History
1960s
World average score and entries per decade
13.2 today, from 99.1 in 1860
World average score, every country counted the same Entries that moved a score Context only
No entries for the chosen countries here.
196925 entries3 score changes
🇧🇪 Belgium International ✓
Belgium joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Belgium ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 17 October 1969. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇮🇸 Iceland Ban ✓
Iceland bans cannabis
A regulation prohibited cannabis, and the ban was written into the drug law in 1974.
10016−84 points
🇲🇽 Mexico Enforcement ✓ Article
The US all but closes the Mexican border over marijuana
The United States began Operation Intercept at the Mexican border on 21 September. Intensive searches disrupted travel and provoked Mexican diplomatic protests. In October it was superseded by Operation Cooperation: Washington would ease crossing procedures and Mexico would intensify enforcement. Further talks established a joint working group on narcotics, marijuana and dangerous drugs. This was an enforcement and diplomatic campaign, not a new cannabis prohibition.
🇧🇫 Burkina Faso International ✓
Burkina Faso joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Burkina Faso acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 16 September 1969. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇻🇳 Vietnam Enforcement ✓
South Vietnam: US forces test cannabis detection dogs
Two dog-handler teams arrived to help US forces detect cannabis in baggage and around barracks. The dogs had been retrained in Okinawa after the US command requested teams in May, drawing on US Customs experience at border stations. The command history reported finds of discarded cannabis before baggage inspections as the wider suppression campaign targeted both users and their supplies.
🇨🇦 Canada Easing ✓ Article
Canada lets possession be dealt with by a fine
Convictions had risen from a few dozen a year to thousands, and nearly half ended in prison. An amendment to the Narcotic Control Act let prosecutors proceed by summary conviction, and a fine quickly became the usual sentence. Earlier that year the government had appointed the Le Dain Commission, which went on to recommend ending the offence altogether.
1113+2 points
🇲🇨 Monaco International ✓
Monaco joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Monaco acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 14 August 1969. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇺🇸 United States · Virginia Enforcement ✓
A Virginia student gets 25 years for marijuana
Frank LaVarre, a twenty-year-old former University of Virginia student caught at a Danville bus station with four containers of marijuana, pleaded guilty to possession and was sentenced to twenty-five years in the state penitentiary, five suspended, and a $500 fine. After Life magazine used the case to illustrate the country's drug laws, the governor pardoned him on 2 January 1970, placing him on probation.
🇺🇸 United States · Michigan Tightening ✓
John Sinclair receives a lengthy sentence for two cannabis cigarettes
John Sinclair receives nine and a half to ten years for possession of two marijuana cigarettes. The sale count had been dismissed on entrapment grounds. His case becomes the focus of a campaign later joined by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
🇲🇺 Mauritius International ✓
Mauritius joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Mauritius deposited its succession to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 18 July 1969. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇩🇰 Denmark Easing ✓ Article
Denmark tells police to warn, not prosecute
A circular from the chief public prosecutor said that possession of a small amount of cannabis for personal use should be met with a warning. It stayed the standard response until 2004.
1122+11 points
🇩🇰 Denmark Tightening ✓
Denmark introduces a six-year maximum for serious drug supply
Law No. 276 of 18 June 1969 inserted Penal Code section 191, providing up to six years' imprisonment for unlawful drug transfer to many people, for substantial payment or in other particularly aggravating circumstances. Related conduct, including possession, required intent to transfer on those terms. Committee guidance reserved its cannabis application for serious commercial activity; this was not a six-year maximum for every personal-possession case. A later government bill expressly confirms commencement on 1 July 1969.
🇲🇴 Macau Easing ✓
Macau’s colonial drug amendment cuts the prison term for use to six months
Portugal published an amendment reducing Macau’s personal-use prison term from six months–one year to a fixed six months, accompanied by a fine. It retained separate penalties for supplying drugs to others. The later 1991 replacement introduced a fine as an alternative to prison for personal acquisition or possession.
