Malta tightens the rules for its cannabis associations

In May 2025, three and a half years after Malta legalised cannabis, parliament amended the law unanimously. The changes kept every personal allowance: adults may still carry 7 grams, keep 50 at home and grow four plants. They tightened the rules for the clubs and created a new offence: a smell that bothers the neighbours.

The mood before

Use had not risen. A Eurobarometer survey published in December 2024 put past-year use at 4 per cent, down from 7 per cent in 2021. But public patience was thinner. Support for a ban had grown by eight points to 46 per cent, and 49 per cent saw cannabis smoked in public as a problem where they lived, up 14 points.

What changed

Measure	Rule from 2025
Smell	A €235 fine when cannabis smoke bothers neighbours, even from inside a home
Minors at associations	Fines of up to €10,000
Location of associations	At least 250 metres from schools, sports facilities and youth centres
Associations’ offences	Heard by a Court of Magistrates
Definition of cannabis	Covers THC and CBD; non-psychoactive cannabinoids with under 0.2% THC excluded

Who smells it?

The odour fine was the hardest to apply. On 20 May the police commissioner, Angelo Gafà, told MPs that “the police are not experts in odour” and that he could not tell whether a smell was cannabis, a cigar or a vape. He urged them to pass laws that could actually be enforced.

The job went instead to the regulator, the Authority for the Responsible Use of Cannabis. From mid-June it took complaints on a freephone line. Complaints could not be anonymous and had to say where the smell came from; officers would first talk to those involved and recommend remedies, and fine only if the nuisance went on. Its chair, Joey Reno Vella, reminded the public that smoking in public was still illegal.

The parliamentary secretary responsible, Rebecca Buttigieg, said the 2021 law had met its harm-reduction goals without raising use among people who did not already use cannabis. In law, what Malta allows adults to hold and grow is unchanged since 2021.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}