Easing
Decriminalisation, lighter penalties, fines instead of prison, and rulings that protect users.
228 entries, 1862–2026 · 109 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Easing entries per decade
13.2 today, from 99.1 in 1860
World average score, every country counted the same Entries that moved a score Context only
No entries for the chosen countries here.
🇦🇺 Australia · New South Wales Easing ✓
NSW assents to a registered-patient cannabis-driving reform
Act 33 of 2026 received assent after passing Parliament on 17 September. The announced scheme would require a prescription, registration and education, and would be limited to unrestricted non-commercial drivers. A positive roadside test would still bring a 24-hour driving ban; laboratory THC below 50 ng/ml would bring no further action, while the first two detections at or above that threshold within two years would bring warnings. Implementation was expected in late 2026 or early 2027, and commencement was not established in this review.
🇺🇸 United States Easing ✓
Congress delays part of the federal hemp-product ban
On 2 September Congress passed a continuing resolution, Public Law 119-103, that moves part of the new hemp definition from 12 November to 11 December 2026. The exclusion of cannabinoids that a cannabis plant cannot produce naturally stays on 12 November, and from that day those products are marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. The rest of the definition, including the total-THC cap and the 0.4 milligram limit on a finished product, waits until 11 December. The 2025 law that wrote the definition is unchanged apart from those dates.
🇮🇩 Indonesia Easing ✓
Indonesia removes minimum prison terms for cannabis offences
People prosecuted for planting or possessing cannabis no longer face a special four-year minimum prison term: the basic maximum remains twelve years, with prison and/or a fine. The reform also removes minimum terms for sale and giving drugs to another person, while retaining life and death alternatives for specified serious offences. It took effect alongside the new Criminal Code, whose production and import offence replaces the old Article 113.
🇨🇳 China Easing ✓
China seals records of drug-use penalties
The revised Public Security Administration Punishments Law, passed on 27 June 2025, took effect. Article 136 seals records of public-security violations, drug use included: they may not be given out or published, except to state organs handling a case or bodies entitled to check under national rules. After a public outcry in late 2025 the legislature's legal commission said that sealing does not delete a record, and that drug use remains an offence punished under the same law.
🇦🇼 Aruba Easing ✓ Article
Aruba raises the cannabis dismissal band from 5 to 30 grams
Aruba’s revised prosecution instruction raised the soft-drug surrender-and-dismissal band from 0–5 g to 0–30 g. Its possession/courier table replaced the earlier short prison request with fine requests of AWG 250 for 30–100 g, AWG 750 for 100–300 g and AWG 1,500 for 300–500 g. Exceptions remained for minors, repeat offending, another offence and specified settings, including carnival parades, workplaces and government buildings.
2124+3 points
🇮🇸 Iceland Easing ✓
Iceland lets health bodies and charities run consumption rooms
An amendment extended consumption-room licences from municipalities to health institutions and non-governmental organisations, and defined the rooms as a legally protected setting for people aged 18 and over.
🇳🇴 Norway Easing ✓
Norway's parliament passes a drug reform that is not yet in force
The Storting adopted the government's reform. Use and possession of small amounts stay forbidden, but the fine will no longer go on a person's criminal record, people with dependency are to get help in place of punishment, and under-18s must attend a municipal advisory meeting. As of August 2026 no date had been set for it to take effect, so the old rules still applied.
🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda Easing ✓
Antigua and Barbuda plans to wipe old cannabis convictions
After its weekly meeting the Cabinet said it would bring a bill to the next sitting of Parliament to pardon people convicted of possessing less than 15 grams of marijuana and to expunge their records. The attorney general was asked to draft it. Whether the bill has passed was not confirmed.
🇧🇾 Belarus Easing ✓ Article
Belarus widens amnesty eligibility for first-time drug offenders
People with no previous convictions became eligible for amnesty consideration across the principal personal-possession and supply offences, subject to the law’s conditions. The anniversary amnesty included a one-year reduction route for eligible prison and restriction-of-liberty sentences. It followed March’s sentencing reform; the first-conviction exception did not extend to supply causing death.
🇨🇦 Canada · Manitoba Easing ✓
Manitoba allows four cannabis plants at home
From 1 May 2025 a person 19 or older may grow up to four cannabis plants in their ordinary residence, and the household may not exceed four. The plants must be indoors, locked away from young people or otherwise out of their reach, and grown from seed or plant material that is not illicit. Quebec's ban on personal cultivation remains.
🇬🇺 Guam Easing ✓ Article
Guam lets licensed cannabis sellers use a temporary testing exemption
Licensed cannabis businesses could use a temporary exemption from laboratory testing while Guam had no qualifying laboratory, with warning labels and growers’ sworn assurances about contaminants. Governor Lou Leon Guerrero signed the change to help businesses open after years of delays under the 2019 law. It took effect ninety days after signature and originally had a two-year expiry; lawmakers extended that window in 2026.
🇯🇪 Jersey Easing ?
Jersey lets Centeniers fine people for possessing cannabis
The Crime (Public Order) (Jersey) Law 2024 came into force. It inserted Article 28A into the Misuse of Drugs Law, allowing a Centenier at a Parish Hall enquiry to impose a level 1 fine for possessing a Class B or Class C drug if the person accepts it, without a criminal conviction.