🇳🇬 Nigeria International ✓
Nigeria joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Nigeria ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 6 June 1969. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇩🇰 Denmark Debate ✓ Article
A Danish parliamentary committee calls for cannabis research and review of personal-use offences
The committee examining two drug bills found no clear basis for deciding controlled cannabis legalisation. It recommended more research into cannabis and the effects of legal controls on users, and inquiry into whether personal-use conduct should be removed from the drug law's offences. These were recommendations, not enacted legalisation or decriminalisation. The date is the committee report's issue date.
🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓ Article
The US Supreme Court strikes down the Marihuana Tax Act
In Leary v. United States the court ruled that the 1937 tax law, the basis of federal prohibition, forced people to incriminate themselves. State laws still banned cannabis, and Congress replaced the tax act with the Controlled Substances Act the following year.
🇻🇳 Vietnam Enforcement ✓
South Vietnam begins destroying cannabis fields
US military aircraft began searching the Delta for cannabis fields so security forces could cut and burn the plants. The flights followed South Vietnam's 1968 directive against cultivation and formed part of a joint campaign against supplies reaching US troops. A later US health report estimated that half a million plants had been destroyed by 1971, mostly in the Delta.
🇫🇷 France International ✓
France joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
France acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 19 February 1969. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇻🇪 Venezuela International ✓
Venezuela joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Venezuela ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 14 February 1969. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇨🇾 Cyprus International ✓
Cyprus joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Cyprus acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 30 January 1969. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓
Britain's Wootton Report says cannabis is less harmful than assumed
A government advisory committee concluded that the long-term moderate use of cannabis has no harmful effects, and that nobody should go to prison for possessing a small amount. The Home Secretary rejected it, but the 1971 drug law did put cannabis in a lower class than heroin.
🌐 International International ✓
The WHO expert committee reaffirms that cannabis control must continue
As western countries began to debate their cannabis laws, the WHO Expert Committee said it strongly reaffirmed its earlier opinion that cannabis is a drug of dependence producing public health and social problems, that its control must be continued, and that a medical need for cannabis as such no longer existed. The next year it recommended placing tetrahydrocannabinols in the strictest category of the treaty then being drafted.
🇵🇾 Paraguay Culture & science ✓ Article
Cannabis growing takes root on Paraguay's border with Brazil
In the late 1960s cannabis became an established crop in the department of Amambay, around Pedro Juan Caballero on the Brazilian border, as trafficking organisations took hold in the country. Some forty years later it was grown in eight departments, and a study put the value of cannabis exports at about 709 million dollars a year, against 1,594 million for soya, the main legal export.
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan Tightening ✓
Soviet authorities declare the Chu valley's wild cannabis a narcotic
The decision came after young people took an interest in the plant, known across the Soviet Union as dichka. The authorities burned the fields and sprayed them, and the plants grew back: their roots run deep, and stronger chemicals would have killed everything else. Industrial harvesting of hemp in the valley stopped in the middle of the 1980s.
🇦🇫 Afghanistan Culture & science ✓ Article
Afghanistan's king urges farmers to grow more hashish
With foreign demand rising, King Zahir Shah issued official edicts in 1969 and again in 1970 encouraging farmers to use fertilisers to increase hashish production. Cannabis plantations spread around Herat, Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif and lined the main roads out of Kabul, and the trade helped farmers buy tractors and other equipment.
196816 entries3 score changes
🇮🇶 Iraq Death penalty ✓ Article
Iraq adds death penalties for specified drug-trafficking cases
Repeat offenders convicted of specified supply offences, leaders of trafficking groups and customs or other officials with drug-related duties could now face death or lifelong hard labour. Ordinary trafficking, including cannabis growing for trade, carried lifelong hard labour, while unauthorised possession or growing for personal use rose from one to five years to three to ten years in prison, with higher fines. The government said the earlier penalties had failed to deter smugglers; further military penalties followed in 1970.
🇧🇷 Brazil Tightening ✓ Article
Brazil's military government punishes users like traffickers
A decree-law issued days after the regime suspended civil liberties gave possession for personal use the same sentence as dealing: one to five years of reclusion and a fine of ten to fifty times the highest minimum wage, against international guidance. Users kept facing prison until 2006.
