as a health issue
Opening a workshop of the National Anti-Drugs Council in Paramaribo on the revision of the five-yearly National Drugs Master Plan, President Chandrikapersad Santokhi said drug problems should be approached mainly as a health matter and less as a criminal one, with a focus on reducing use, helping addicts and curbing demand, and proposed coordinating the plan from the Presidency. The report of the workshop does not mention cannabis specifically.
🇨🇷 Costa Rica Debate ✓
Costa Rica's top court blocks a recreational cannabis bill
The Constitutional Chamber ruled that the government's bill to regulate recreational cannabis, file 23.383, was unconstitutional because it conflicts with the three UN drug conventions, which rank above domestic law. The electoral tribunal had asked after a citizen sought to put the bill to a referendum. The bill could go forward only if Costa Rica left the conventions.
🇦🇺 Australia Debate ✓
Australia's Senate votes down a bill to legalise cannabis
The Senate rejected the Greens' Legalising Cannabis Bill by 24 votes to 13, with Labor and the Coalition against. A Senate committee had recommended rejection on 31 May. The bill would have legalised the production, sale and use of cannabis by adults nationwide.
🇪🇷 Eritrea Debate ✓
Eritrea confirms its new penal code is still awaiting enforcement
Eritrea told the UN children’s-rights committee that its 2015 Penal Code was not yet enforced and identified the Transitional Penal Code as the working law. The published replacement contained separate personal-use drug offences and a fine alternative, but its entry-into-force rule required gazette publication. A UN Special Rapporteur’s 2025 report also said that the new codes had not been brought into force.
🇲🇿 Mozambique Debate ✓
Mozambique's president calls for studies on legalising cannabis
Opening a two-day meeting of the Eastern and Southern Africa Commission on Drugs in Maputo, President Filipe Nyusi called for deep reflection on policies to regulate cannabis, noting that other countries were already treating it as a legal plant. More than cooperation between countries, he said, deep studies were needed on how to legalise the plant. In the same speech he warned that drug trafficking fuels terrorism, citing the violence in Cabo Delgado. The European Union's representative said the EU was ready to share its members' experience with countries of the region.
🌐 International Debate ✓
An African drugs commission meets in Maputo on regulating cannabis
The Eastern and Southern Africa Commission on Drugs met in Maputo on 5 and 6 August to compare approaches to regulating cannabis. Its report set out the region's steps: Lesotho licensing medical growing in 2017, Zimbabwe in 2018, Zambia after a cabinet decision in 2019, Malawi in 2020, and South Africa's court ruling of 2018 and Act of 2024, which a South African delegate called not really ideal because it allows use without any legal way to buy. Tanzania and Mozambique still criminalise production, trade and use. Delegates warned that the cost of compliance shuts out small traditional growers and risks handing the market to large companies.
🇱🇻 Latvia Debate ✓
Latvia's president and prime minister back ending prosecution of minors for drug use
After the medical association asked for personal use to be decriminalised, the prime minister, Evika Siliņa, and the president, Edgars Rinkēvičs, supported a justice ministry proposal that young people should no longer be criminally liable for using drugs. Possession and supply would stay crimes. Ten minors were prosecuted for drug offences in 2024, against hundreds of administrative cases a year; the amendments were due before the Saeima in January 2026.
🇨🇿 Czechia Debate ✓
Czechia's drug coordinator is pushed out
The governing coalition's leaders agreed that Jindřich Vobořil would leave the post of national drug coordinator at the end of August. He had clashed with politicians over a regulated cannabis market and other measures; the Christian Democrats and the opposition leader Andrej Babiš had pressed for his departure. He stayed on as an adviser and said he had faced pressure and threats from large industries.
🇯🇪 Jersey Debate ✓
Jersey rejects cannabis decriminalisation by one vote
The States Assembly rejected decriminalising personal possession and recreational use by 23 votes to 22, with one abstention, but asked ministers by 26 votes to 19 to bring forward cannabis proposals by November 2025 and to fund the work.
🇸🇮 Slovenia Debate ✓
Slovenians vote for legal cannabis
In two advisory referendums, 66% backed growing cannabis for medical use and 51.6% backed growing and possessing it for personal use. The governing coalition later drafted a personal-use bill, which is still before parliament.
🇳🇵 Nepal Debate ✓
Nepal's budget promises a law for medical cannabis farming
Presenting the 2024/25 budget, Finance Minister Barsha Man Pun said legal provisions would be made for the commercial cultivation of marijuana for medical use. No law followed: in August 2026 his successor Swarnim Wagle told the National Assembly that further study was needed before changing the rules on production.
🇨🇼 Curaçao Debate ✓
Curaçao’s advisers seek clearer rules for future drug exemptions
Curaçao’s Advisory Council asked the government to explain why its replacement drug bill would let it exempt substances, activities or circumstances from existing prohibitions. The council wanted a reasoned explanation with examples, alongside clearer procedures for individual permissions. The final July law kept an exemption power covering cannabis but required the government to seek Parliament’s approval before making such a decree.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Debate ✓
Nigeria's Senate votes for the death penalty for drug trafficking
Passing a bill to amend the NDLEA Act, the Senate adopted a floor amendment replacing life imprisonment with death as the penalty for drug traffickers. A first voice vote seemed to go against it; the Deputy Senate President called a second and ruled it carried, over protests from some senators. The bill still needed agreement with the House of Representatives.
🇧🇪 Belgium Debate ✓
Belgium's parliament passes a report on cannabis policy
The federal parliament approved in plenary an information report evaluating drug policy, cannabis above all. It does not advocate decriminalising cannabis. It calls for a new legal framework that makes the law equal, accessible and predictable and harmonises prosecution policy, and recommends that people who use or hold cannabis for their own use without disturbing the peace could avoid criminal or administrative punishment by choosing free psycho-medico-social support. PS, MR, Ecolo, Groen, Open Vld and Vooruit supported it; CD&V, a party of the federal majority, opposed it, Les Engagés abstained, and N-VA and Vlaams Belang gave no opinion.
🇸🇱 Sierra Leone Debate ✓ Article
Sierra Leone declares a national emergency over drug abuse
President Julius Maada Bio declared a national emergency on drug and substance abuse, focusing on the synthetic drug sold as kush. He promised treatment centres in every district and a task force combining prevention, recovery support, community work and stronger enforcement against suppliers. Preliminary testing published in June detected synthetic cannabinoids and nitazenes, a group of synthetic opioids, in kush samples from Freetown; it challenged earlier rumours about the drug's ingredients.
🇮🇪 Ireland Debate ✓
Ireland's Citizens' Assembly calls for a health-led approach
An assembly of 99 citizens recommended that possession of drugs for personal use be dealt with by health services, not the courts. On cannabis, it fell one vote short of recommending legalisation.
🇨🇿 Czechia Debate ✓
Czechia's cannabis bill drops the commercial market
The government presented a draft cannabis law covering home growing, cannabis clubs, licensed sales and exports, and taxation, with registration of users, small growers and clubs. It left out the open regulated market that had been planned. Pro-legalisation groups criticised the omission, and the drug coordinator Jindřich Vobořil said he was not giving up.
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🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina Debate ✓
Bosnian officials back medical cannabis at a Sarajevo conference
The head of the medicines agency, the Federation's health minister and the MP Saša Magazinović all supported legalising cannabis for medical use, saying seriously ill people were buying cannabis oil of unknown quality on the black market. The decision followed two years later.
🇶🇦 Qatar Debate ✓
Qatar's cabinet approves changes to the 1987 narcotics law
The cabinet approved a draft amending Law 9 of 1987 on drugs and dangerous psychotropic substances. The report read does not say what the amendments change.
🇧🇹 Bhutan Debate ✓
Local leaders in eastern Bhutan ask Parliament to allow medicinal marijuana sales
The district council of Samdrup Jongkhar decided to ask the National Assembly to amend the law so that marijuana could be sold for medicinal purposes. Leaders of Lauri and Serthig gewogs, where the plant grows wild and villages are far from markets, said it could bring income; about 25 villagers from the two gewogs had been arrested for trafficking over the previous five years.
🇷🇴 Romania Debate ✓ Article
Romania’s Senate rejects replacing cannabis charges with a three-gram fine
The Senate rejected a bill that would have replaced criminal penalties for possessing up to three grams of cannabis for personal use with an administrative fine of 1,000–3,000 lei. Its electronic roll call records 103 votes for the rejection report, one against and four abstentions. The proposal then went to the Chamber of Deputies, where a joint committee rejection report followed in December.
🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓
US health officials recommend Schedule III
The Department of Health and Human Services recommended that the DEA move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III. The DEA confirmed that intention in April 2024.
🇦🇺 Australia Debate ✓
A bill to legalise cannabis is introduced in the Australian Senate
Senator David Shoebridge introduced the Legalising Cannabis Bill to legalise recreational cannabis nationally. It did not pass.
🇱🇺 Luxembourg Debate ✓
Luxembourg sketches a state-controlled cannabis supply
The government presented plans for two domestic production licences and a supply chain ending in fourteen dispensaries, and said the draft would not be finished before the October elections. Only the home-growing part became law that summer.
🇩🇪 Germany Debate ✓
Germany drops its plan for licensed cannabis shops
The coalition had promised a nationwide regulated market. After talks with the European Commission, ministers announced a narrower plan: home growing and non-profit associations first, with shops only as regional trials later.
🇨🇼 Curaçao Debate ✓
Curaçao opposition presses for the stalled medical cannabis bill
MAN and KEM lawmakers called for approval of Curaçao’s medical-cannabis export bill, according to reporting published on 7 April. KEM’s Michelangelo Martines and MAN’s Giselle McWilliam wanted answers after the proposal had been discussed twice and then stalled following a change of government. The campaign renewed the argument for a cannabis industry first advanced by former minister Suzanne Camelia-Römer in 2018.