1619+3 points
🇲🇦 Morocco Easing ✓ Article
Morocco's king pardons more than 4,800 cannabis growers
King Mohammed VI pardoned 4,831 people convicted, prosecuted or wanted in cases tied to growing cannabis, on the anniversary of the Revolution of the King and the People. The justice ministry said it would let them join the regions' new strategy for legal cannabis.
🇸🇰 Slovakia Easing ✓ Article
Slovakia cuts sentences for small amounts
Act 40/2024 split the old drug offence into four and replaced "usual doses" with fixed amounts. Possessing cannabis in a negligible amount, up to 2 g, now carries up to one year in prison and growing up to two plants for one's own use up to six months; larger tiers carry more. The milder text, applied by prosecutors from 6 August 2024, also covers earlier acts.
911+2 points
20239 entries1 score change
🇨🇭 Switzerland Easing ✓ Article
Switzerland starts regulated pilot sales
Basel opened the first city trial selling regulated cannabis to registered adult residents through pharmacies. Zurich, Bern, Lausanne and others followed. Outside the trials there is still no legal source.
2930+1 point
🇬🇱 Greenland Easing ✓ Article
Greenland allows low-THC cannabis through authorised importers
Greenland’s new drug law and regulation took effect together, creating an exception for cannabis products with no more than 0.2% THC imported by an authorised legal entity. The law retained prescription and pharmacy routes for controlled medicines and replaced the inherited Danish statute. The change followed parliament’s 2019 calls for access to low-THC oils.
20229 entries4 score changes
🇬🇾 Guyana Easing ✓ Article
Guyana ends jail for small amounts
The National Assembly removed prison for possessing up to 30 g. Up to 15 g is simple possession, and 15 to 30 g brings community service. Before, anything over 15 g was treated as trafficking, with at least three years.
917+8 points
🇲🇴 Macau Easing ✓ Article
Macau’s top court cuts two home growers’ sentences for a single plant
Two first offenders who grew one cannabis plant for personal use had their combined prison sentences reduced from five years nine months each to one year nine months and two years. The plant yielded 37.208 grams of leaves and flowers, above the five-day reference quantity, but the top court applied the lesser production tier after considering the whole case. The ruling showed how the lesser tier remained available under the stricter personal-use rules introduced in 2017.
🇹🇼 Taiwan Easing ✓
Taiwan lowers the sentence for growing cannabis for personal use
The Legislative Yuan amended the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act without objection. Growing for personal use in minor circumstances now carries one to seven years in prison and a fine of up to NT$1 million, down from a minimum of five years and up to NT$5 million.
🇳🇴 Norway Easing ✓ Article
Norway's Supreme Court ends punishment for addicts
After parliament rejected a general decriminalisation, the court ruled that people who are dependent on drugs should not be punished for holding small amounts for their own use. The Director of Public Prosecutions turned this into guidelines for police the following month.
1217+5 points
20217 entries4 score changes
🇹🇳 Tunisia Easing ✓
The Kef court cuts the 30-year cannabis sentences
After the appeal hearing was postponed from February to 9 March, a court in El Kef reduced the sentences of the three men to two years in prison, according to a report of 10 March. The January verdict had drawn criticism from citizens, civil society and human rights organisations and calls to amend Law 52, which sets a minimum of one year in prison and a fine from 1,000 dinars for use.
🇧🇧 Barbados Easing ✓ Article
Barbados decriminalises 14 g
Possession of up to 14 g became a fixed-penalty matter: a $200 penalty payable within 30 days, which discharges any liability to conviction. Not paying is an offence with a $1,000 fine. People under 18 must also attend the National Council on Substance Abuse, and earlier convictions for up to 14 g are deemed expunged.
1222+10 points
🇧🇲 Bermuda Easing ✓ Article
Bermuda lets people apply to clear old cannabis possession convictions
Bermuda brought into force a process for people convicted of possessing seven grams of cannabis or less before 20 December 2017 to apply for an order clearing the conviction. The government launched online applications the next day, arguing that people convicted before decriminalisation should also benefit from reform. Old records that omitted the amount later blocked many applications, prompting new rules in 2023.
202010 entries5 score changes
🇹🇼 Taiwan Easing ✓
Taiwan's top court rejects the five-year minimum for growing cannabis
In Interpretation No. 790 the Council of Grand Justices found the mandatory minimum of five years for growing cannabis disproportionate, in the case of a Tainan man sentenced for six potted plants grown for his own use, and gave lawmakers a year to amend the law.
🇻🇨 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Easing ✓ Article
Saint Vincent's two-ounce reform enters force
Act No. 10 of 2019 took effect by proclamation. Possession of up to 56 g remained an offence but ceased to be arrestable or detainable, with a fine capped at EC$500 and a procedure that can discharge liability without court proceedings or a criminal record.
1122+11 points
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia Easing ✓
Saudi Arabia abolishes discretionary flogging
Decree M/40, issued by the Supreme Court sitting in full session on 18 February 2020, abolished the ta'zir penalty of flogging and said that courts should impose imprisonment and/or a fine, or an alternative penalty, in ta'zir cases. The source does not say which offences are ta'zir, so it does not link the change to drug offences.
