History
1980s
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.
198924 entries3 score changes
🌐 International International ✓
The Single Convention's deadline for ending traditional cannabis use passes
Article 49 let countries keep non-medical use of cannabis for a transitional period of at most 25 years from the treaty's entry into force. India, Nepal, Pakistan and later Bangladesh had claimed it. The period ran out in December 1989; bhang, made from leaves the treaty does not count as cannabis, was not affected.
🇨🇺 Cuba International ✓
Cuba joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Cuba acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 14 December 1989. The Protocol, adopted in Geneva on 25 March 1972 and in force from 8 August 1975, strengthened the international control board and, among other changes, lets parties provide treatment, education, after-care and rehabilitation for people who use drugs, as an alternative to conviction or punishment or in addition to it.
🇭🇳 Honduras Tightening ✓
Honduras's replacement drug law takes effect
Decree 126-89 prohibited cannabis cultivation and prescribed nine to twelve years' imprisonment plus a fine for illicit growing. Minimum quantities for immediate personal consumption, assessed medically, brought security measures under Article 26: up to thirty days' internment and a fine for a first case, escalating measures for repetition, and rehabilitation confinement for dependent users. Above that minimum, possession fell under the trafficking provision. Adopted on 5 September and published on 23 November, the law took effect twenty days after publication, on 13 December. Articles 16 to 30 and 41 were later repealed when the criminal code commenced on 25 June 2020.
🇸🇳 Senegal International ✓
Senegal joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Senegal ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 27 November 1989. Article 3 of the convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
🇳🇬 Nigeria International ✓
Nigeria joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Nigeria ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 1 November 1989. Article 3 of the convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
🇺🇸 United States Tightening ✓
American agents raid garden shops in 46 states
Operation Green Merchant, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration from 1988 to 1992, went after shops selling equipment for growing indoors. It started from advertisements in the magazines High Times and Sinsemilla Tips and traced deliveries through parcel records; a Dutch seed bank was among the targets. The raids of this day brought more than 100 arrests. In all there were 1,698 arrests, and 3,794 indoor gardens were seized.
🇨🇳 China International ✓
China joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
China ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 25 October 1989. Article 3 of the convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
🇲🇷 Mauritania International ✓
Mauritania joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Mauritania acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 24 October 1989. 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.
🇲🇭 Marshall Islands Enforcement ✓ Article
Marshall Islands overturns a cannabis conviction after denial of a lawyer
George Sakaio’s marijuana conviction and two-year prison sentence were reversed after he pleaded guilty without a lawyer and was refused permission to withdraw the plea. The Supreme Court held that police and courts had failed to protect his right to counsel and ensure he understood the plea. It returned the case to the High Court for further proceedings.
🇦🇷 Argentina Tightening ✓ Article
Argentina criminalises personal possession again
A new drug law set one month to two years in prison for possession for personal use, which a court could replace with treatment or an educational course. The Supreme Court upheld it in 1990 and reversed itself in 2009.
2211−11 points
🇯🇲 Jamaica International ✓
Jamaica joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Jamaica acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 6 October 1989. The Protocol, adopted in Geneva on 25 March 1972 and in force from 8 August 1975, strengthened the international control board and, among other changes, lets parties provide treatment, education, after-care and rehabilitation for people who use drugs, as an alternative to conviction or punishment or in addition to it.
🇧🇹 Bhutan Enforcement ✓ Article
Bhutan records its first cannabis arrest
The first drug-abuse arrest in Bhutan, for cannabis, took place in Gelephu.
🇫🇷 France Tightening ✓
France's highest criminal court applies restrictions on relief from drug-related expulsion orders
In appeal 88-87.571, the Court of Cassation upheld refusal to consider lifting a permanent exclusion from French territory imposed for drug offences. The 1987 trafficking law had removed that route of relief. The Court treated the change as a procedural rule governing sentence execution, immediately applicable even though the offences preceded the amendment. Only applications filed before the new rule took effect retained the earlier remedy. The judgment concerned drug offences generally; it did not identify the substance involved or change the cannabis possession penalty.