🇸🇨 Seychelles Debate ✓
Seychelles campaigners call prison sentences for cannabis excessive
After two men were given custodial sentences for cannabis offences, the Seychelles Kanabis Association said the sentences were excessive and out of line with reality. Its chairman, Nelson Esparon, said the 2020 medical cannabis rules were not fit for purpose, so that people seeking cannabis for treatment had to turn to illicit sources and risk prison, and urged the government and parliament to review the law.
🇻🇬 British Virgin Islands Debate ✓
BVI’s premier proposes a route for doctors to administer cannabis
Premier Natalio Wheatley said talks with the UK had identified a route towards licensing local doctors to administer medical cannabis. He proposed considering regulations under existing legislation while reconsidering the unassented 2020 licensing bill. Work on the approval arrangements was still to be completed.
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🏳️ Abkhazia Debate ✓
Abkhaz deputies propose cutting arrest for cannabis use to three days
Abkhaz deputies passed a first-reading proposal to cut cannabis-use arrest from fifteen days to three, arguing that marijuana should receive a lighter penalty than other drugs. The draft proposed thirty days for repetition within a year. The law dated April 2023 ultimately set three days for cannabis or hashish use and ten for repetition.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Debate ✓
Lithuania's parliament votes for fines but keeps the crime
The Seimas approved by 63 votes to 60 an amendment making possession of a small amount of cannabis an administrative offence, with a warning or a fine of 50 to 300 euros. In the same sitting it failed to remove the offence from the Criminal Code and sent that draft back to committee, so possession stayed a crime.
🇮🇪 Ireland Debate ✓
An Irish deputy proposes legalising seven grams
Gino Kenny introduced a bill to legalise personal use and possession of up to seven grams of cannabis. In December the parliamentary Joint Committee on Justice recommended decriminalising drugs for personal use, and in February 2023 the government agreed to call a Citizens' Assembly on drug use.
🇭🇷 Croatia Debate ✓
Croatia's parliament debates nine plants for every adult
The Social Democrats' bill 'on using the full potential of hemp', submitted in March, would have legalised growing and use and let every adult grow up to nine plants. Thirty signatures were needed to force a debate, and they included deputies from the governing coalition's partners and from the right. The government rejected the bill in its opinion, saying the nine plants would encourage drug use.
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Debate ✓ Article
Timor-Leste’s president urges a different approach to cannabis
President José Ramos-Horta urged Timor-Leste to distinguish cannabis from methamphetamine and heroin, and to reconsider the costs of punitive prohibition. Speaking to Parliament after cannabis investigations in Dili, he criticised procedural failures that could undermine the presumption of innocence and argued for considering medical and economic uses. His intervention followed the justice minister’s call for tougher penalties; in November he again advocated medical cannabis in his independence-anniversary address.
🇸🇽 Sint Maarten Debate ✓ Article
Sint Maarten seeks studies before deciding how to legalise cannabis
Health minister Omar Ottley invited local and international organisations to propose studies and a route towards a regulated cannabis industry. The government wanted to assess the economic, social and medical effects before deciding how legalisation should work, with proposals due on 5 December. A formal inter-ministerial committee followed in February 2024.
🇧🇲 Bermuda Debate ✓ Article
Bermuda’s governor blocks cannabis licensing on UK instructions
Governor Rena Lalgie announced that the UK had instructed her not to assent to Bermuda’s cannabis licensing bill as drafted. The UK concluded that its adult-use provisions conflicted with obligations under the 1961 and 1971 UN drug conventions. After Bermuda’s government shifted from a medical-only proposal towards a broader licensed market, the House passed the bill in March 2022, but the governor reserved assent for a UK decision.
🇱🇷 Liberia Debate ✓
Liberia’s senators clash over denying bail in drug cases
A Senate committee objected to a proposed ban on bail for drug trafficking and recommended an immediately payable bond worth twice the value of the seized drugs. Another senator argued that wealthy dealers could pay and escape prosecution. The West Africa Drug Policy Network, which worked on the amendment with Representative Thomas Goshua and the drug agency, urged a compromise protecting people who use drugs; the final law was signed in July 2023.
🇧🇿 Belize Debate ✓
Belize puts its cannabis legalisation law on hold
The National Assembly had passed the Cannabis and Industrial Hemp Control and Licensing Bill, which awaited the Governor General's signature, when the Council of Churches gathered the 20,000 signatures needed to force a referendum. Prime Minister John Briceño deferred the vote until further notice, citing its cost of 5 million dollars and banks' fears for their links with US banks. The bill was to be amended so that it could become law only after a referendum.
🇦🇹 Austria Debate ✓
Austria's Constitutional Court refuses to hear a challenge to the cannabis ban
A man caught late in 2020 by two plain-clothes officers with a half-smoked joint asked the court to strike down the prohibition, arguing that cannabis carries less risk of dependence than nicotine or alcohol. The court had opened proceedings in February and asked the government to justify the ban. It then declined unanimously: cannabis, unlike alcohol and tobacco, is covered by international treaties, and how to regulate drugs is for parliament. The decision was made public on 18 July.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Debate ✓
Lithuania's Seimas agrees to consider decriminalising cannabis
A narrower bill, covering only cannabis and its oil, resin and extracts, was sent to committee by 70 votes to 46 with 10 abstentions. A small amount, to be defined by the health minister, would bring a warning or a fine of 30 to 250 euros, and no penalty for someone who hands the drug over voluntarily.
🇲🇪 Montenegro Debate ✓ Article
Montenegro’s cannabis petition draws parties and patients into reform debate
A petition by Legalizuj.me had gathered more than 6,500 signatures, Pobjeda reported, as parties discussed medical access and wider cannabis reform. Campaigner Edin Šarkinović, who has quadriplegia, described using cannabis following medical advice in the United States and serving six months with an ankle monitor after cannabis was found at home. The Liberal Party agreed to bring the campaign’s proposals to parliament through Andrija Popović, who had proposed medical cannabis in 2014.
🇭🇳 Honduras Debate ✓
Honduras's vice-president proposes growing cannabis for export
Salvador Nasralla proposed legalising cannabis cultivation, entirely for export, to create jobs; he said it would not legalise medical or other use at home. No bill was filed. Two deputies backed a debate, and a former deputy noted that a bill for terminally ill patients filed in October 2020 had not advanced.
🇦🇱 Albania Debate ✓
Albania's prime minister announces medical cannabis
Edi Rama announced plans to legalise medical cannabis after a national consultation in which 61% favoured it. Parliament voted the law through by 69 to 23 on 21 July 2023.
🇨🇿 Czechia Debate ✓
Czechia's drug coordinator plans a licensed cannabis market
The national drug coordinator Jindřich Vobořil said he was preparing a law to regulate the sale and growing of cannabis: licensed growers, possibly licensed shops, caps on purchases and perhaps registration of buyers. In April 2023 the government approved an addiction plan that included a regulated market. In May Vobořil said he wanted shops for adults, clubs and licensed growing by 2024, and admitted that another EU member state might challenge the plan at the European Court of Justice.
🇦🇹 Austria Debate ✓
Germany's plans reopen the debate in Austria
Germany's announcement that it would legalise cannabis set off a discussion in Austria, where almost half the public said it was open to legal cannabis.
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🇭🇰 Hong Kong Debate ✓
Hong Kong warns CBD sellers against even trace THC
The government told CBD sellers that products must contain no THC, which was controlled regardless of concentration. CBD itself was still outside dangerous-drug controls, but importers and traders were responsible for the ingredients they supplied. The warning preceded the decision to bring CBD itself under those controls in February 2023.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Debate ✓
A Lithuanian bill to decriminalise small amounts falls for lack of a majority
The Freedom Party, a partner in the governing coalition, proposed replacing criminal liability for acquiring and possessing small amounts of drugs with a warning or a fine of 50 to 350 euros and a prevention course, largely restoring the law as it stood before 2017. Sixty-one deputies voted for, 58 against and 7 abstained, which was not enough.
🇮🇳 India Debate ✓
Indian ministries discuss ending prison for personal use
A meeting of government stakeholders reached a consensus to remove imprisonment and fines for personal consumption by amending Section 27 of the narcotics law, after the social justice ministry recommended decriminalisation. The law has not been changed.
🇳🇦 Namibia Debate ✓
Namibian cannabis users challenge the ban in the High Court
Brian Jaftha, president of Ganja Users of Namibia and of the Rastafari United Front, and the group's secretary general Borro Ndungula asked the Windhoek High Court to declare the prohibition on adult possession and use of cannabis unconstitutional. They argued that the ban rests on outdated views and was partly motivated by a racist political agenda against the Rastafari religion. The government answered that the justice minister had approved a review of the cannabis laws by the Law Reform and Development Commission, so the claim was premature.
🇵🇭 Philippines Debate ✓
UN rescheduling leaves Philippine cannabis law unchanged
The Dangerous Drugs Board and PDEA said the UN's recognition of cannabis's potential medical value had no immediate domestic effect. Cannabis remained a dangerous drug under Republic Act 9165, and cultivation, possession, use and supply remained punishable.
🇵🇹 Portugal Debate ✓
Portuguese parties table bills to legalise cannabis for adults
Twenty years after decriminalisation, bills for a regulated adult market were put before parliament. The Left Bloc, Liberal Initiative and LIVRE support legalisation. Shops had spread in the meantime, but they may sell only products without THC.