🇶🇦 Qatar Easing ✓
Qatar lowers the personal-use drug sentence
Law 3 of 2020, published in Official Gazette issue 4 of 18 February 2020, amended article 37 of the 1987 narcotics law. Personal-use possession, cultivation and use now carry six months to three years and a fine of QR10,000 to QR20,000. The English consolidation, marked as amended only by Law 1 of 2006, still shows the earlier range of two to five years and QR50,000 to QR100,000.
🇰🇳 Saint Kitts and Nevis Easing ✓
Saint Kitts and Nevis raises the limit to 56 g
Parliament raised the amount treated as a ticketable infraction from 15 g to 56 g and passed a Cannabis Act for medical and religious use. The medicinal licensing parts were brought fully into force in 2023.
2932+3 points
20185 entries2 score changes
🇬🇪 Georgia Easing ✓ Article
Georgia's Constitutional Court ends punishment for use
The court abolished the administrative fines for consuming cannabis, making private use legal. Growing and selling remain crimes, so there is no lawful way to get it.
1922+3 points
🇮🇱 Israel Easing ✓
Israel's Knesset approves fines in place of prosecution
The law passed on this day took effect on 1 April 2019: an adult caught with cannabis in public pays a fine of about 275 dollars for a first offence and 550 for a second, and only a third within seven years opens a criminal investigation. A survey of 2017 had found that 27% of Israelis aged 18 to 65 had used cannabis in the past year, the highest rate recorded anywhere.
201712 entries6 score changes
🇧🇲 Bermuda Easing ✓ Article
Bermuda decriminalises possession of up to 7 g
Bermuda removed criminal liability for simple possession of seven grams of cannabis or less, while police retained power to seize it and prosecutors could still pursue evidence of intent to supply. Cultivation, supply, importation and unauthorised consumption remained offences. The change followed a proposed caution system for amounts under three grams; a later law created an application route to clear qualifying older convictions.
1219+7 points
🇧🇹 Bhutan Easing ✓
Bhutan softens its drug law for small amounts of cannabis
The National Assembly adopted an amendment to the 2015 narcotics act by 40 votes. A person holding up to twice the scheduled quantity of cannabis, who tests positive and has no trafficking record, is treated as a case of substance abuse and sent for treatment, not charged with trafficking. Minors get counselling first and compulsory treatment on later offences.
🇬🇪 Georgia Easing ✓ Article
Georgia's Constitutional Court ends criminal penalties for use
The court ruled that criminal punishment for consuming cannabis is unconstitutional, leaving only an administrative fine. Eight months later it struck down the fine as well.
1419+5 points
🇧🇿 Belize Easing ✓ Article
Belize decriminalises 10 g
Adults may possess up to 10 g and use it on private premises without committing an offence. Growing any amount remains a crime, and a later law to create a regulated market was shelved.
1125+14 points
🇿🇦 South Africa Easing ✓
A South African high court declares the ban on private use invalid
The Western Cape High Court ruled that banning adults from using and growing cannabis at home violated the right to privacy. The order was suspended while the government appealed; the Constitutional Court confirmed it the next year.
🇹🇳 Tunisia Easing ✓
Tunisia lets judges pardon first-time cannabis users
With a wider reform of Law 52 blocked in parliament, the National Security Council under President Beji Caid Essebsi let judges grant a pardon as soon as a first cannabis-use conviction is pronounced, so the person avoids prison. Trials under the law had risen from 732 in 2011 to 5,744 in 2016.
20165 entries2 score changes
🇲🇹 Malta Easing ✓ Article
Malta stops prosecuting small possession
The Drug Dependence Act turned possession of up to 3.5 g into a fine of €50 to €100 decided by a commissioner, not a criminal court. Growing a single plant no longer carried a mandatory prison term.
921+12 points
🇯🇲 Jamaica Easing ✓ Article
Jamaica decriminalises ganja
Possessing up to 2 oz became a ticket with a small fixed penalty: no arrest and no criminal record. Each household may grow five plants, Rastafari may use ganja as a sacrament, and a licensed medical industry was set up.
1131+20 points
20147 entries4 score changes
🇫🇷 France Easing ✓
France lets police settle cannabis use with a payment
Under the penal reform of the justice minister Christiane Taubira, voted in 2014, a 'transaction pénale' for minor offences punishable by less than a year in prison, the use of cannabis among them, came into application on 15 October 2014. The interior minister Manuel Valls had said in April 2013 that he intended to make possession of a small quantity a fine- only matter, without giving an amount or a date.
🇬🇲 Gambia Easing ✓ Article
Gambia gives first-time cannabis offenders a lower penalty scale
First-time cannabis possession gained a separate penalty scale: 0.1–150 grams carried a 50,000–100,000-dalasi fine, one to two years in prison, or both. The prison ranges rose to two to five years for 151–500 grams and three to ten years from 501 grams, each with a fine alternative. Interior Minister Ousman Sonko argued that lighter penalties would reduce the imprisonment of young people unable to pay large fines and ease pressure on prisons.