🇧🇸 Bahamas International ✓
The Bahamas joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
The Bahamas ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 30 January 1989. Article 3 of the convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓
US Supreme Court upholds helicopter observation of a cannabis greenhouse
In Florida v. Riley, the Supreme Court upheld naked-eye observation of cannabis through openings in a greenhouse from a helicopter at 400 feet. Justice O'Connor's separate concurrence supplied the fifth vote and stressed the regularity of public air travel at that altitude, rather than aviation-rule compliance alone. The ruling did not approve every low-altitude flight over a home.
🇸🇪 Sweden Tightening ✓
Sweden extends compulsory substance-use care from four to six months
Act 1988:870 replaced the 1981 LVM law and raised the maximum care period from four to six months, with discharge required earlier when the purpose of care had been achieved. The reform sought intervention at an earlier stage of serious substance misuse and made compulsory care mandatory where its legal conditions were satisfied. It concerned qualifying alcohol and drug cases, including cannabis within the drug framework, rather than imposing six months of detention on every user.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Other law ✓
Vanuatu sets a twenty-year maximum for drug offences
Vanuatu’s 1989 amendment replaced the general drug-offence penalty with a fine of up to VT100 million, up to twenty years in prison, or both. The same general clause applied to possession, supply and cannabis cultivation. Later appeal-court guidance directed judges to distinguish small personal grows from commercial operations when choosing a sentence within that wide range.
🇺🇸 United States · California Debate ✓ Article
California research panel proposes limited home cultivation
The commentary in the Research Advisory Panel's annual report for 1989 proposed allowing cultivation at a person's residence, without authorising supply to others or increasing the one-ounce limit outside the home. It spoke for members as experts, not their appointing agencies, and included minority reports. The date identifies the reporting year, not a verified publication day; this was a recommendation, not an enacted reform.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Tightening ✓
Nigeria creates its drug enforcement agency with sentences up to life
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency Decree set up the agency that still enforces Nigeria's drug law and, with the Indian Hemp Decree of 1966 and the Special Tribunal decrees of 1984 and 1986, forms its legal base. As summarised in a 2017 regional review, the law makes no distinction between possession and use, both punished with 15 to 25 years in prison, while producing, planting or growing, selling, buying or otherwise dealing all carry life imprisonment. The decree was amended in 1990 and 1992 and became an Act in the 2004 revision of the laws.
🇪🇬 Egypt Death penalty ✓
Egypt rewrites its drug penalties around the death sentence
Law 122 of 1989 amended the narcotics law of 1960 and gave it the penalties still in force. Article 33 sets death and a fine of 100,000 to 500,000 pounds for importing or exporting a narcotic without a licence, for producing one for trade, and for growing or trading in the listed plants or their seeds for trade. Article 34 sets death or life at hard labour for holding, buying or selling a drug with intent to trade, and death where an aggravating circumstance applies, such as supplying a person under 21 or acting near a school or place of worship. Offering a drug to someone without payment brings life at hard labour and a fine of 50,000 to 200,000 pounds under Article 35.
🇧🇩 Bangladesh Ban ✓ Article
Bangladesh bans cannabis outright
Ganja had been grown under licence and sold in government-approved shops, a holdover from colonial excise law. Cultivation was prohibited in 1987 and sales in 1989, and the Narcotics Control Act 1990 made the ban complete.
325−27 points
198830 entries4 score changes
🇧🇴 Bolivia Other law ✓ Article
Bolivia defines personal possession as two days of consumption
Two medical experts were to assess how much counted as 48 hours of personal drug consumption under the implementing rules for the July drug law. Possession above that amount was presumed to be trafficking, exposing a cannabis user to ten to twenty-five years in prison plus a fine. People within the personal-use amount still faced compulsory treatment, with the quantity assessed individually.
🌐 International International ✓
The UN Convention against Illicit Traffic
The third drug treaty went further than the first two: it asks states to make possession, purchase and cultivation for personal use a criminal offence, subject to their constitutions. That clause is why most reforms since have taken the form of decriminalisation or court rulings, not open legalisation.