🇧🇹 Bhutan Debate ✓
Bhutan's government says it is exploring medicinal cannabis
Answering a question in the National Assembly, Foreign Minister Tandi Dorji said the government was exploring ways to legalise marijuana for medicinal use but needed more time before tabling an amendment to the narcotics act, because it depended on outside experts. One member asked for the whole act to be amended, saying many men in some villages were in prison. Under the 2018 amendment, possessing up to seven grams of cannabis is illegal possession and anything above it is illicit trafficking; cultivation is allowed only for medical and scientific research.
🇪🇸 Spain Debate ✓
Spain's Socialists vote down a legalisation motion
Más País proposed legalising recreational use; Unidas Podemos supported the motion and the governing Socialist Party voted against it. That July the Supreme Court was reported to have closed the gap in the law that Barcelona's clubs relied on.
🇳🇴 Norway Debate ✓
Norway's parliament rejects decriminalisation
The government proposed replacing fines for possession with mandatory counselling, as recommended by an expert committee. The bill failed to win a majority in parliament.
🇬🇩 Grenada Debate ✓
Grenada's first decriminalisation bill is tabled and lapses
Agriculture minister Peter David laid a bill before the House that would have let anyone over 18 hold 28 g and each homeowner grow five plants, and allowed Rastafarian use in places of worship. It died when Parliament was dissolved before the June 2022 election.
🇫🇮 Finland Debate ✓
Finland's Greens adopt legalisation
The Green League became the first party in parliament to put legalising cannabis in its programme. Parliament had made personal use a crime in 1971 by 92 votes to 80.
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🇺🇦 Ukraine Debate ✓
Ukrainians back medical cannabis in a presidential poll
In a non-binding national survey announced by President Zelenskyy, 64.88% of participants were in favour of legalising cannabis for medical use and 29.53% against. In April 2021 the cannabinoid medicines dronabinol and nabiximols were approved.
🇳🇿 New Zealand Debate ✓ Article
New Zealand votes against legalisation
A referendum on a detailed bill for a regulated market was lost by 50.7% to 48.4%, the closest any country has come to legalising by popular vote.
🇸🇲 San Marino Debate ✓
San Marino's health committee takes up three cannabis petitions
The Council's permanent health committee heard the health secretary report on three citizens' petitions approved by the Council: one of 2015 on therapeutic use and two of 2019 asking for recreational cannabis to be regulated. He said they raised the same urgency by different approaches.
🇬🇬 Guernsey Debate ✓
Guernsey asks for non-punitive options for small drug possession
The States voted 24 to 14 to have options drawn up for alternative, non-punitive approaches to possessing and using small quantities of illegal drugs, not limited to cannabis.
🇻🇬 British Virgin Islands Debate ✓ Article
BVI lawmakers approve a bill to clear some old cannabis convictions
The BVI House of Assembly passed a companion bill offering removal of some historic cannabis convictions involving up to 50 g of cannabis or 10 g of resin. Health minister Carvin Malone had argued that old records could block police certificates and employment as medical reform moved forward. The bill required assent, and a July 2026 official legal review still reported it awaiting that step.
🇻🇬 British Virgin Islands Debate ✓ Article
BVI lawmakers approve a medical cannabis licensing bill
The BVI House of Assembly passed a bill to create a cannabis licensing authority and a regulated cultivation, processing and distribution system. The published proposal included dispensaries and different routes for medical documents and declarations of therapeutic use. Assent then depended on further BVI–UK work over licensing responsibilities and international obligations.
🇮🇱 Israel Debate ✓
Israeli bills to decriminalise up to 50 grams advance
Legislation to decriminalise possession of up to 50 grams began its passage through the Knesset.
🇸🇲 San Marino Debate ✓
San Marino shelves a plan to regulate recreational cannabis
In 2019 the Grand and General Council approved a citizens' proposal that would have allowed 30 grams and four plants. In March 2020 it backed away, saying it would wait to follow Italy.
🇳🇵 Nepal Debate ✓
A former law minister registers a bill to legalise cannabis farming in Nepal
Sher Bahadur Tamang's private bill would have licensed farmers to grow cannabis, let them export it, and allowed sale to patients on a doctor's prescription and to drug makers. The draft also let a household grow six plants without a licence. It was never put to a vote.
🇧🇲 Bermuda Debate ✓
Bermuda expands its cannabis plan beyond medical use
Bermuda’s government announced a broader licensing proposal covering adult use, personal and commercial cultivation, and retail sales. Attorney-General Kathy Lynn Simmons said feedback on the earlier medical-only proposal had questioned its complexity and asked for wider reform. The resulting licensing bill reached the governor in 2022, when the UK instructed her not to assent to it as drafted.
🇨🇻 Cabo Verde Debate ✓
Cabo Verde's president vetoes authorisation to rewrite the 1993 drug law
Parliament had authorised the government to draft a new drug law that included suspended sentences with compulsory treatment. President Jorge Carlos Fonseca vetoed it after the Constitutional Court found the delegation too broad and indeterminate.
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🇧🇲 Bermuda Debate ✓
Bermuda proposes locally grown cannabis for medical inhalation
Attorney-General Kathy Lynn Simmons opened consultation on a scheme for prescribed cannabis to be smoked or vaped, with a new authority licensing local cultivation and manufacturing. The proposal followed the 2014 pharmaceutical law and 2019 hemp exemption. After public feedback questioned the narrow scope and regulatory cost, the government shifted towards a wider adult-use licensing plan in 2020.
🇲🇹 Malta Debate ✓
A woman's jail term for one seedling prompts a change to Malta's drug law
Marie Claire Camilleri was sentenced to six months in prison for growing a single cannabis sapling, without buds, on her roof; the magistrate himself said the law failed to distinguish who truly deserved prison. Days later the justice minister, Owen Bonnici, presented amendments giving courts discretion not to jail people who showed that their cultivation was strictly for personal use. Cultivation stayed illegal.
🇨🇼 Curaçao Debate ✓ Article
Curaçao’s advisers question financing of a medical cannabis industry
Curaçao’s Advisory Council asked the government to strengthen its medical-cannabis production bill before sending it to Parliament. It found insufficient support for the economic case and asked how the proposed cannabis bureau would finance harvest purchases and recover its money from buyers. By September, local reporting said a bill for that bureau had reached Parliament.
🇫🇷 France Debate ✓
French deputies from four groups propose a state cannabis monopoly
A bill to create a state monopoly on the production and sale of cannabis was tabled by deputies from four political groups, including the governing party. In January 2017, 150 public figures in Marseille, among them lawyers, judges and doctors, had called for controlled legalisation, saying that most of the city's gangland killings were tied to the cannabis trade. A poll in 2021 found 51 per cent of the French in favour of decriminalisation.
🇹🇼 Taiwan Debate ✓
Taiwan holds its first cannabis rally
Two to three hundred people gathered outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei at a demonstration organised by a group called Green Sensation, asking that cannabis be regulated as a medicine. A justice ministry spokesman said the campaign was unlikely to change anything, and a governing-party lawmaker said no legislator was keen to sponsor a bill. The rally became an annual event.
🇱🇻 Latvia Debate ✓
Latvia's interior ministry says decriminalising drug use may go to parliament
A senior official, Jānis Bekmanis, said a proposal to decriminalise drug use might soon reach the Saeima, and that the justice ministry was examining whether criminal liability for use deters anyone. The ministry's own position he called extremely cautious. That summer the government moved drug policy from the interior ministry to the health ministry.
🇫🇴 Faroe Islands Debate ✓
Faroese MPs reopen the debate over access to medical cannabis
MP Jenis á Rana resubmitted a proposal to let Faroese patients join Denmark’s medical-cannabis trial after parliament rejected it in 2018. Many MPs now supported wider access but argued that the health minister could add products to the medicines list without a new law. Minister Sirið Stenberg offered to discuss that route with the social affairs committee; official medical guidance dates the trial scheme’s start to April 2019.
🇺🇦 Ukraine Debate ✓
A petition for medical cannabis reaches Ukraine's parliament
The Ukrainian Association of Medical Cannabis, backed by sixteen organisations, said more than two million Ukrainians could benefit. The petition passed the required 25,000 signatures in March, and on 18 April Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview that he supported medical legalisation.
🇵🇾 Paraguay Debate ✓
A Paraguayan senator proposes legalising cannabis outright
Senator Paraguayo Cubas presented a bill to legalise growing, selling and using cannabis for medical and recreational purposes. It was sent to committees. In September the Senate passed a narrower bill, by Víctor Ríos and Patrick Kemper, on cannabis for medical use.
🇹🇿 Tanzania Debate ✓
A Tanzanian MP calls for medical cannabis
Kahama Urban MP Jumanne Kishimba advocated in parliament for the legalisation of cannabis for medicinal use.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Debate ✓
An Ondo State governor proposes growing cannabis for medicine
Governor Rotimi Akeredolu proposed legalising cannabis cultivation in Ondo State for medical use, and repeated the call in 2020.
🇬🇱 Greenland Debate ✓
Greenland’s parliament calls for access to low-THC cannabis oils
Greenland’s parliament instructed the government to take steps allowing cannabis products and oils containing no more than 0.2% THC. The decisions sought access comparable with Denmark’s 2018 change, which did not automatically apply in Greenland. A local law and an authorised-import exception followed in January 2023.
🇬🇲 Gambia Debate ✓
Gambia’s drug agency calls for treatment and alternatives to prison
The drug agency’s five-year plan called for rehabilitation facilities, counselling, skills training and alternatives such as community service for young and first-time offenders. It described a system dominated by punishment, with burdensome fines and limited help during and after imprisonment. The plan proposed a review of drug laws after the 2014 first-offender reform.