79+2 points
🇪🇨 Ecuador Easing ✓
Ecuador replaces the penalties of Law 108
Parliament approved the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code, which took the place of the criminal part of the 1990 drug law. In July the drug council set tables dividing trafficking into minimum, medium, high and large scale, and after cases were reviewed 1,065 people were released from jail in November.
🇮🇹 Italy Easing ✓ Article
Italy's Constitutional Court strikes down the 2006 drug law
The court annulled the law that had put cannabis in the same class as heroin and cocaine. The earlier, milder rules came back, and thousands of sentences had to be reviewed.
1823+5 points
🇷🇴 Romania Easing ✓ Article
Romania lowers the cannabis prison minimum and opens a treatment route
From 1 February 2014, personal possession, buying and growing of cannabis carried three months to two years in prison or a fine; the previous minimum was six months. People charged with personal-use offences could be assessed for an assistance programme and, with their agreement, enter it; following the programme could let a court waive or postpone punishment. The changes accompanied the new Penal Code.
911+2 points
🇺🇸 United States Easing ✓ Article
The Cole memo sets priorities for federal cannabis enforcement
The Justice Department directed federal prosecutors to focus on eight cannabis enforcement priorities and expected states to operate effective regulatory systems. It deferred challenges to the Colorado and Washington laws, while preserving federal prosecution authority. The memorandum created no legal defence or enforceable right and did not amend federal law.
🇨🇷 Costa Rica Easing ✓
Costa Rica writes proportionality and gender into drug sentencing
Law 9161 amended Article 77 of the drug law so that sentences take proportionality and the situation of women into account; in March 2012 some 120 women were in prison for bringing drugs into jails. The same month President Laura Chinchilla pardoned seven women imprisoned for trafficking.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Easing ✓ Article
Vanuatu’s appeal court separates personal growing from commercial crops
Vanuatu’s appeal court divided cannabis cultivation into three sentencing categories: small personal grows generally called for fines or other community measures, small commercial grows for a prison starting point of two to four years, and large commercial operations for four years or more. The judges cited increasing commercial cultivation and said plant numbers, sizes and growing methods all mattered. Wetul’s own immediate two-year-four-month term was replaced with seven months suspended for two years, alongside supervision and community work.
🇺🇸 United States · Vermont Easing ✓ Article
Vermont replaces criminal penalties for small adult possession with civil fines
Act 76 made possession by people aged 21 or older of up to one ounce of marijuana or five grams of hashish a civil violation, with maximum fines of $200, $300 and $500 for successive offences and no criminal-history record. Cultivation remained criminal; the act did not legalise recreational supply.
20124 entries1 score change
20113 entries2 score changes
🇲🇻 Maldives Easing ✓
The Maldives' Drugs Act creates a drug court
Act 17/2011 moved away from a purely punitive approach to small-scale offences. It separates use, peddling and trafficking, and lets users enter treatment and rehabilitation through a specialist Drug Court, which began work in June 2012.
🇵🇱 Poland Easing ✓ Article
Poland lets prosecutors drop small cases
An amendment passed on 1 April 2011 added article 62a: a prosecutor may discontinue a case, even before opening an investigation, when the amount is small, it was for the person's own use and punishment would serve no purpose. The same act raised the maximum for possessing a large quantity to ten years. The new article is discretionary and was used sparingly: in 2012 it ended 2,307 cases, and prosecutors applied it in 11.6% of those they handled.
911+2 points
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan Easing ✓ Article
Kazakhstan makes small-scale possession an administrative offence
Law 393-IV of 18 January 2011 on the further humanisation of criminal legislation decriminalised Part 1 of Article 259 of the Criminal Code: illegal purchase, transport or storage of narcotics or psychotropic substances without intent to sell, in large quantities as the EMCDDA describes it. The act became an administrative offence.
914+5 points
🇦🇷 Argentina Easing ✓ Article
Argentina's Supreme Court protects private use
In the Arriola ruling the court held that punishing an adult for holding a small amount for personal use in private is unconstitutional. The law itself was never changed and no gram limit was set, so judges decide case by case.
1120+9 points
🇲🇽 Mexico Easing ✓ Article
Mexico stops prosecuting up to 5 g
A reform of the health law set personal-use thresholds for all drugs. Someone holding up to 5 g of cannabis is not prosecuted and is referred to treatment instead.
1117+6 points
20085 entries1 score change
🇮🇹 Italy Easing ✓
Italy's Court of Cassation orders a retrial for a Rastafarian convicted of dealing
Carabinieri found a man asleep in his car, and he handed them 97 grams of loose marijuana, saying it was for his own use as a Rastafarian. He was sentenced to sixteen months in prison and a €4,000 fine for holding it for supply, and the conviction was upheld on appeal in 2004. The Court of Cassation found the courts had relied on the weight and ignored his religion and the circumstances, and sent the case to the Florence appeal court to be judged again.
🇦🇲 Armenia Easing ✓
Armenia decriminalises drug use
Two amendments effective on 5 July repealed the criminal offence of drug use and introduced administrative offences for non-prescribed use and small-quantity possession and related acts without intent to supply. The original fine for use was 100–200 statutory minimum-salary multiples, doubling for repetition within a year; small possession carried 200–400 multiples, also doubling on repetition. The administrative schedule included up to 0.5 grams of dried marijuana, two grams undried or 0.2 grams of cannabis resin. Voluntary surrender could exempt small possession, while voluntarily seeking medical help could exempt use. The reform did not legalise supply.