117−4 points
🇧🇬 Bulgaria International ✓
Bulgaria joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Bulgaria ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 25 October 1968. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇻🇳 Vietnam Enforcement ✓ Article
South Vietnam orders provincial chiefs to stop cannabis cultivation
South Vietnam ordered province chiefs to stop cannabis cultivation and publicly condemned cannabis and opium use and trafficking. The government expanded its Narcotics Bureau as US commanders pressed for action against supplies reaching their troops. Earlier restrictions dated to at least a 1954 order; the crackdown led into aerial searches and crop destruction in 1969.
1008−92 points
🇬🇳 Guinea International ✓
Guinea joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Guinea acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 7 October 1968. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇬🇦 Gabon International ✓
Gabon accedes to the 1961 Single Convention
Gabon deposited its accession to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 29 February 1968; it took effect for Gabon on 30 March 1968.
🇨🇱 Chile International ✓
Chile joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Chile ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 7 February 1968. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇺🇸 United States · Texas Enforcement ✓
Texas gives an activist 30 years for one joint
Lee Otis Johnson, a Houston civil-rights organiser, handed a single marijuana cigarette to an undercover police officer. Texas law counted the handover as a sale, and a Houston jury gave him 30 years in prison. "Free Lee Otis" became a rallying cry on campuses across the state. He was freed in 1972, after a federal judge ruled that he should not have been tried in Houston, where feeling about the case ran high.
🇸🇪 Sweden Tightening ✓
Sweden passes the Narcotic Drugs Penal Act
The Act, still the core of Swedish drug law, replaced earlier decrees and raised the penalties for possession and supply. It followed the collapse of an experiment in prescribing drugs to users.
🇳🇴 Norway Tightening ✓
Norway creates a serious drug crime
A new section 162 of the penal code set a maximum of six years for serious drug offences, three years after the first cannabis seizure in the country. The maximum rose to ten years in 1972.
🇯🇵 Japan Enforcement ✓
A UN report finds most of Japan's cannabis offenders are foreigners
The report said those who broke the cannabis law were mainly foreign sailors and soldiers on leave from the Vietnam war. In 1972 there were 853 violations; by 2006 there were 2,423, and in 2019 4,570 after six years of increases.
🇯🇲 Jamaica Enforcement ✓
Bob Marley is jailed for ganja
The singer Bob Marley, who had recently taken up the Rastafari faith and its use of ganja as a sacrament, was arrested for possession. According to the historian Martin Booth he spent a month in jail, under a law that since 1941 had made prison compulsory for any ganja conviction, and used the time to learn more about Rastafari.
🇮🇱 Israel Tightening ✓
Israel makes it a crime to induce minors to use drugs
Amid a moral panic over hashish spreading to middle-class youth after the 1967 war, the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance Amendment Law added a section criminalising anyone who directly or indirectly induced minors to use dangerous drugs. Its sponsor called for heavy, even exemplary, penalties.
🇦🇷 Argentina Easing ✓
Argentina exempts possession for personal use
A reform of the penal code punished drug possession only above the amount needed for personal use. The exemption lasted six years.
1122+11 points
196714 entries2 score changes
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Tightening ✓ Article
Britain gives police the power to stop and search for drugs
Section 6 of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1967 let a constable who had reasonable grounds to suspect that a person was in possession of a drug unlawfully search that person, detain them for the search, and search any vehicle in which the constable suspected the drug was.
1511−4 points
🇵🇭 Philippines International ✓
The Philippines joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
The Philippines ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 2 October 1967. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓
A full-page advertisement in The Times calls for cannabis law reform
The Society of Mental Awareness (SOMA), founded that year by Stephen Abrams, placed an advertisement in The Times to influence the terms of reference of the Wootton Committee, which the government had set up to examine the case for reform. The committee's report referred to it in its introduction; the government rejected the report.