🇫🇮 Finland Debate ✓
A Finnish citizens' initiative calls for decriminalisation
A petition to stop punishing cannabis use gathered more than the 50,000 signatures needed to put it before parliament, which did not act on it.
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🇫🇷 France Debate ✓
French deputies vote for a fixed fine
The National Assembly approved replacing prosecution for cannabis use with an on-the-spot fine of €200. It came into use nationwide in September 2020.
🇱🇺 Luxembourg Debate ✓
Luxembourg's government says it will legalise cannabis
The government announced that recreational cannabis would be legalised, without a timetable. The project was delayed by the pandemic in 2020 and reduced in 2021 to growing at home.
🇯🇪 Jersey Debate ✓
Jersey backs medical cannabis prescribing beyond hospital consultants
The States Assembly backed the principle that medical professionals who already had prescribing rights should be able to prescribe medicinal cannabis. The subsequent ministerial decision records that this departed from advisory recommendations to limit the new route to hospital consultants. The vote was a policy decision; the implementing Order followed in December and commenced in January 2019.
🇲🇾 Malaysia Debate ✓
A death sentence prompts Malaysia to discuss medical cannabis
Public outcry over the death sentence given to a 29-year-old led the cabinet to discuss its medicinal value. Plans for medical legalisation lapsed after a change of government.
🇰🇪 Kenya Debate ✓ Article
A Kenyan MP proposes legalising cannabis
Ken Okoth, the member for Kibra, drafted a Marijuana Control Bill to license growers and users and promote medical use. He died of cancer in July 2019 and the bill went no further.
🇫🇴 Faroe Islands Debate ✓ Article
A new Faroese party campaigns for the right to grow and use cannabis
Hallur Hjalgrímsson Djurhuus announced a party campaigning for people to grow and use cannabis, with medical access a particular priority. It sought the 800 signatures needed to contest an election while remaining neutral on other issues. The founders submitted those signatures in February 2019 as the separate medical-cannabis debate returned to parliament.
🇱🇧 Lebanon Debate ✓
Lebanon's parliament speaker says a medical cannabis law is coming
Nabih Berri told the American ambassador that parliament was preparing legislation to allow cannabis to be grown and processed for medicine, after a study by a consulting firm on reviving the economy. That October growers in the Bekaa said they opposed legalisation, fearing the income would pass to politicians. The law followed in April 2020.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria Debate ✓
Sofia's marchers ask for an end to prison for small amounts
The yearly procession, now called Freedom for Weed and organised by the Bulgarian Liberation Society, set out from Sveta Nedelya Square with two demands: stop imprisoning people for small amounts of cannabis for their own use, and decriminalise growing small quantities at home. The organisers said almost 20% of Bulgarians had tried cannabis.
🇧🇾 Belarus Debate ✓ Article
Belarus’s drug prisoners’ mothers go on hunger strike for shorter sentences
Twenty-four women joined hunger strikes seeking shorter drug sentences, case reviews and a meeting with President Lukashenko. Most ended their protest on 11 May after the government forwarded proposed amendments to parliament. The campaign continued, and lower minimum sentences took effect in October 2019.
🇲🇲 Myanmar Debate ✓
Myanmar's new drug policy calls for voluntary treatment
Myanmar's first national drug-control policy proposed replacing compulsory treatment with voluntary services, expanding harm reduction and treating drug users as patients. Developed by the drug-control committee with UNODC support and civil-society consultation, it also recommended considering repeal of drug-related death sentences. The policy followed a legal amendment that still allowed compulsory treatment and kept prison penalties for unauthorised possession.
🇸🇰 Slovakia Debate ✓
A Slovak justice minister proposes fines for a first offence
Lucia Žitňanská proposed that a first possession of a small amount be a misdemeanour and only a repeat within twelve months a crime, with a limit of one gram for cannabis. Her proposal failed, and so did a more cautious one by her successor; a coalition party objected that demand for drugs would rise. At the time even one joint could bring a prison sentence.
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Debate ✓
Kyrgyzstan’s harm-reduction workers warn against unaffordable drug fines
Harm-reduction workers warned that the fines planned for the 2019 justice reform could push people who use drugs further into debt and prison. Ranar Foundation lawyer Denis Kucheryaviy described a man who had served three years after a case involving 3.5 grams of hashish and was struggling with an unpaid fine and missing identity documents. Harm Reduction Network head Sergey Bessonov called for alternative penalties and effective treatment.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Debate ✓
Vanuatu’s cabinet backs plans for a cannabis export industry
Vanuatu’s cabinet backed a policy direction proposing medical-cannabis and hemp production for overseas markets, with legislation still to follow. Agriculture Director Antoine Ravo saw agricultural potential, while farmer-network representative Lavinia Kaumaitotoya warned about diversion into illicit use. The proposal was to be reviewed by Agriculture Minister Hosea Nevu before parliamentary debate; the eventual licensing law began in January 2022.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Debate ✓
Lithuania's parliament twice refuses to undo the criminalisation of 2017
Within a year of making possession of any amount a crime, the Seimas twice rejected amendments that would have returned small quantities of drugs to the administrative code.
🇱🇮 Liechtenstein Debate ✓
A Liechtenstein party campaigns to relax the cannabis law
The Free List toured the country arguing for reform and pointing to the money saved by not enforcing the ban. The social affairs minister, Mauro Pedrazzini, said he wanted to see what neighbouring countries did first and warned against becoming a stoner stronghold in the Rhine valley.
🇧🇷 Brazil Debate ✓
Brazil's science society votes to legalise and regulate all drugs
At its annual meeting the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science unanimously approved a motion proposing that all drugs be legalised and regulated according to their specific benefits and harms, to protect groups at risk and respect users.
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🇹🇿 Tanzania Debate ✓
Tanzania proposes thirty years for trafficking up to fifty kilos of cannabis
The government proposed a thirty-year trafficking tier for fifty kilograms or less of cannabis or khat, alongside life imprisonment above that amount. The bill also proposed adding possession to the existing trafficking definition and a medically assessed treatment route for certain people convicted of drug use. Parliament enacted the amendment later that year, with publication on 1 December.
🇬🇹 Guatemala Debate ✓ Article
Guatemala’s health committee rejects a medical cannabis bill
Fourteen of the eighteen members of Congress’s Health Committee signed an adverse opinion on a bill for medicinal, therapeutic and scientific cannabis production and supply, Prensa Libre reported in October. Committee member Marvin Orellana argued that medicine-testing laboratories needed modernising before such a system could be considered. The setback followed the committee opposition to a broader adult and medical cannabis bill in 2016.
🇲🇳 Mongolia Debate ✓ Article
Mongolia approves a national drug-control programme
The cabinet approves a programme combining control of illicit drug circulation, prevention, personnel training, and voluntary and compulsory treatment. The announcement reports 388 cases and 1,112 people investigated over ten years across controlled substances; these are not cannabis-specific counts or evidence of programme outcomes.
🇮🇱 Israel Debate ✓
Israel's cabinet approves decriminalisation
The cabinet backed replacing criminal charges for personal use with fines. The Knesset passed the law on 19 July 2018 and it took effect in April 2019.
🇧🇲 Bermuda Debate ✓
Bermuda’s prosecutors propose cautions for small cannabis amounts
The Director of Public Prosecutions published draft guidance to divert people caught with under three grams of cannabis away from court. It proposed first and second cautions, then assessment, counselling and a drug test before a third caution, with commencement tied to criminal-procedure legislation. Bermuda later removed criminal liability for simple possession of up to seven grams in December.
🇰🇪 Kenya Debate ✓ Article
Kenya's Senate hears a cannabis legalisation petition
The Senate presented Gwada Ogot's petition seeking cannabis decriminalisation, a regulator and amnesty for prisoners. A further presentation is recorded on November 29. This date follows the examined February Hansard; Carrier places the broader initiative in 2015. Presentation and committee referral did not change the law.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓
Britain's MS Society calls for herbal cannabis to be legal for patients
The MS Society, which in the 1990s had refused to press for access to herbal cannabis, changed its position and called for it to be legalised for medicinal use by people with multiple sclerosis. The cannabis-based spray Sativex was licensed but not available on the health service except in Wales.
🇼🇸 Samoa Debate ✓
Samoa's Law Reform Commission backs medicinal cannabis
The commission's final report recommended a regulated regime for medicinal cannabis. The government did not act on it and turned down a cultivation proposal in 2019.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Debate ✓
A bill seeks to stop Nigerian judges varying drug sentences
A National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (Amendment) Bill was introduced to amend the 1989 law. It aimed to close loopholes by wording the provisions so clearly that judges could not vary the sentences the Act lays down, among other changes.
🇲🇹 Malta Debate ✓
Malta's ReLeaf campaign asks for legal home growing
Before the general election the campaign group ReLeaf presented a manifesto asking to legalise possession of up to 28 g per person and six plants per household. The Labour Party's manifesto promised a national debate on recreational cannabis.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Debate ✓
A Lithuanian MP proposes to decriminalise possession and sharing
After administrative penalties for possession were abolished and suspended sentences for serious crimes, which include distributing small amounts, were restricted, the Liberal MP A. Armonaitė tabled amendments to grade the penalties and to decriminalise possession and sharing among friends, with warnings and administrative fines in their place. The health minister supported the approach; R. Karbauskis, chairman of the Farmers and Greens Union, called for zero tolerance. A judge, A. Cininas, said the laws were destroying people's lives.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Debate ✓
Activists rally for legalisation outside the Lithuanian parliament
In 2016 and again early in 2017, several hundred activists demonstrated outside the Seimas in support of legalising cannabis, as possession of any amount became a matter for the criminal law.