1118+7 points
🇪🇨 Ecuador Easing ✓
Ecuador approves a conditional pardon for small-scale drug couriers
The Constituent Assembly approved a pardon for a defined group of people convicted of drug offences, including first offenders caught with no more than two kilograms, subject to sentence and time-served requirements. It covered controlled drugs generally, rather than cannabis alone. The measure relieved existing sentences; it did not legalise drug transport or possession and was separate from the new constitution adopted later that year. A contemporary report documented the release of a man sentenced to eight years after being caught with 61 grams of cannabis.
20065 entries3 score changes
🇧🇬 Bulgaria Easing ✓ Article
Bulgaria sets one to six years for possession
After two years in which any possession was treated as a serious crime, the penal code was amended: one to six years in prison, or a fine in minor cases that still counts as a conviction. The amendment, which rewrote every drug offence in the code to match a European Union framework decision, was published in State Gazette 75 of 2006 and took effect on 13 October. The courts had been filling up: 525 people were convicted of drug crimes in 2003, 921 in 2005 and 1,587 in 2006.
18+7 points
🇧🇷 Brazil Easing ✓ Article
Brazil ends prison for users
A new drug law kept possession for personal use a crime but removed prison as a penalty, replacing it with a warning, community service or an educational course. Penalties for dealing went up.
914+5 points
20052 entries0 score changes
🇷🇴 Romania Easing ✓ Article
Romania cuts cannabis possession penalties and lets courts impose fines
People caught growing, buying or possessing cannabis for themselves could receive six months to two years in prison or a fine from 7 March 2005. The amendment separated cannabis and other “risk drugs” from the higher drug category, whose personal-use penalty remained two to five years. Its treatment-linked alternatives to punishment were deferred until the new Penal Code took effect.
🇧🇪 Belgium Easing ✓
Belgium restores uniform low-priority handling for small cannabis possession
A joint directive signed on 25 January took effect on 1 February, replacing regional instructions issued after the 2004 annulment. Adult personal possession of at most 3 g or one cultivated plant, without indications of sale or trafficking, aggravating circumstances or disturbance of public order, received the lowest prosecution priority and a simplified police report. Police sent monthly report summaries to prosecutors and did not seize cannabis in qualifying cases. The directive retained the quantity guideline from 2003; it did not legalise possession.
20044 entries2 score changes
20033 entries2 score changes
🇵🇪 Peru Easing ✓
Peru fixes the personal-use limit at 8 g
Law 28002 specified non-punishable possession for one's own immediate use: up to 8 g of marijuana or 2 g of its derivatives. Possession of two or more types of drugs was excluded. The same law introduced Article 296-A on cannabis cultivation, with a lower penalty of two to six years where the number of plants did not exceed one hundred. Published on 17 June, the law took effect the following day under the constitutional commencement rule.
🇧🇪 Belgium Easing ✓
Belgium limits police reporting for adult personal cannabis possession
The Law of 3 May 2003 took effect on publication on 2 June. Article 16 required only police registration for an adult's personal-use quantity of cannabis without public nuisance or problematic use. Possession remained an offence. The accompanying 16 May prosecution guideline treated up to 3 g or one cultivated plant as personal use absent indications of sale or trafficking. The Court of Arbitration later annulled the reporting exception for its vague criteria.
1724+7 points
🇭🇺 Hungary Easing ✓ Article
Hungary reopens diversion for all users
A new government reversed the 1999 tightening: anyone caught with a small amount for personal use could again avoid prosecution by completing six months of treatment or counselling.
812+4 points
20022 entries2 score changes
🇪🇪 Estonia Easing ✓
Estonia makes small amounts a misdemeanour
A new penal code treats possession of a small quantity for personal use as a misdemeanour punished by a fine. The statute does not fix that quantity at 7.5 grams. A large quantity is enough to intoxicate at least ten people. A 2014 Supreme Court judgment records that 7.5 grams of marijuana at 7 to 10 per cent THC was treated as already enough.
1119+8 points
🇨🇷 Costa Rica Easing ✓ Article
Costa Rica replaces public drug-use fines with voluntary treatment
Law 8204's revision of the drug law replaced public-use day-fines with voluntary, free treatment under Article 79. Article 58 retained eight to fifteen years for unauthorised cultivation and supply, and possession for the purposes listed there; it did not make all personal possession trafficking. The law was signed on 26 December 2001 and took effect on publication, 11 January 2002. It did not create a legal cannabis market, and separate child-protection provisions remained.
1722+5 points
20018 entries7 score changes
🇲🇱 Mali Easing ✓ Article
Mali replaces long drug sentences with a lighter personal-use tier
Mali's replacement drug law set three months to one year, a fine, or both for a small personal supply of a high-risk plant or substance, including cannabis oil; cannabis derivatives other than oil carried two to six months, a fine, or both. The lighter tier covered possession, purchase and cultivation, replacing the earlier law's long forced-labour punishments. Ordinary high-risk drug cultivation and international trafficking still carried five to ten years and a fine, and landholders had to destroy cannabis plants growing on their land.