🇲🇾 Malaysia International ✓
Malaysia joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Malaysia acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 11 July 1967. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇺🇸 United States International ✓
The United States joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
The United States acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 25 May 1967. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇹🇷 Türkiye International ✓
Türkiye joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Türkiye acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 23 May 1967. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇲🇽 Mexico International ✓
Mexico joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Mexico ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 18 April 1967. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇪🇸 Spain Other law ✓
Spain adapts its law to the Single Convention
Law 17/1967 on narcotics, still in force, placed cannabis under state control and limited it to medical and scientific use.
🇼🇸 Samoa Ban ✓ Article
Samoa passes the Narcotics Act
The Act, modelled on New Zealand's 1965 law, prohibited growing cannabis or holding its seed, and possessing, using and supplying it. The three drug classes, with cannabis in Class B, were added in 2009.
1009−91 points
🇳🇱 Netherlands Enforcement ✓ Article
Cannabis becomes the Netherlands' main drug offence
Offences against the Opium Act had been rising since 1964, and 1967 was the turning point: 76 per cent of them now concerned cannabis, and 86 per cent by 1972. Seizures grew from 274 kilograms in 1970 to almost 6,000 in 1973. Surveys in 1970 put drug users at 1.9 to 3.4 per cent of the population, and Rotterdam detectives estimated that 70 to 80 per cent of the more than 60,000 visitors to the Kralingen pop festival in June 1970 smoked cannabis.
🇦🇺 Australia Tightening ✓
Australia passes the Narcotic Drugs Act
The Commonwealth Act put the 1961 Single Convention, which Australia had signed, into federal law.
19667 entries2 score changes
🇵🇱 Poland International ✓
Poland joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Poland ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 16 March 1966. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea Other law ✓
Spain publishes the decree applying its revised Penal Code in Equatorial Guinea
Decree 480/1966, dated 17 February and published on 1 March, declared the revised 1963 Spanish Penal Code applicable in Equatorial Guinea. This documents the ancestry of the penal framework later amended by the 1993 drug decree; it does not independently establish the first cannabis prohibition.
🇶🇦 Qatar Other law ✓
Qatar has a narcotics decree-law
The 1987 narcotics law repealed Decree-Law 28 of 1966 on combating narcotic drugs and regulating their use and trade, as amended in 1972, 1983 and 1986. The 1966 text itself was not read.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Tightening ✓ Article
Nigeria's military government issues the Indian Hemp Decree
Months after taking power, the military government replaced colonial-era fines with some of the harshest penalties in the world: the death penalty for cultivation, 21 years for importation, and severe penalties for use and possession. The death penalty was later removed.
113−8 points
🇫🇮 Finland Ban ✓
Finland prohibits cannabis
Cannabis was banned in 1966, and parliament voted narrowly in 1971 to make personal use a crime as well.
10017−83 points
🇳🇱 Netherlands International ✓
The Netherlands joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
The Netherlands ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 16 July 1965. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇵🇰 Pakistan International ✓
Pakistan joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Pakistan ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 9 July 1965. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇫🇮 Finland International ✓
Finland joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Finland ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 6 July 1965. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇪🇹 Ethiopia International ✓
Ethiopia joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Ethiopia acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 29 April 1965. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇱🇧 Lebanon International ✓
Lebanon joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Lebanon ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 23 April 1965. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇸🇪 Sweden Culture & science ✓
Stockholm doctors prescribe drugs to addicts, and Sweden draws its lesson
In a legal prescription programme backed by the newspaper Expressen, about 120 people received amphetamine and opiates: some four million doses of amphetamine and 600,000 of opiates in two years. Drugs leaked to others, and the project was ended in 1967 after a young woman died of an overdose in a participant's flat. The physician Nils Bejerot, who had opposed it, became the founding figure of Sweden's restrictive policy.