🇬🇭 Ghana Debate ✓
Ghana's government brings a bill to treat drug use as a health matter
A Narcotics Control Commission Bill, first proposed by the government in 2014, was put forward to replace the 1990 law. It called for decriminalising drug use, alternatives to prison, proportionate sentences and a harm reduction strategy, and encouraged reviewing the classification of substances such as cannabis. It became law in 2020.
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🇬🇹 Guatemala Debate ✓ Article
Guatemala’s congressional committee opposes adult cannabis regulation
Congress’s legislation and constitutional committee opposed a bill that would permit private adult cannabis use, five home plants and licensed sales, Prensa Libre reported in November 2016. The committee cited constitutional health duties and treaty obligations; sponsor Álvaro Velásquez criticised its legal approach and said he would keep seeking support. The bill’s proposed permissions remained part of the political debate.
🇬🇱 Greenland Debate ✓
Greenland proposes a joint plan to curb hash supply and dependence
Greenland’s health department proposed a national hash action plan combining action against supply with prevention and treatment. A later independent review says the full plan remained a proposal, while some activities proceeded through the public-health programme. In 2026 the government again emphasised prevention and customs controls.
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🇮🇷 Iran Debate ✓
Iran's Expediency Council discusses growing cannabis under a state monopoly
An Iranian news agency reported a proposal to regulate the cultivation of the poppy and of cannabis through state monopolies; the council, which makes Iran's drug laws, had discussed it without approving it. The same month an international conference on addiction in Tehran held a panel on regulating and legalising cannabis, and Saeed Sefatian, who leads the council's working group on reducing demand, set out steps towards it in a lecture. Cannabis use had been rising since the 2000s, with plants grown on city balconies.
🇱🇻 Latvia Debate ✓
Latvia's parliament declines to decriminalise
A citizens' petition for decriminalisation gathered the 10,000 signatures needed to reach parliament. When a committee heard it in July 2015, experts, ministry officials and deputies were unanimously against, and parliament turned it down. The day after the committee's vote a second initiative, for medical marijuana, was started; two years later it had some 600 signatures, and the author of the first, Vladislavs Lukaperovs, had given up the cause.
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🇧🇬 Bulgaria Debate ✓
Only the Greens campaign for legal cannabis in Bulgaria's election
The Greens were the one party to support legalisation openly. The Central Election Commission fined them for a campaign video, and they won 0.6% of the vote. No party proposed medical cannabis; the nationalist Patriotic Front wanted a complete ban on possessing drugs.
🇲🇪 Montenegro Debate ✓ Article
Montenegro’s Liberal Party proposes cannabis for patients in severe pain
Liberal Party MP Andrija Popović proposed allowing medical cannabis for pain associated with serious illnesses, Beta reported on 13 October. His party said the proposal was before parliament, and he cited medical use in western European countries. Campaigners returned to the issue in 2022, when a cannabis-reform petition drew more than 6,500 signatures.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria Debate ✓
Bulgarian groups fight a draft code that would jail every user
The justice ministry had published a new penal code at the end of December, and the government approved it before the deadline for public comment had passed. It kept one to six years for possessing any quantity and dropped the fine for minor cases, so that even the smallest amount would mean prison; it said nothing of treatment, although the national drugs council had recommended it. Five organisations held a press conference against it, recalling that zero tolerance a decade earlier had clogged the courts.
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan Debate ✓
A Kazakh lawmaker proposes leasing the cannabis fields to drug companies
Dariga Nazarbayeva, a member of parliament and the president's eldest daughter, told the chamber that the country should review its attitude to cannabis and lease some of its 140,000 hectares of wild plants to international pharmaceutical companies. Nothing came of it; industrial hemp was allowed only in 2025.
🇬🇹 Guatemala Debate ✓
Guatemala inaugurates a commission on drug policy reform
President Otto Pérez Molina's government, which had announced a National Commission for Drug Policy Reform in October 2013, inaugurated it in January 2014. In April the president said the government was studying the legalisation of cannabis and of poppy growing. In 2013 the country's prisons held 16,336 people, at more than two and a half times their capacity, half of them awaiting trial.
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Debate ✓ Article
Kyrgyzstan’s addiction doctor proposes a legal cannabis pilot
Addiction specialist Jenishbek Nazaraliev proposed legalising cannabis for medical and recreational use, beginning with a pilot around Lake Issyk-Kul. He argued that regulation could reduce corruption, improve control of growers and sellers and bring tax revenue. The state drug-control service opposed the idea, arguing that legalisation would leave international trafficking networks in place.
🇵🇭 Philippines Debate ✓
The first Philippine medical cannabis bill
House Bill 4477, the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Act, was introduced and died with the 16th Congress. It was refiled in 2016.
🇯🇲 Jamaica Debate ✓
A death in custody over a joint pushes Jamaica towards reform
The push to change Jamaica's cannabis laws gained momentum in 2014 after a young man died in custody following his arrest for possessing a joint. That year 15,000 people were arrested for cannabis possession, a quarter of all court cases concerned cannabis, and arrests and prosecutions were estimated to cost 64 million US dollars a year. The Ganja Law Reform Coalition, growers' associations, Rastafari and Maroon communities backed reform, which followed in 2015.
🇸🇻 El Salvador Debate ✓
Salvadorans march for decriminalisation
More than 700 people protested in San Salvador in favour of decriminalising consumption and personal cultivation. A survey that year found only 8% of Salvadorans supported legalisation.
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🇺🇾 Uruguay Debate ✓
Mujica's government proposes state-run cannabis sales
In a fifteen-point security plan called the Strategy for Life and Coexistence, the government proposed legalising and controlling the sale of cannabis, with the state producing it. The bill sent to parliament in August had a single article, a poll found 66% opposed, and the president put it on hold for a period of debate.
🇦🇷 Argentina Debate ✓
Argentina's Congress hears eight bills to decriminalise possession
The Chamber of Deputies held two days of hearings on drug law reform. Eight bills were before Congress: most would have decriminalised possession for personal use, some also growing for personal use, and one would have allowed THC for therapy and science. A study had found about a third of federal prisoners held for drug offences.
🇸🇰 Slovakia Debate ✓
Slovakia's incoming prime minister proposes legal possession
Robert Fico proposed allowing possession of up to three doses of cannabis for personal use. Nothing came of it, and a 2018 proposal to make small amounts a misdemeanour was blocked by a coalition partner.
🇪🇸 Spain Debate ✓ Article
A Spanish village votes on growing cannabis to pay its debt
Rasquera, a Catalan village of 960 people, held a referendum on leasing land to ABCDA, a Barcelona cannabis association with 5,000 members, which would grow for its members and pay the village 1.3 million euros, about what it owed. The plan was said to bring about 40 jobs, and it needed 75 per cent approval to go ahead. It won 56.3 per cent, so it missed that threshold. The national drug office said growing on that scale would break the law and pledged to block it. In May 2013 a court in Tarragona revoked the agreements, holding that a town's financial trouble does not make such contracts a matter of public interest.
🇱🇻 Latvia Debate ✓
Latvians begin collecting signatures for decriminalisation
An initiative on the citizens' platform ManaBalss.lv asked that adults be allowed to grow two or three plants, keep 20 to 30 grams at home and carry up to 5 grams in public. On 24 March 2015 it passed the 10,000 signatures needed to go to parliament, which rejected it that September.
🇬🇹 Guatemala Debate ✓
Guatemala's president calls for decriminalisation
President Otto Pérez Molina announced his support for decriminalising drugs. A poll at the time found 41% of Guatemalans in favour; no law followed.
🇧🇿 Belize Debate ✓
Belize says it is considering decriminalisation
The government announced that it was considering decriminalising possession of small amounts of cannabis.
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🇰🇭 Cambodia Debate ✓
Cambodian drug-law critics warn of two years in compulsory treatment
Critics warned that a draft drug law approved by Prime Minister Hun Sen could put people who use drugs into involuntary treatment for up to two years. They pointed to reports of abuse in detention centres and argued that the draft's broad definition of addiction could sweep in people simply under the influence. The final law promulgated in January 2012 included voluntary-treatment rules, medical conditions for compulsory treatment and a six-month-to-two-year period for state-centre treatment.
🇧🇷 Brazil Debate ✓
Brazil's Supreme Court protects marches for legalisation
The Federal Supreme Court unanimously recognised the right to march for the legalisation of marijuana, so that demonstrators and speakers could no longer be treated as advocating drug use. Ribeiro writes that after the ruling the experiences of patients and their families could be heard openly, and the stories of children with epilepsy treated with cannabis began to reach newspapers and television.
🌐 International Debate ✓ Article
The Global Commission urges experiments with legal cannabis regulation
The Global Commission on Drug Policy proposed ending criminalisation of people who use drugs without harming others and encouraged experiments with legal regulation, especially cannabis. Its June report called for health services and action against violent criminal organisations. The commission was an independent policy body; its report did not amend drug treaties or national laws.
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🇺🇸 United States · California Debate ✓
California's Proposition 19 narrowly fails
The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act would have let adults over 21 hold an ounce and grow limited amounts, with cities and counties regulating sales. It lost by 53.5 per cent to 46.5. A post-election poll found half of voters thought cannabis should be legal but disliked the details.
🇺🇾 Uruguay Debate ✓
A conservative deputy files Uruguay's first home-growing bill
Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou of the National Party presented the first bill in Uruguay's history to legalise growing cannabis at home for personal use. It set no limit on plants or on the amount counted as personal. By early 2012 a cross-party bill for eight plants and 25 g looked set to pass.