59+4 points
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Easing ✓ Article
Lambeth trials cannabis warnings instead of arrests
A local police pilot in the London Borough of Lambeth used confiscation and warnings for small amounts of cannabis held for personal use. It exercised existing police discretion while possession remained an offence. The Home Office said the pilot evaluation would help inform its decision on reclassification. The local experiment did not itself change the national drug classes.
🇵🇹 Portugal Easing ✓ Article
Portugal decriminalises all drugs
Possessing up to a ten-day supply, 25 g of cannabis flower, stopped being a crime. Police confiscate it and refer the person to a dissuasion commission, which can suspend the case or impose a fine. Growing and selling remain crimes.
1124+13 points
20001 entry0 score changes
19991 entry0 score changes
19983 entries2 score changes
🇺🇾 Uruguay Easing ✓
Uruguay widens the personal-use exemption
An amendment replaced the "minimal quantity" of the 1974 decree with a "reasonable quantity" for personal use, judged by the court in each case.
🇧🇪 Belgium Easing ✓ Article
Belgium gives cannabis possession the lowest priority
A ministerial directive told prosecutors to treat adults holding cannabis for personal use as the lowest priority. A 2003 law and later directives fixed this at 3 g or one plant, usually ending in nothing more than a police record.
1117+6 points
🇦🇹 Austria Easing ✓
Austria replaces its drug law and retains diversion with a cannabis-specific assessment rule
The Narcotic Substances Act replaced the 1951 law, retaining provisional withdrawal of small-quantity personal-use cases for a two-year probation period under section 35. A health-authority opinion could be omitted for cannabis-only cases where no health measure appeared necessary, but was required if another such report had been made within five years. This continued earlier diversion provisions rather than introducing treatment instead of punishment for the first time.
1119+8 points
19961 entry0 score changes
19953 entries1 score change
🇨🇱 Chile Easing ✓
Chile stops punishing private use
Law 19.366 made using drugs in private, or holding them for one's own immediate use, not punishable. Using in public became a minor offence with a fine.
1122+11 points
🇧🇷 Brazil Easing ✓
Brazil begins to soften its treatment of drug users
Law 9,099 relaxed the penalties for consuming drugs, and Law 9,714 of 1998 went further towards taking prison out of the picture for users. The 1976 law that made use a crime stayed in force until 2006.
🇬🇮 Gibraltar Easing ✓ Article
Gibraltar’s appeal court rejects a charge for intended cannabis supply abroad
A man who carried 737 grams of cannabis resin through Gibraltar for supply in England defeated the prosecution’s appeal against the removal of his possession-with-intent-to-supply charge. The court held that the intended act of supply had to take place in Gibraltar, even after the 1985 amendment concerning recipients abroad. He had admitted possession, importation and exportation; the ruling concerned the separate intent-to-supply count.
19943 entries2 score changes
🇨🇦 Canada Easing ✓
A Canadian court ends the ban on marijuana literature
A court challenge sponsored by the activist Marc Emery persuaded an Ontario judge to overturn Canada's prohibition on marijuana and drug-related literature, so that High Times magazine and growing books could again be sold. Emery had moved to Vancouver that March and founded Hemp BC, a shop selling cannabis paraphernalia.
🇨🇴 Colombia Easing ✓ Article
Colombia's Constitutional Court protects the personal dose
The court ruled that punishing an adult for carrying or using a personal dose, 20 g of cannabis, violates the right to free development of personality. The dose itself had been defined in a 1986 law that still punished it.
1130+19 points
🇩🇪 Germany Easing ✓ Article
Germany's Constitutional Court limits prosecution of small amounts
The court upheld the ban on cannabis but said that cases involving a small amount for occasional personal use and no danger to others should generally not be prosecuted. It required enforcement authorities in the states to apply that principle in an essentially uniform way.
1520+5 points
19934 entries4 score changes
19924 entries2 score changes
🇿🇦 South Africa Easing ✓ Article
South Africa replaces its apartheid-era drug law
The Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act did away with the mandatory minimum sentences of 1971 and left punishment to the courts. Possession stayed a crime, and anyone with more than 115 g was presumed to be dealing.
711+4 points
🇩🇪 Germany Easing ✓
Germany lets prosecutors drop small cases
A new section 31a of the narcotics law allowed prosecutors to close a case without going to court when someone held a small amount for their own use. The Constitutional Court made this the expected outcome two years later.
🇦🇺 Australia · Australian Capital Territory Easing ✓
The Australian Capital Territory introduces fines for simple offences
The Drugs of Dependence (Amendment) Act created simple cannabis offences that can be dealt with by paying a fine, following South Australia's expiation scheme.
19912 entries2 score changes
🇲🇴 Macau Easing ✓ Article
Macau gives personal possession a fine-only alternative to prison
Macau’s 1991 replacement drug law punished personal acquisition or possession with up to three months in prison or a 500–10,000 pataca fine, replacing the old six-month prison term accompanied by a fine. Possession for therapeutic purposes had a separate fine-only penalty, and people dependent on drugs could receive treatment-related measures. The law listed cannabis, resin and oil; its personal-use approach continued in the 2009 replacement before penalties rose in 2017.