🇳🇴 Norway Enforcement ✓
Norway makes its first cannabis seizure and prosecution
In 1965 Norway recorded its first seizure of cannabis, and its first court case under the 1964 Medicines Act, in which a foreign student was arrested and punished for unlawful dealings with cannabis. The Medicines Act of 1964 had replaced the opium law and set fines or up to two years in prison for offences involving narcotics.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Debate ✓ Article
A Nigerian psychiatrist describes cannabis use as a medical problem
Thomas Adeoye Lambo, one of the first psychiatrists to treat cannabis-using patients in West Africa, published a study of addiction in the leading West African medical journal and in the UN's drug research bulletin. It helped establish cannabis use as a medical question in the region. The Indian Hemp Decree imposed by the military government the following year shared very little with his view.
🇳🇿 New Zealand Other law ✓
New Zealand enacts the Narcotics Act to implement the Single Convention
The Law Commission's historical review identifies the Narcotics Act 1965 as the measure implementing the 1961 Single Convention. It distinguished dealing offences from simple possession or use, with substantially higher penalties for dealing. This year-level entry records enactment as described by the review, rather than asserting an exact commencement day.
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Tightening ✓ Article
Kyrgyzstan ends southern Chuy hemp cultivation and converts its farms
A Soviet decision barred sowing southern Chuy hemp throughout Kyrgyzstan from 1965, according to historians who quote the June 1964 decision. They describe pressure from Kyrgyz party leader Turdakun Usubaliyev, the development of substitute industrial materials and the conversion of hemp farms to other crops and livestock. The earlier Soviet restriction had expressly targeted Indian hemp.
🇪🇹 Ethiopia Culture & science ✓
Rastafari settle on the emperor's land at Shashamane
In the 1960s Rastafari from the Caribbean began to settle on land near Shashamane that Emperor Haile Selassie had set aside for them. The town later became known for growing cannabis, mostly for local use; an American report of 1998 described moderate quantities grown in the area. The law made no exception for the settlers.
196429 entries3 score changes
🇸🇪 Sweden International ✓
Sweden joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Sweden ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 18 December 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇲🇱 Mali International ✓
Mali joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Mali acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 15 December 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🌐 International International ✓
The Single Convention enters into force
The treaty took effect once forty countries had ratified it. Through the 1960s and 1970s most governments rewrote their drug laws to match, which is why so many national prohibitions date from these years.
🇮🇳 India International ✓
India joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
India ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 13 December 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇳🇮 Nicaragua Ban ✓ Article
Nicaragua makes marihuana a crime against public security
Law 1034 punished anyone who brought in, transported, grew, kept or distributed marihuana or any Cannabis species without authorisation, set a lesser prison term for being found with the drug in cigarettes or any other form, and gave 60 to 180 days of arrest to anyone found under its effects. It left earlier public health rules in place, so some restriction may predate it.
10016−84 points
🇰🇪 Kenya International ✓
Kenya joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Kenya acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 13 November 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇧🇷 Brazil Tightening ✓
Brazil's new military government hardens the drug article
Early in the military dictatorship President Castello Branco signed Law 4.451, which reinforced and hardened the penalties of the 1940 Penal Code for narcotics. It was the first of three tightenings under the dictatorship: a decree-law of 1968 put the user on the same footing as the trafficker, and Law 5.726 of 1971 confirmed it.
🇩🇰 Denmark International ✓
Denmark joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Denmark ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 15 September 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇹🇳 Tunisia International ✓
Tunisia joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Tunisia ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 8 September 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇵🇪 Peru International ✓
Peru joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Peru ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 22 July 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇯🇵 Japan International ✓
Japan joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Japan ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 13 July 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇧🇪 Belgium Easing ✓
Belgium lets prosecutors release minor drug offenders on probation
A law extended the 1921 drug law so that prosecutors could release minor offenders on probation.
🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago International ✓
Trinidad and Tobago joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Trinidad and Tobago acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 22 June 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇧🇷 Brazil International ✓
Brazil joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Brazil ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 18 June 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Tightening ✓ Article
Britain makes growing cannabis an offence
To ratify the Single Convention, the Dangerous Drugs Act 1964 made it an offence to cultivate the cannabis plant and to let premises be used for smoking it. Possession had been illegal since 1928.