🇹🇯 Tajikistan Debate ✓ Article
Tajikistan’s drug-policy reviewers urge treatment and stronger patient privacy
A review involving health officials, the Drug Control Agency and civil society urged changes to policing, treatment and patient confidentiality. It criticised reliance on arrest and conviction targets, discrimination against people who use drugs and weaknesses in privacy protections. The reviewers recommended shifting enforcement toward dealers and larger supply networks while supporting harm reduction and voluntary treatment.
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🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓
The Dagga Party is founded in South Africa
Jeremy Acton founded the Dagga Party to campaign for legal cannabis. He was one of the three applicants, with Gareth Prince and Jonathan Rubin, whose case led to the 2017 and 2018 rulings protecting private use.
🌐 International Debate ✓ Article
A Latin American commission calls for rethinking drug prohibition
A commission convened by former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico proposed a health-focused approach and evaluation of decriminalising personal cannabis possession. Its declaration paired reform with prevention and action against organised crime. These were recommendations for governments, without an accompanying change in national law.
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🇳🇦 Namibia Debate ✓
Namibia proposes 20 to 40 years for drug offences
Parliamentary debate on the Combating of the Abuse of Drugs Bill proposed exceptionally severe penalties. Contemporary reporting described parliamentary adoption, but this review did not establish assent or commencement. The proposal must not be substituted for the operative 1971 Act’s penalty provisions.
🇧🇪 Belgium Debate ✓
Belgium's first cannabis social club is founded in Antwerp
Trekt Uw Plant was founded three years after the law set cannabis apart from other drugs and tolerated an adult's single plant. It harvested its first formal crop in 2010. In 2013 a second club became independent in Hasselt and three more were founded in Liège, Andenne and Namur. Over the same years the police dismantled ever more plantations: 35 in 2003, 1,212 in 2013.
🇸🇪 Sweden Debate ✓
Sweden renews its drug-free-society strategy for 2006–2010
Parliament approved the drug-policy goals in the government's renewed action plan: a drug-free society, fewer new users, helping people with substance-use problems stop, and reducing drug supply. The 2006–2010 programme combined prevention, treatment, enforcement, monitoring and international cooperation. This was approval of policy goals within the existing prohibition framework, not a new cannabis offence or evidence that the stated targets had been achieved.
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🇰🇷 South Korea Debate ✓
A Korean actress seeks a constitutional referral over cannabis penalties
During her criminal appeal, Kim Bu-seon sought a trial-court referral for constitutional review. That request was rejected in April 2005; her direct constitutional complaint followed in June. The 2004 request preceded the Constitutional Court's November 2005 ruling.
🇨🇭 Switzerland Debate ✓
Switzerland's proposed cannabis reform fails in parliament
The National Council again refused to consider the proposed revision of the Narcotics Act, ending the reform despite support in the Council of States. The rejected package included decriminalising cannabis consumption and associated preparatory acts. Its failure left those proposals unimplemented.
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🇳🇿 New Zealand Debate ✓
New Zealand's cannabis inquiry ends without agreement on its legal status
Parliament's Health Committee reported on cannabis and public health. Members could not agree on the most appropriate legal status, but the report recommended reconsidering classification, exploring prescription of clinically tested cannabis products and further consideration by the Justice and Electoral Committee. These were recommendations, not enacted possession or medical-access reforms.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria Debate ✓
Sofia sees its first march for cannabis
The Promena movement demonstrated in Sofia in June 2003. A march has been held in the city every year since; by 2018 its organisers counted fifteen years and said the number of Bulgarians who had tried cannabis had grown from about 200,000 to more than a million.
🇨🇦 Canada Debate ✓
Canada introduces a bill to replace some small-possession prosecutions with tickets
Government Bill C-38 received first reading. It proposed fine-only treatment for possession of up to 15 g of marijuana or 1 g of resin, with ticket procedures where the relevant contraventions arrangements applied; 15–30 g of marijuana could follow either a criminal or ticket route. The bill did not reach third reading or become law in that parliamentary session. Its introduction did not decriminalise possession.
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🇨🇦 Canada Debate ✓
A Canadian Senate committee recommends a legal cannabis market
The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs publicly released its final cannabis report after a two-year study. It recommended a licensed exemption scheme for production and sales, an amnesty for possession convictions, and wider medical access. These were committee recommendations, not enacted legalisation; the entry uses the public release date.
🌐 International Debate ✓
The UN drug commission argues over lenient cannabis policies
The annual report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 2001 used strong language about the trend to leniency, and its president, Hamid Ghodse, asked the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to consider cannabis control in detail so that the 1961 convention would be applied consistently. Morocco pointed to the contradiction between decriminalising use in some countries and pressing southern countries to eradicate the plant by repressive means. The dispute continued in 2003 without result.
🇸🇪 Sweden Debate ✓
Sweden's parliament restates the goal of a drug-free society
Parliament approved the drug-policy goals in the national action plan for 2002–2005. The government allocated SEK 325 million for 2002–2004 and had already commissioned a national drugs coordinator on 17 January 2002 to implement, monitor and coordinate the plan. The programme pursued reduced drug supply and demand within the existing prohibition framework. These were policy goals and funding decisions, not proof of a decline in cannabis use.
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🇨🇭 Switzerland Debate ✓
Switzerland's government proposes decriminalising cannabis consumption
The Federal Council proposed a broad revision of the Narcotics Act, including decriminalisation of cannabis consumption and its preparatory acts, and new arrangements for cannabis cultivation, manufacture and trade. It was a legislative proposal, not an immediate change in what adults could legally possess or grow.
🇪🇸 Spain Debate ✓
Catalonia's Parliament asks the government to seek medical cannabis permission
The Parliament of Catalonia approved a non-legislative proposal urging the regional executive to work with the relevant administrations to obtain authorisation for therapeutic cannabis use. The initiative followed advocacy by the breast-cancer patients' association Grup Àgata and preceded the regional pilot programme. The motion itself did not authorise prescriptions or supply.
🇯🇲 Jamaica Debate ✓
Jamaica's National Commission on Ganja recommends decriminalisation
The commission chaired by Barry Chevannes found overwhelming public support for allowing adults to use small amounts in private and for sacramental use. The United States warned against it, and nothing was done for fourteen years.
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🇵🇹 Portugal Debate ✓
Portugal adopts a national drug strategy built on health
With an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 heroin users and the highest HIV rate among injecting drug users in the European Union, the government adopted a strategy that expanded harm reduction and doubled spending on treatment and prevention. Decriminalisation of use followed from it two years later.
🌐 International Debate ✓
The first Global Marijuana March
The yearly demonstration, held on the first Saturday of May, began in 1999. In New York the police counted 4,000 marchers and the organisers 20,000. Marches have since been held in more than 1,000 cities in 85 countries and territories.
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🇳🇿 New Zealand Debate ✓
A New Zealand parliamentary committee finds the harms of cannabis overstated
The ten-member health select committee, chaired by Brian Neeson, reported that the mental health effects of cannabis appeared to have been overstated and that moderate use did not seem to harm most people who tried it. It recommended that the government review its cannabis policy; Neeson worried that illegality kept people from seeking treatment. It was described as the first such inquiry since 1973.
🇨🇭 Switzerland Debate ✓
Swiss voters reject the drug legalisation initiative
A year after refusing a repressive course, the Swiss turned down the opposite one. The initiative "for a sensible drug policy", launched by the Working Group for Drug Legalisation and backed by the Greens and Social Democrats, won 26% of the vote and no canton, on a turnout of 38.4%. Government and parliament had opposed it; the Swiss vote archive calls the result a clear no to decriminalising hard drugs.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓ Article
House of Lords recommends prescription access to cannabis
The Science and Technology Committee published its report after an inquiry beginning in April 1998. It recommended urgent clinical trials and moving cannabis and resin to Schedule 2 to allow named-patient prescribing, while supporting continued prohibition of recreational use. Patient groups gave evidence. This corrects the previous 1997 dating and separates the 1997 conference from the parliamentary report; the recommendation itself did not change the law.
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🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓ Article
Patient and professional groups organise a cannabis-trials conference
The MS Society, Royal Pharmaceutical Society and British Medical Association organised a conference on clinical trials. Suzanne Taylor describes the meeting as bringing together scientists, clinicians, patients and funders and drawing industry attention. It is separate from the House of Lords inquiry whose report was published in November 1998, and did not itself change prescribing law.
🇦🇹 Austria Debate ✓
Austrian deputies ask for cannabis for personal use to go unpunished
After parliament passed the Narcotic Substances Act on 16 April 1997, the deputies Klara Motter, Schmidt and colleagues moved that the government prepare a law exempting the purchase, possession, use, import and export of cannabis for one's own use from punishment. They pointed to the Netherlands, Spain, Britain and the German Constitutional Court's ruling of 1994, and argued that cannabis was less harmful than alcohol or nicotine.
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🇩🇪 Germany Debate ✓
A German state proposes selling cannabis over the counter
Schleswig-Holstein, governed by Social Democrats and Greens, announced that it would ask the federal drugs agency for a permit to sell cannabis legally, in order to separate it from the market in hard drugs. Its health minister, Heide Moser, said general warnings about drugs were no longer taken seriously. A federal spokesman said the idea had little to do with reality.
🇳🇿 New Zealand Debate ✓
A cannabis party wins 1.66% in New Zealand's first proportional election
The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party stood for the first time in the 1996 general election and took 1.66% of the party vote, not enough for a seat in parliament.
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🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓
Willie Nelson becomes co-chair of NORML’s advisory board
NORML founder Keith Stroup dates Nelson’s acceptance of the advisory co-chair role to 1994, following a relationship beginning in the mid-1970s. His support includes fundraising benefits and public advocacy.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓ Article
Patient advocates press the health department for medical cannabis access
The Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics organised a delegation of MPs, scientists and clinicians to the Department of Health. It sought herbal-cannabis preparations for research and named-patient prescribing. Suzanne Taylor records another delegation in 1997. These were advocacy efforts, not permission for patients to possess or grow cannabis.