911+2 points
🇵🇪 Peru Easing ✓ Article
Peru exempts possession for personal use
Article 299 of the new Penal Code made possession for one's own immediate use not punishable. The limit was later fixed at 8 g of cannabis.
1120+9 points
19903 entries2 score changes
🇷🇺 Russia Easing ✓
A Soviet constitutional body rejects criminal liability for drug use
The Committee for Constitutional Supervision of the USSR declared that criminal liability for the illicit use of drugs was unconstitutional, three years after a decree had introduced it. Possession stayed a crime: in Russia from 1996 to 2004 even very small amounts of a drug such as heroin could bring years in prison.
🇸🇰 Slovakia Easing ✓ Article
Czechoslovakia's decriminalisation covers Slovakia
After the fall of the communist government, an amendment to the criminal code removed possession of drugs for one's own use as an offence.
1225+13 points
🇨🇿 Czechia Easing ✓ Article
Czechoslovakia stops punishing possession for personal use
After the fall of the communist government, an amendment to the criminal code removed possession of drugs for one's own use as an offence. It stayed that way until 1999.
1225+13 points
19883 entries2 score changes
🇵🇾 Paraguay Easing ✓ Article
Paraguay exempts 10 g for personal use
Law 1340 exempts from punishment a person holding a small amount only for their own use, measured as a daily dose: no more than 10 g of marijuana, or 2 g of cocaine, heroin or other opiates. A judge decides whether it was personal use, so arrest remains possible.
1117+6 points
🇵🇭 Philippines Easing ✓
Philippine Supreme Court acquits Aminnudin after excluding illegally seized cannabis
In People v. Aminnudin, G.R. 74869, the Supreme Court excluded cannabis seized during an unlawful warrantless arrest and bag search after a passenger left a ship in Iloilo. Officers had advance information and at least two days to seek warrants; the circumstances did not fit the claimed warrantless-arrest exceptions. Without the seized evidence, the Court reversed the life sentence and acquitted him. The decision enforced search-and-seizure protections rather than legalising possession.
🇨🇷 Costa Rica Easing ✓
Costa Rica stops treating drug use as a crime
Law 7093, the first version of the country's present drug law, made the use of drugs an administrative matter punished with day-fines. Production and trafficking stayed crimes.
1117+6 points
19871 entry1 score change
19862 entries1 score change
🇦🇷 Argentina Easing ✓ Article
Argentina's Supreme Court first protects personal use
In Bazterrica, the Supreme Court held Article 6 of Law 20.771 unconstitutional insofar as it criminalised simple drug possession for personal use within the private sphere protected by Article 19 of the Constitution. The majority reversed the conviction and returned the case for a new decision. The ruling protected private conduct that did not harm others rather than authorising trafficking or every form of public drug use.
1122+11 points
🇲🇺 Mauritius Easing ✓
Mauritius's Supreme Court rejects removing judicial control of drug-case bail
In Nordally v Attorney General, reported at 1986 MR 204, the Supreme Court held that the Dangerous Drugs Act's statutory exclusion of bail was inconsistent with the Constitution. It protected the judiciary's role in deciding bail and other matters incidental to criminal proceedings against executive interference. This was a procedural safeguard within the drug-control system, not an exemption from cannabis offences or an automatic entitlement to release. The ruling is documented retrospectively in the Privy Council's 2006 Khoyratty judgment.
19852 entries1 score change
🇦🇹 Austria Easing ✓
Austria revises small-quantity diversion and adds treatment-based sentence deferral
The 1985 Narcotics Act amendment rewrote the offences and diversion rules. Under revised section 17, prosecutors had to provisionally shelve cases confined to acquiring or possessing a small quantity for personal use, for two years, subject to the statutory health-related conditions. New section 23a allowed qualifying prison sentences of up to two years to be deferred for necessary medical treatment, with later conditional remission considered after successful treatment. Possession remained criminal: revised section 16's basic offence carried up to six months or a fine. This revised an existing diversion framework.
🇮🇱 Israel Easing ✓
Israel's attorney general tells police not to arrest first-time users
Under attorney general's directives issued in 1985 and renewed in 2003, people caught with a small amount of cannabis were not supposed to be arrested for a first offence, and police had discretion over later ones. The law itself still allowed up to three years in prison for possessing up to 15 g.
1117+6 points
19832 entries1 score change
🇵🇹 Portugal Easing ✓
Portugal hardens the law on trafficking and softens it for users
Decree-Law 430/83 revised the 1970 drug law in two directions at once: a harder line against trafficking and lighter penalties for consumption.
🇪🇸 Spain Easing ✓ Article
Spain confirms the personal-use exception in its Penal Code
Organic Law 8/1983 rewrote Article 344 to punish facilitating illegal drug consumption through cultivation, manufacture or trafficking, and possession for trafficking. Its wording distinguished personal possession from the trafficking offence and set different penalties according to the statutory harm category. This legislative clarification did not create a right to sell or give cannabis to others.