2015−5 points
🇸🇽 Sint Maarten Other law ✓
Sint Maarten comes under the Netherlands Antilles’ new drug ordinance
The Netherlands Antilles’ new Opium Ordinance took effect on 1 June 1964, covering Sint Maarten as part of the country. It replaced an older ordinance dated 30 July 1929. The later consolidated law contains the cannabis controls under which Sint Maarten’s prosecutors issued their small-quantity policy in 2018.
🇨🇼 Curaçao Other law ✓
Curaçao starts using a replacement drug-control law
The Netherlands Antilles’ replacement Opium Ordinance came into force on 1 June 1964, providing the legal foundation later carried into Curaçao’s own drug law. It replaced an ordinance from July 1929; Curaçao’s later consolidated text prohibited cannabis cultivation, possession and use while retaining medical exceptions. The island replaced that inherited ordinance again in July 2024.
🇯🇲 Jamaica International ✓
Jamaica joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Jamaica acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 29 April 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇭🇺 Hungary International ✓
Hungary joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Hungary ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 24 April 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇺🇦 Ukraine International ✓
Ukraine joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Ukraine ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 15 April 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇩🇿 Algeria International ✓
Algeria joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Algeria acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 7 April 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🏳️ Somaliland Other law ✓ Article
A new Somali penal code punishes drug supply in what is now Somaliland
A new penal code brought one-to-three-year prison terms for unauthorised drug trading, possession for sale and supplying or obtaining drugs for others to the north as well as the rest of the Somali Republic. Hosting a place for drug consumption carried six months to two years; entering it to consume carried up to six months. The code replaced the Indian Penal Code previously used in Somaliland, and later special drug laws imposed heavier penalties.
🇸🇴 Somalia Other law ✓
Somalia’s new penal code sets prison terms for drug supply and use venues
Somalia’s new penal code prescribed one to three years in prison for unauthorised narcotics trade, possession for sale and supplying or obtaining drugs for someone else. Allowing premises to be used for drug consumption carried six months to two years; entering such premises to consume carried up to six months. The code took effect in April 1964, and special drug laws followed in 1970 and 1984.
🇸🇳 Senegal International ✓
Senegal joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Senegal acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 24 January 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇬🇭 Ghana International ✓
Ghana joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Ghana ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 15 January 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇪🇨 Ecuador International ✓
Ecuador joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Ecuador acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 14 January 1964. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇯🇲 Jamaica Tightening ✓ Article
Jamaica sets an 18-month minimum for ganja possession
The Jamaica Labour Party government, which had promised early laws on rape and ganja, raised the penalty for a first possession offence to a minimum of 18 months and a maximum of three years in prison without the option of a fine. Police sergeants could authorise searches without a magistrate's warrant, vehicles suspected of carrying ganja could be seized, and allowing premises to be used for ganja became an offence. Norman Manley, for the opposition, called the penalties fit only for fascist countries.
92−7 points
🇮🇱 Israel Culture & science ✓ Article
An Israeli chemist isolates THC from hashish supplied by the police
Raphael Mechoulam, a chemist at the Weizmann Institute, obtained 11 pounds of Lebanese hashish from a police officer who had seized it from smugglers, and carried it by public bus from Tel Aviv to his laboratory in Rehovot. A few months later he and his colleagues isolated THC, the plant's psychoactive ingredient, and determined its structure. It was the first of many such supplies over the next 50 years.
🇳🇿 New Zealand Tightening ✓
New Zealand expands its Indian-hemp definition beyond flowering tops
The Dangerous Drugs Amendment Act 1963 received assent. Section 2 replaced the original Schedule's reference to dried flowering or fruiting tops of the pistillate plant with any part of the plant. The amendment broadened the plant material described by the existing definition; it was not New Zealand's first cannabis-control law.
