The story
Paraguay grows more cannabis than any other country in South America, almost all of it for export and all of it illegal. In 2020 its Congress tried to let sick people grow a few plants of their own. The president said no.
What Congress passed
Medical cannabis had been legal since 2017, but in the form of oil from licensed laboratories, which patients said was scarce and mostly imported. The bill that the Chamber of Deputies approved on 26 August 2020 took another route. It amended articles 30 and 33 of the drug law of 1988:
- holding cannabis would not be punished when it was exclusively for medical use
- the patient needed a medical certificate endorsed by the health ministry
- the patient, or a legal representative, could grow, harvest and process the plants
- the premises had to be authorised by the anti-drug secretariat
Holding more than the treatment required would still bring two to four years in prison. The stated aim was to give people of limited means a way to the medicine.
The veto
| Date | Step |
|---|---|
| 26 August 2020 | Chamber of Deputies gives final approval |
| 11 September 2020 | The president’s veto is reported |
| 5 November 2020 | The Senate votes for the bill again, with 26 votes |
| April 2022 | Still waiting in the Chamber of Deputies |
The anti-drug secretariat and the health ministry had both asked for the veto. Their argument was that the bill contravened the Single Convention of 1961, and that a law with weak controls could let production leak to other uses. The government preferred its own model: licensed producers who give at least 2% of their output to the health ministry for free distribution. Twelve firms held such licences.
The patients’ group Mamá Cultiva, which had campaigned for the bill, rejected the veto and looked to Congress to override it.
What patients had instead
By April 2022 the national register for medical cannabis listed three doctors and forty patients. Mamá Cultiva called the 2017 law a dead letter: no state research, no domestic growing by the licensed firms, no oil distributed. It put the number of people who might need treatment at 700,000 to a million.
In April 2024 a woman in her sixties was jailed for having two plants.
Why the index did not move
A bill that is vetoed changes nothing in law, so Paraguay’s cultivation score stays at its low level across this date. The score for possession rests on the exemption of ten grams for personal use, which dates from 1988 and was not touched.[1][2][3][4]
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Paraguay here.
References
- Ferrere — Fue sancionado el proyecto de ley que despenaliza la siembra, el uso y la tenencia de cannabis para uso medicinal (1 September 2020)archived
- La Nación — Ejecutivo veta proyecto de ley que despenaliza el cultivo de marihuana para uso medicinal (11 September 2020)archived
- La Nación — Senado se ratifica en uso medicinal de la marihuana (5 November 2020)archived
- Última Hora — Ley de uso del cannabis medicinal es letra muerta, denuncian (20 April 2022)archived
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.