🇰🇼 Kuwait Debate ✓
Kuwait’s parliament first rejects wider death penalties for drug offences
A proposal to extend death penalties to drug importing, manufacture and cultivation passed a first parliamentary reading but failed to secure majority support at its second reading, Amnesty International reported. The proposal would have made death optional for some trafficking offences and mandatory in specified aggravated circumstances. Broader capital drug penalties followed in 1995.
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🇺🇾 Uruguay Debate ✓
Uruguay's lower house sets up a drug commission
Two years after the return to democracy, the Chamber of Representatives created a Special Commission on Drug Addiction, prompted mainly by a rise in cannabis use. It reviewed drug policy for years; the first change to the law came in 1998.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong Debate ✓
Hong Kong expands anti-cannabis publicity aimed at young people
The government announced more broadcasts, posters and school materials addressing cannabis and mandrax after reports of growing use among young people. Answering a lawmaker’s question, the security secretary said the school talks programme would expand to older secondary pupils; about 600 talks had already reached some 200,000 students in its first cycle.
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🇪🇸 Spain Debate ✓
Spain approves its National Plan on Drugs
The government approved the Plan Nacional sobre Drogas to coordinate a multidisciplinary response across public authorities. It became the institutional framework for national drug policy, including cannabis, although the immediate political and health crisis centred on heroin. Approval of the plan did not itself alter the legal status of personal cannabis possession.
🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article
Jack Herer publishes The Emperor Wears No Clothes
Herer says he completed the first edition in 1985 after collecting cannabis information since 1973. The book made industrial hemp, medical use and opposition to prohibition part of one reform argument. The supplied later text argues that hemp could replace major uses of timber and fossil fuels; these are the author's claims, not findings of this index.
🇳🇴 Norway Debate ✓
Norway adopts a drug-free society as a national policy goal
Government white paper 13 for 1985–86 introduced a drug-free society as the aim of Norway's response to narcotics, including cannabis. It sought a systematic framework for future action rather than presenting concrete new measures. The policy statement did not itself amend possession penalties.
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🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓
Nancy Reagan makes the parents' anti-marijuana campaign her cause
A year after her husband took office, the first lady hosted forty members of the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth at the White House and announced that preventing adolescent drug abuse would be her primary cause. Fearing oversight and fines, many convenience stores and record shops had by then stopped selling cannabis paraphernalia. By 1983 there were more than three thousand parent groups nationwide, and after 1984 the movement and the first lady turned their attention abroad.
🇮🇹 Italy Debate ✓ Article
Italy's Constitutional Court blocks a referendum to free cannabis from the drug law
Campaigners had gathered more than 500,000 signatures for a referendum that would have taken cannabis out of Italy's 1975 drug law, freeing its cultivation, trade, possession and use. The Constitutional Court refused to let the vote go ahead. Italy had ratified the 1961 Single Convention without reservations, and the court said repealing these rules would break that treaty, a decision the Constitution leaves to parliament rather than voters. Treaty obligations were again among the reasons a cannabis referendum was blocked in 2022.
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🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓
The Legalise Cannabis Campaign is founded in Britain
The Legalise Cannabis Campaign was started to campaign for full legalisation of the use and distribution of cannabis in the United Kingdom. The chapter notes that such politicised campaigns failed in a hostile policy environment, and that arguments for medicinal cannabis were overwhelmed by them.
🇯🇲 Jamaica Debate ✓
Peter Tosh demands legalisation at the One Love Peace Concert
On stage in Kingston, Tosh lit a spliff and lectured the audience about legalising cannabis, attacking the attending political leaders Michael Manley and Edward Seaga for failing to do it. According to The Gleaner he became a regular target for the police; in September he was arrested at Half Way Tree for smoking marijuana and attacking a police officer, and reported being badly beaten in custody.
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🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article
American parents organise against marijuana
A grassroots movement of parent activists began in 1976, in reaction to decriminalisation in a dozen states and rising use among teenagers: by 1978, 37.1 per cent of high-school seniors reported smoking in the past month. By 1980 the activists had formed a national federation and, by the chapter's account, had persuaded state governments to overturn most of their decriminalisation laws and to regulate the trade in paraphernalia heavily. Nancy Reagan took up their cause.
🇯🇲 Jamaica Debate ✓
Peter Tosh releases Legalize It
The former Wailer's first solo album, recorded in Kingston, was released by CBS Records. Its title track became popular among supporters of cannabis legalisation, reggae audiences and Rastafari around the world, and a favourite at his concerts.
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🇯🇲 Jamaica Debate ✓
Jamaica proposes heavy penalties for ganja trafficking
Amid reports of large-scale organised export of ganja, apparently partly in exchange for guns, Michael Manley told the House that the people behind the trade came from the best residential areas, not the ghettos. A bill introduced in April 1974 proposed life imprisonment for trafficking in opium and cocaine and much harsher penalties for ganja trafficking.
🇳🇱 Netherlands Debate ✓
The Dutch government says it would legalise cannabis if the treaty allowed
A government memorandum stated that use of cannabis and possession for personal use should be removed from criminal justice as soon as possible, but that this would conflict with treaty obligations. It promised to explore amending the Single Convention; the idea was not pursued, and the 1976 law used non-prosecution instead.
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🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓
American lawyers' bodies vote to decriminalise possession
The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, meeting as a committee of the whole, voted 42 to 7 to amend the Uniform Controlled Substances Act to decriminalise private possession of marijuana for personal use and casual non-profit distribution. The same week the American Bar Association's House of Delegates resolved, by 122 votes to 70, that there should be no criminal laws punishing simple possession by users.
🇮🇹 Italy Debate ✓
Italy's Radicals hold a "Freedom and Drugs" congress in Rome
The Radical Party and Stampa Alternativa brought campaigners together in Rome on 23–24 June to argue for changing Italy's drug laws. Giancarlo Arnao was among those taking part. Parrella sees the meeting as an early step in Italy's cannabis reform movement.
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🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article
The Shafer Commission recommends decriminalisation
The national commission created by the Controlled Substances Act recommended removing criminal penalties for possessing and casually distributing small amounts.
🇳🇱 Netherlands Debate ✓ Article
The Baan Commission proposes separating the drug markets
A government working group argued that drugs should be ranked by risk and that keeping cannabis users away from dealers of harder drugs mattered more than punishing them. Its report became the basis of the 1976 law.
🇨🇦 Canada Debate ✓
Canada's Le Dain Commission recommends ending the possession offence
After three years of hearings, the royal commission concluded that possession of cannabis should no longer be a crime. The government introduced a bill to ease penalties, but it died in Parliament and the law stayed as it was for another 46 years.
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🇳🇱 Netherlands Debate ✓
The Hulsman Commission proposes taking cannabis out of criminal law
A commission set up by the national federation of mental health organisations and chaired by the criminal law professor Louk Hulsman argued that forcing users of different drugs into one criminal subculture exposed cannabis users to harder drugs. It recommended removing use and small possession of cannabis from criminal law.
🇦🇫 Afghanistan Debate ✓ Article
Afghanistan promises drug-control cooperation while describing weak enforcement
Afghan foreign minister Musa Shafiq told US secretary of state William Rogers that hashish and opium cultivation were prohibited under Islamic law but that enforcement was difficult, especially in remote mountain areas. He blamed growing demand from foreign tourists and promised cooperation on drug control. The discussion came as Washington worried that successful action elsewhere could push drug production towards Afghanistan.
🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓
Lester Grinspoon publishes Marihuana Reconsidered
Harvard University Press publishes psychiatrist Lester Grinspoon's review of cannabis and prohibition. Grinspoon later recalled beginning research in 1967 expecting to establish the drug's dangers, then changing his view after reviewing the literature. The book questioned whether criminal penalties were justified and helped inform reform campaigning; publication did not change the federal scheduling rules.
🇮🇪 Ireland Debate ✓
An Irish working party advises against prison for small amounts
The Working Party on Drug Abuse, set up by the government in 1968, recommended reviewing the legal status of cannabis and not imprisoning people for possessing a small amount for their own use. The Misuse of Drugs Act of 1977 put cannabis in a category of its own, with fines for the first two offences.
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🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓
Keith Stroup founds NORML
The lawyer Keith Stroup founded the National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws, with 5,000 dollars in seed money from the Playboy Foundation, and soon changed "Repeal" to "Reform". It became the leading advocacy group for decriminalising marijuana in the United States.
🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓
A US health official proposes Schedule I for marijuana as a stopgap
While the Controlled Substances Act was being drafted, Assistant Secretary of Health Roger Egeberg recommended placing marijuana in Schedule I temporarily, until the commission the Act created had reported. The commission recommended decriminalisation in 1972; the classification was not changed.
🇮🇱 Israel Debate ✓
The writer Yoram Kaniuk argues for legalising hashish
As hashish use spread among Israeli students and the middle class, the novelist Yoram Kaniuk put forward a case for legalisation, arguing that it had not been proven anywhere that hashish was truly dangerous and that, unlike alcohol, it did not provoke violence.
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🇩🇰 Denmark Debate ✓ Article
A Danish parliamentary committee calls for cannabis research and review of personal-use offences
The committee examining two drug bills found no clear basis for deciding controlled cannabis legalisation. It recommended more research into cannabis and the effects of legal controls on users, and inquiry into whether personal-use conduct should be removed from the drug law's offences. These were recommendations, not enacted legalisation or decriminalisation. The date is the committee report's issue date.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓
Britain's Wootton Report says cannabis is less harmful than assumed
A government advisory committee concluded that the long-term moderate use of cannabis has no harmful effects, and that nobody should go to prison for possessing a small amount. The Home Secretary rejected it, but the 1971 drug law did put cannabis in a lower class than heroin.