🇦🇷 Argentina International ✓
Argentina joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Argentina ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 10 October 1963. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇲🇲 Myanmar International ✓
Myanmar joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Myanmar ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 29 July 1963. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka International ✓
Sri Lanka joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Sri Lanka acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 11 July 1963. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇳🇿 New Zealand International ✓
New Zealand joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
New Zealand ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 26 March 1963. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇦🇫 Afghanistan International ✓
Afghanistan joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Afghanistan ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 19 March 1963. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
196216 entries2 score changes
🇬🇭 Ghana Easing ✓
Ghana's Supreme Court overturns an Indian-hemp possession conviction
In Hassan v The State, the Supreme Court held that section 47(1) of the 1961 Act required proof that Indian hemp was prepared for smoking or was smoking residue. Finding leaves identified as Indian hemp did not establish that element. The court quashed the conviction, ordered acquittal and refused a retrial. The decision concerned the charge and evidence before it, rather than authorising every form of cannabis possession or supply.
🇮🇱 Israel International ✓
Israel joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Israel acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 23 November 1962. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇯🇴 Jordan International ✓
Jordan joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Jordan ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 15 November 1962. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇨🇺 Cuba International ✓ Article
Cuba joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Cuba acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 30 August 1962. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and calls for their restriction to medical and scientific purposes, subject to its provisions. The accession predates the convention's international entry into force on 13 December 1964 and does not identify Cuba's first domestic prohibition or prescribe a Cuban prison sentence.
🇮🇶 Iraq International ✓
Iraq joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Iraq ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 29 August 1962. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇸🇾 Syria International ✓
Syria joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Syria acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 22 August 1962. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇧🇯 Benin International ✓
Benin joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Benin ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 27 April 1962. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇰🇼 Kuwait International ✓
Kuwait joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Kuwait acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 16 April 1962. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇧🇴 Bolivia Other law ✓ Article
Bolivia punishes unlawful cannabis possession with three to five years
People holding narcotics without being able to justify their lawful origin faced three to five years in prison under a law explicitly covering Indian hemp and its preparations. Unlawful manufacture, trade or supply carried three to ten years plus a fine, while misuse led to compulsory admission to a health or welfare institution. The law combined prison sentences with medical supervision; compulsory treatment also appeared in the later 1988 drug law.
🇸🇰 Slovakia Tightening ✓ Article
Czechoslovakia's criminal code punishes possession in Slovakia
The communist-era criminal code made it a crime to produce, import or keep narcotics without permission, with up to two years in prison.
2012−8 points
🇨🇿 Czechia Tightening ✓ Article
Czechoslovakia's new criminal code punishes possession
The communist-era criminal code made it a crime to produce, import or keep narcotics without permission, with up to two years in prison. Cannabis was barely known in Czechoslovakia at the time; home-grown use spread in the 1970s and 1980s.
2012−8 points
🇳🇬 Nigeria Enforcement ✓ Article
Cannabis seizures in Nigeria rise ninefold in a year
Two years after independence, police seized 7.2 tons of cannabis nationwide, against 823 kilograms the year before, and identified twenty-eight cannabis farms. As cocoa declined in the 1960s, cannabis filled some of the gap in farm production. Newspapers linked the spread of smoking to urban deviance and to political violence in the Western Region, with little evidence for that causal claim. Seizures also reflected policing capacity and attention; they do not establish a ninefold increase in consumption.
🇧🇸 Bahamas Other law ✓
The Bahamas define Indian hemp in law
Act 26 amended the Dangerous Drugs Act with a new definition of Indian hemp covering all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa, its resin and every preparation of them.
196112 entries3 score changes
🇵🇷 Puerto Rico Enforcement ✓
Puerto Rico’s top court keeps a cannabis prosecution dismissed
María Moreno Medina, accused of holding part of a cannabis cigarette in a handbag in Ponce, kept the dismissal of her case because prosecutors filed the formal charge too late. The Supreme Court also explained that the harsher 1959 felony law could not punish conduct alleged to have occurred under the earlier misdemeanor law. The police complaint dated the incident to May 1959 at the Bar El Cocodrilo.
