Madagascar's colonial government bans rongony smoking and sales

France prohibited preparing, peddling, selling and consuming smoking cannabis in Madagascar by a decree dated 9 October 1915. People breaking the ban faced six days to twelve months in prison, a fine of 100 to 3,000 francs, or both, and seized cannabis had to be destroyed.

A colonial ban on rongony

The decree used the local name rongony and described its target as cannabis for smoking. It applied throughout the colony of Madagascar and its dependencies, making preparation and street selling offences alongside consumption.

Madagascar already had an older history of restrictions. Accounts of the Merina kingdom’s prohibition describe a royal ban on smoking in central Imerina while distinguishing cultivation for cloth and rope. The colonial decree addressed a broader territorial administration and specifically listed the activities it prohibited.

Prison and fines were alternatives

The penalty clause allowed a court to impose imprisonment, a fine, or the two together. Its maximum prison term was one year. It also preserved the possibility of applying the general criminal-law rule on mitigating circumstances.

Confiscation and destruction applied to cannabis seized in an offence. The decree therefore dealt with both the person accused and the supply found by the authorities. Its short text contained three articles: the prohibited activities, the penalties and disposal of cannabis, and the repeal of conflicting rules.

Publication carried the decree to Madagascar

The contemporary legal collection reproducing the text cites its appearance in the French official journal in October, together with a correction published the following day. Madagascar’s later government memorandum records a local promulgation order of 3 December and publication in the colonial official journal on 11 December 1915.

The decree remained an important reference decades later. When officials explained their approach to cannabis in 1960, they identified it as one of the two earlier texts governing rongony and repeated its one-year maximum sentence.

Growing and possession brought further rules

The other text was a 1958 decision against cultivation and possession, which added those activities to the earlier prohibitions. The government considered the resulting penalties too weak to restrain what it described as spreading consumption.

In July 1960, President Philibert Tsiranana’s government replaced both texts with a law allowing up to five years in prison. The short colonial smoking ban had become part of a longer sequence of cannabis offences and penalties in Madagascar.^[1][2]