Mozambique receives Portugal's prison terms for cannabis offences

Portugal extended its new drug law to Mozambique by an order dated 26 October 1970. People who obtained or held cannabis for themselves, or supplied it without profit, faced up to two years in prison and a fine; other unauthorised dealings carried two to eight years and a fine.

A new law across the colonies

Mozambique already had a cannabis prohibition dating from 1914, followed by pharmacy regulations in 1941. The new order brought the colony into a broader Portuguese criminal law covering a list of controlled drugs, including cannabis flower and resin.

Portugal’s government presented the law as a response to drug dependence, public health concerns and the connection it drew between drugs and crime. It described its earlier legislation as outdated and said the replacement drew on foreign experience and international recommendations. The overseas minister, Joaquim Moreira da Silva Cunha, extended it across the colonies, with a different arrangement for Macau.

Possession and gifts could bring prison

The main offence covered a long chain of activities: importing, growing, preparing, holding, transporting, selling and supplying drugs. Its ordinary punishment was two to eight years in prison plus a fine of 10,000 to 100,000 escudos.

The shorter sentence applied when those acts served the person’s own use or another person’s use without profit, subject to a separate exception concerning sexual crimes. Sharing cannabis could therefore attract punishment even when nobody charged for it. The personal-use range included a fine of 5,000 to 50,000 escudos alongside imprisonment.

Smoking could lead to further offences

Habitual use that made someone dangerous to themselves or others, or caused a public scandal, carried six months to two years and a fine. The same punishment applied to using drugs in front of others while knowing this could encourage their use.

People responsible for premises could also be punished for allowing illegal use or storage there. Foreigners convicted under the law faced expulsion after serving their sentence, without a time limit.

Authorised uses and a lasting inheritance

Industrial, scientific and therapeutic activities remained exempt when authorised. The colonial order adapted the prescription rules: a prescription normally could be dispensed only once unless the doctor expressly allowed repeats.

The law’s place in Mozambique lasted beyond colonial rule. The 1997 drug law explicitly repealed it, replacing its penalties and separating cannabis cultivation from ordinary trafficking. That replacement became the basis for later cannabis cases in Mozambique.^[1][2][3]