1134+23 points
19821 entry0 score changes
19801 entry0 score changes
19771 entry1 score change
19762 entries2 score changes
🇧🇷 Brazil Easing ✓
Brazil separates users from traffickers again
Law 6.368 ended the 1968 rule that punished users like dealers. Possession for personal use carried six months to two years in prison; trafficking carried three to fifteen.
79+2 points
🇳🇱 Netherlands Easing ✓ Article
The Netherlands separates cannabis from hard drugs
A revised Opium Act put cannabis on its own list and made possession of up to 30 g a minor offence that prosecutors would not pursue. The same policy let coffeeshops sell small amounts openly.
1239+27 points
19753 entries2 score changes
🇮🇹 Italy Easing ✓ Article
Italy stops punishing users for a "modest quantity" of drugs
Law 685 made buying or holding a "modest quantity" of drugs for personal use no longer a crime, though the drugs were still seized. It set no gram limit, so courts decided case by case what counted as modest. The law also brought in treatment and rehabilitation for drug users. Growing and sharing cannabis were still covered by other offences. It took effect on 30 December 1975, replacing the 1954 law that had punished possession like dealing.
1121+10 points
🇺🇸 United States · Alaska Easing ✓ Article
Alaska's Supreme Court protects cannabis at home
In Ravin v. State the court ruled that the state constitution protects possession of cannabis at home.
🇳🇿 New Zealand Easing ✓
New Zealand passes the Misuse of Drugs Act
The Act put cannabis in Class C, the lowest. The maximum for possession became three months in prison or a $500 fine, with a presumption against imprisonment.
1113+2 points
19743 entries1 score change
🇺🇾 Uruguay Easing ✓ Article
Uruguay stops punishing possession for personal use
Decree-law 14.294 exempted from punishment anyone holding a minimal quantity only for their own use. Growing and selling stayed crimes, so there was no legal way to obtain it until 2013.
1132+21 points
🇲🇵 Northern Mariana Islands Easing ✓ Article
Northern Mariana Islands’ court throws out marijuana possession and sale charges
Mariano Bermudes had marijuana possession and sale charges dismissed after the territorial High Court struck down the drug-control law used against him. The court found that lawmakers had given health officials insufficient guidance to decide which drugs to prohibit, and criticised a penalty scheme that could punish marijuana offences more severely than opium or heroin offences. A later territorial code expressly listed marijuana and capped the fine for possessing or giving away up to one ounce at $50.
🇪🇸 Spain Easing ✓
Spain's Supreme Court: possession for personal use is not a crime
The court held that possessing drugs for one's own use fell outside the criminal offence of trafficking. Parliament wrote this into the penal code in 1983.
19724 entries1 score change
19712 entries0 score changes
🇺🇸 United States Easing ✓ Article
Most American states cut their marijuana possession penalties
Twenty-one states had reduced penalties for possession by the start of 1970 and eleven more did so that year. In 1971 fifteen further states eased their laws and fourteen cut them again. By the end of 1971 only Texas, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island kept mandatory felony penalties for possession, though bills to reduce penalties failed in New York and California.
🇵🇷 Puerto Rico Easing ✓ Article
Puerto Rico cuts personal-possession penalties and offers probation
People possessing drugs for their own use faced one to three years in prison under the original new law, replacing the five-to-twenty-year cannabis penalty. Eligible first offenders could receive probation without a finding of guilt and later have the case dismissed once in their lifetime. The possession rule took effect on 23 June 1971 and benefited people convicted afterwards even when charged under earlier legislation; most other provisions followed after 180 days.
19702 entries1 score change
🇺🇸 United States Easing ✓ Article
The United States passes the Controlled Substances Act
The Act replaced the tax law struck down the year before. It put marijuana in Schedule I, the category for drugs with no accepted medical use, where it largely remains. It also repealed the mandatory minimum sentences of the 1950s and made simple possession a misdemeanour.
711+4 points
🇺🇸 United States · Virginia Easing ✓
Virginia makes first-offence marijuana possession a misdemeanour
After the LaVarre case, Virginia replaced its Uniform Narcotic Drug Act with a comprehensive drug control law. A first offence of possessing marijuana became a misdemeanour punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to twelve months in jail, or both; repeat offences remained felonies. Hearings were told that some prosecutors declined to charge because even the old minimum penalty seemed too great.
19693 entries2 score changes
🇨🇦 Canada Easing ✓ Article
Canada lets possession be dealt with by a fine
Convictions had risen from a few dozen a year to thousands, and nearly half ended in prison. An amendment to the Narcotic Control Act let prosecutors proceed by summary conviction, and a fine quickly became the usual sentence. Earlier that year the government had appointed the Le Dain Commission, which went on to recommend ending the offence altogether.
1113+2 points
🇩🇰 Denmark Easing ✓ Article
Denmark tells police to warn, not prosecute
A circular from the chief public prosecutor said that possession of a small amount of cannabis for personal use should be met with a warning. It stayed the standard response until 2004.
1122+11 points
🇲🇴 Macau Easing ✓
Macau’s colonial drug amendment cuts the prison term for use to six months
Portugal published an amendment reducing Macau’s personal-use prison term from six months–one year to a fixed six months, accompanied by a fine. It retained separate penalties for supplying drugs to others. The later 1991 replacement introduced a fine as an alternative to prison for personal acquisition or possession.