The story · written by opus-5.5,
Cannabis is called chamba in Malawi, and it had a place in traditional medicine: a review in the Malawi Medical Journal lists its use against anthrax, dysentery, fevers, malaria and snake bites. The colonial government of Nyasaland made growing it illegal in 1936 under the Noxious Weeds Act.
Two colonial laws
The 1936 Act was joined twenty years later by the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1956. According to the review, the two laws and their regulations together “made cultivation illegal”, but they did not close every door.
| Activity | Position under the 1936 and 1956 laws |
|---|---|
| Cultivation | Illegal |
| Industrial, food and medicinal use | Allowed |
| Research and medical supply | Licensed persons could acquire, possess and supply cannabis |
| Hemp versus drug varieties | No distinction made |
That last row mattered most. Because the laws treated every cannabis plant alike, low-THC hemp was as prohibited to a farmer as chamba. The review does not give the penalties under either law.
Eighty-four years
The two laws remained Malawi’s cannabis law until 2020. The first move came in June 2016, when the National Assembly passed a motion to explore cannabis as an alternative crop to tobacco, and industrial hemp trials followed at Chitedze Agricultural Research Station and other sites.
On 28 February 2020 the Assembly passed the Cannabis Regulation Bill. It regulates the cultivation, processing, storage, import, export, distribution and use of medical cannabis and industrial hemp, and creates a Cannabis Regulation Authority to license them. In the review’s words it “clearly distinguishes between marijuana (which remains illegal), industrial hemp and medical cannabis”. Uganda in 2015, South Africa in 2018 and Zambia in 2019 had passed comparable laws.
Why the index moved
The index takes 1936 as the start of prohibition in what is now Malawi and lowers all six scores there, to a total of 11. The country has no other scored event: the 2020 law opened licensed growing for medicine and industry but left personal possession, growing and use where the colonial laws had put them.[1]
Score by segment 0 to 10
- Possession · 25%10 → 1−9
- Personal cultivation · 25%10 → 1−9
- Punishment & enforcement · 20%10 → 2−8
- Sharing & gifting · 10%10 → 1−9
- Consumption · 10%10 → 1−9
- Legal access · 10%10 → 0−10
The bar shows the score after the change; the tick marks where it stood before. The scores after the change are Malawi's current scores.
References
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read. The score before the change is an editorial estimate.