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🇳🇬 Nigeria Debate ✓ Article
A Nigerian psychiatrist describes cannabis use as a medical problem
Thomas Adeoye Lambo, one of the first psychiatrists to treat cannabis-using patients in West Africa, published a study of addiction in the leading West African medical journal and in the UN's drug research bulletin. It helped establish cannabis use as a medical question in the region. The Indian Hemp Decree imposed by the military government the following year shared very little with his view.
🇺🇸 United States · New York Debate ✓
Allen Ginsberg joins a Greenwich Village cannabis demonstration
A United Press International photograph shows poet Allen Ginsberg and other demonstrators outside the Women's House of Detention on Greenwich Avenue, demanding the release of people arrested for cannabis use or possession. Ginsberg's placard uses the slang word pot. The Library of Congress catalog dates the image to 10 January 1965. The demonstration documents early public opposition to cannabis prohibition; it did not itself change the law.
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🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓
A South African committee reports on the abuse of dagga
The Interdepartmental Committee on the Abuse of Dagga published convictions for possession, which in 1948 fell almost entirely on Africans and Coloured people, and concluded that smoking dagga does not in general act as an aphrodisiac but has a sedative effect. A pharmacologist who reviewed the subject in 1961 held that the plant is not native to southern Africa and is always cultivated, usually in secret.
🇮🇱 Israel Debate ✓
Knesset debate on a drug law turns to hashish and immigrants
The Knesset passed an amendment to the Mandate's Dangerous Drugs Ordinance that removed clauses barring the cultivation and preparation of the opium poppy, to end dependence on imported medicinal narcotics. It had nothing to do with hashish, but opponents argued against it by pointing to immigrants from Arab and Muslim countries and their supposed disposition to hashish smoking.
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🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓
A federal researcher tells Congress marijuana is not addictive
Harris Isbell, research director at the Public Health Service hospital in Lexington, told the Kefauver committee that marijuana smokers were usually mildly intoxicated, bothered no one and developed no dependence, and that a link to violent or sexual crime was unproven. Harry Anslinger replied that over half of young heroin addicts had started on marijuana. He had rejected this stepping-stone claim in 1937; from 1951 it became the official reason to punish marijuana like heroin.
🇨🇭 Switzerland Debate ✓
Switzerland's government proposes new cannabis controls
The Swiss government proposed adding Indian hemp to the narcotics list and extending the existing drug ban to hashish. It said cannabis had previously been of little importance in Switzerland but feared supplies reaching the country through neighbouring states after the war. The resulting law was approved later that year and took effect in June 1952.
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🇺🇸 United States · Florida Debate ✓
An axe murder in Tampa becomes the campaign's favourite story
Victor Licata, 21, killed his parents and three siblings with an axe in Ybor City, Tampa. The press blamed marijuana, and Harry Anslinger later made the case the centrepiece of his warnings, describing a sane young man undone by the drug. Licata had been diagnosed with dementia praecox, an old name for schizophrenia; marijuana appears nowhere in his psychiatric reports. He was committed to the state mental hospital.
🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article
Army cannabis report recommends no further Canal Zone legislation
Published in The Military Surgeon in 1933, the Siler committee report described observations of 34 soldiers and recommended no further legislation against sale or use in the Canal Zone. It also recommended retaining military restrictions on cannabis. Its recommendations concerned US-administered territory and military reservations, not cannabis freedom throughout the Republic of Panama.
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🇧🇷 Brazil Debate ✓
Psychiatrists warn that diamba could become an elegant vice
In Vícios sociais elegantes, the psychiatrists Pedro Pernambuco Filho and Adauto Botelho wrote that diamba was still a vice of the poor, but that it tended to join the fashionable vices of the well-off. They called the situation in some northern states alarming and demanded immediate intervention by the authorities.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓
The Home Office tells Parliament that hashish needs no law
After a summer of newspaper stories about a "new dope peril", an MP asked whether hashish, which was on no list of dangerous drugs, was being used in seaport towns and whether it would be restricted. The under-secretary answered that the League of Nations had not yet considered the question, that other countries were more closely concerned, and that the department was watching. Its drugs official, Malcolm Delevingne, had noted that the situation did not call for hashish to be added to the Dangerous Drugs Act: use was probably confined to Arab, Greek and Lascar seamen, as a seizure at South Shields in 1922 suggested. The Cambridge pharmacologist W. E. Dixon agreed in print. Within six months the Pharmaceutical Society had moved to schedule it as a poison instead.
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🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓
Paarl farmers ask South Africa to restrict dagga sales and cultivation
The Paarl Farmers' Association petitioned the justice minister for stronger dagga controls, alleging harm to labourers' work and threats to white farm women. It supplied a newspaper account of a fifteen-year-old sent to buy dagga from a chemist, showing how the medicinal sales channel could supply other users. The association sought cultivation and sales restrictions through noxious-weed legislation; officials later pursued national drug control.
🇯🇲 Jamaica Debate ✓
Jamaica's asylum reports that ganja smoking is spreading
The Kingston lunatic asylum had first recorded an admission put down to ganja smoking in 1883, and a handful more between 1907 and 1910. In his report for 1912 the superintendent wrote that ganja smoking was spreading among the natives of the island, and the Daily Gleaner took up the theme. When the opium bill came before the Legislative Council the next year, a member asked why it ignored a habit that was making criminals and filling the asylum, and the colony's first controls on ganja followed.
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🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓ Article
Transvaal mine managers see no need to ban dagga
Mine inspectors, managers and pass officers generally advised against prohibiting dagga after a labour-bureau survey of cannabis use among African miners. Respondents described moderate use and worried that more restrictions would deter workers from coming to the gold mines. Some also reported miners using it for relief from dust-related breathing problems; these were contemporary beliefs and observations, not clinical findings.
🇰🇪 Kenya Debate ✓ Article
A provincial commissioner in Kenya asks for a law against cannabis
John Ainsworth, provincial commissioner of Kisumu, wrote to the Crown advocate in Mombasa lamenting the use of cannabis and asking for a law to curb its cultivation, saying it had a most deleterious effect on consumers and caused crime. Officials in western Kenya and on the coast shared the concern; restrictions followed in the opium ordinance of 1914.
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🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Debate ✓
Ceylon proposes allowing licensed medicinal cannabis sales
Ceylon published a proposal to let licensed dealers in poisons import, possess and sell cannabis under the rules governing their trade. Acting Attorney-General J. H. Templer explained that the 1905 ban had omitted permission for chemists to handle cannabis even though its medicinal usefulness was acknowledged. The draft would keep the prohibition on growing it.
🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓
Cape dagga farmers petition against chemists controlling their market
A petition from 170 Middelburg farmers and supporters asked the Cape Legislative Council to reverse the cannabis poison listing. Growers complained that chemists, now the permitted sellers, could dictate purchase prices and resell the crop at large profits. Their representative challenged the medical evidence behind the restriction; a repeal was promised in 1907 while officials considered stronger controls over both sales and possession.
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🇲🇺 Mauritius Debate ✓
Mauritius's own doctors tell London that cannabis causes no madness
Reports sent by the governor to the Colonial Office, from the protector of immigrants, the inspector of police and the medical officers, contained a single reference to violence and cannabis. A former medical officer had never heard of a crime traceable to it, and the chief medical officer, after nearly thirty years, had never met a case of lunacy caused by it; asylum figures, he noted, usually rested on a police statement that a man was addicted. The Colonial Office nonetheless minuted that Mauritius should prohibit cannabis absolutely.
🇮🇳 India Debate ✓ Article
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission reports
After hearing nearly 1,200 witnesses across British India, the commission concluded that moderate use of hemp drugs does practically no harm and that banning them would be unjustified. It recommended taxing and licensing them, which remained the system in India until 1985.
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🇲🇺 Mauritius Debate ✓
Mauritius's lunacy board asks for cannabis imports to be banned again
Ten years after Mauritius legalised cannabis, the governor forwarded to the Colonial Office a petition from the Board of Commissioners in Lunacy asking that the importation of gandia be prohibited, on the strength of a rise in asylum admissions attributed to it. The asylum's own superintendent, Dr Monty, disagreed: Indian admissions had fallen since repeal, and the increase was due to drink and misery.
🇮🇳 India Debate ✓ Article
Britain agrees to a commission on hemp drugs in India
The temperance MP William Caine asked for a commission of experts on the cultivation and trade in hemp drugs, their effect on the people and the desirability of prohibiting them, with Indian members who were not officials. To his surprise the government agreed at once, months before it conceded a royal commission on opium. The commission sat in India from 22 August 1893 to 25 April 1894.
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🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓
Natal's Indian immigration commission hears doctors condemn dagga
Doctors in the sugar districts told the Indian Immigrant (Wragg) Commission of 1885–1887 that cannabis endangered life, health, sanity and social order among indentured workers, and that it incapacitated them for work. The commission gave the subject a section of its report, but no control beyond the 1870 law was introduced; workers judged to be suffering from overuse were treated in hospital.
🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓ Article
Natal’s immigration commission recommends cannabis prohibition
The Indian Immigrants Commission of 1885–1887 asked the Governor in Council to use section 70 of the 1870 law to prohibit cannabis use and possession among Indian immigrants. Paterson reports that no implementing rule appears to have followed; Waetjen likewise finds no additional legal controls. This was a recommendation rather than a verified tightening of an operative ban.