🇲🇦 Morocco International ✓
Morocco joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Morocco acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 4 December 1961. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇹🇭 Thailand International ✓
Thailand joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Thailand ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 31 October 1961. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇨🇦 Canada International ✓
Canada joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Canada ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 11 October 1961. The convention lists cannabis and cannabis resin among its controlled drugs and obliges its parties to limit their production, trade, possession and use to medical and scientific purposes.
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Medical ✓ Article
Sri Lanka lets Ayurvedic physicians use cannabis
The Ayurveda Act allowed traditional physicians to obtain cannabis for medicinal preparations, an exception that still exists. Their only legal source is the state's Ayurvedic Drugs Corporation, which gets most of its cannabis from police seizures.
89+1 point
🇷🇺 Russia Hemp ✓ Article
The Single Convention turns Soviet hemp into a drug plant
After the Soviet Union ratified the 1961 convention, hemp began to be treated as a source of cannabinoids and the fields shrank: below 300,000 hectares by 1971 and below 100,000 by the middle of the 1980s. In 1993 the only factory making hemp harvesters stopped production. In 2012 Russia grew 2,000 hectares.
🇳🇵 Nepal Tightening ✓
Nepal starts taxing and licensing cannabis shops
Nepal began licensing and taxing the sale of cannabis, and licensed shops in Kathmandu, along Freak Street above all, became famous on the hippie trail. The trade lasted until the king revoked every licence in 1973 under pressure from the United States.
10049−51 points
🇯🇲 Jamaica Tightening ✓ Article
Jamaica raises the penalties for growing and dealing ganja
After a 1960 rising by Claudius Henry's ganja-using religious group, in which several British soldiers were killed, the press and much of the public tied the unrest to ganja. The amended Dangerous Drugs Law made growing, selling or dealing punishable by obligatory imprisonment of up to five years and an unlimited fine. The home affairs minister said police believed 50 to 75 per cent of violent crimes were the direct result of ganja smoking; he offered no scientific data.
🇮🇳 India International ✓
India keeps bhang out of the Single Convention
India's delegation negotiated a definition of cannabis that excludes the leaves, so that bhang could go on being consumed, notably at Holi. The 1985 narcotics law kept the same exclusion.
🇨🇦 Canada Easing ✓ Article
Canada passes the Narcotic Control Act
Passed the same year as the Single Convention, the Act set a minimum of seven years for importing and a maximum of seven for possession, but dropped the mandatory six months in prison for possession, so judges could again give a fine or probation. Cannabis had been banned since 1923 but was barely used; arrests only took off later in the decade.
911+2 points
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🇲🇬 Madagascar Tightening ? Article
Madagascar raises rongony penalties to as much as five years
Madagascar raised the penalty for growing, preparing, transporting, selling, possessing or consuming rongony to six months to five years in prison, a fine, or both. President Philibert Tsiranana's government said earlier colonial penalties had failed to curb spreading consumption and replaced the 1915 decree and 1958 rules. People providing vehicles or premises to facilitate offences faced the same penalties, with confiscation or closure and a residence ban.
103−7 points
🇰🇼 Kuwait Ban ✓ Article
Kuwait places Indian hemp under licensed drug controls
A drug-control law took effect on gazette publication, expressly listing Indian hemp and all its preparations and derivatives. Unauthorised possession, purchase, sale and transfer were prohibited, while patients could hold prescribed quantities for medical reasons and licensed institutions could handle drugs under permit. Violations carried up to three years in prison and a fine of up to 3,000 rupees, subject to any stronger criminal-law penalty.
1002−98 points
🇸🇾 Syria Other law ✓
The United Arab Republic's drug law applies in Syria
While Syria and Egypt were joined in the United Arab Republic, a decision-law on combating narcotics and regulating their use and trade was issued for both. In Syria it stayed the drug law for thirty-three years: Law 2 of 1993 names it, with its amendments, as the law it repeals.
🇪🇬 Egypt Tightening ✓
Egypt passes its narcotics law
Law 182 of 1960, still the basis of Egyptian drug law, set long prison terms for possessing hashish and allowed the death penalty for trafficking. Egypt had pushed for international control of cannabis since the 1920s.
113−8 points