🇺🇸 United States Tightening ✓
A second Anti-Drug Abuse Act sets the goal of a drug-free America
The act signed by President Reagan created the Office of National Drug Control Policy and declared a drug-free America a policy goal. It restored a federal death penalty and allowed federal benefits to be denied to people convicted of drug offences.
🇵🇾 Paraguay Easing ✓ Article
Paraguay exempts 10 g for personal use
Law 1340 exempts from punishment a person holding a small amount only for their own use, measured as a daily dose: no more than 10 g of marijuana, or 2 g of cocaine, heroin or other opiates. A judge decides whether it was personal use, so arrest remains possible.
1117+6 points
🇳🇱 Netherlands Culture & science ✓ Article
The first Cannabis Cup is held in Amsterdam
The conventionally recognised first official High Times Cannabis Cup took place in Amsterdam in 1988, founded by Steven Hager; Cultivator's Choice's Skunk No. 1 won. The organiser's retrospective uses 1988, while accounts from Ben Dronkers and the World of Cannabis Museum describe an earlier gathering in 1987. These sources do not establish a single undisputed date for every early meeting.
🇮🇷 Iran Death penalty ✓
Iran sets the death penalty for hashish
The Law for Combating Illicit Drugs, the Islamic Republic's first drug law, was approved by the Expediency Council on 25 October 1988. It provided for execution for more than five kilograms of hashish. Growing cannabis in order to make drugs was punished like growing the opium poppy, with death at the extreme. Poppy growing was largely stamped out in the 1980s; cannabis proved harder to eliminate.
86−2 points
🇧🇷 Brazil Tightening ✓
Brazil's new Constitution gives drug trafficking special punitive treatment
Article 5(XLIII) directed legislation to make illicit drug trafficking non-bailable and ineligible for grace or amnesty. Original Article 243 required expropriation without compensation of land containing illegal psychotropic crops, for settlement and food or medicinal cultivation, and confiscation of trafficking assets for treatment and enforcement. These provisions covered cannabis trafficking and illicit crops within the wider drug framework; they did not create a new personal-possession offence.
🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire Tightening ✓
Ivory Coast passes its narcotics law
Law 88-686 on the repression of illicit trafficking in and use of narcotics governed drug offences for more than thirty years with a purely punitive approach. Article 8 punished possession or use with one to five years in prison and a fine of 200,000 to 5 million CFA francs; supply and production carried ten to twenty years under Articles 1 and 2. A regional review of 2017 noted that the sentences were mandatory and that the law offered no alternative to prison, though a judge could order a convicted user to undergo detoxification.
🇧🇴 Bolivia Other law ✓ Article
Bolivia orders treatment for small cannabis possession
Dependent and occasional users found with a minimal amount of cannabis for immediate personal consumption were to be confined for treatment until considered rehabilitated. Two specialists assessed the quantity; possession above it fell under trafficking, carrying ten to twenty-five years in prison plus a fine. Compulsory treatment had appeared in the 1962 narcotics law, and December regulations defined the personal-use amount as 48 hours of consumption.
🇺🇾 Uruguay Other law ✓
Uruguay creates a national drug-policy board under the presidency
Decree 463/988 established a national drugs board within the presidency to coordinate the response to illicit trafficking and harmful drug use. It formed part of the institutional framework for policy on controlled drugs, including cannabis. Creating the board did not itself amend the rules for personal cannabis possession.
🇵🇭 Philippines Easing ✓
Philippine Supreme Court acquits Aminnudin after excluding illegally seized cannabis
In People v. Aminnudin, G.R. 74869, the Supreme Court excluded cannabis seized during an unlawful warrantless arrest and bag search after a passenger left a ship in Iloilo. Officers had advance information and at least two days to seek warrants; the circumstances did not fit the claimed warrantless-arrest exceptions. Without the seized evidence, the Court reversed the life sentence and acquitted him. The decision enforced search-and-seizure protections rather than legalising possession.
🇳🇱 Netherlands Other law ✓
EU court excludes tolerated Dutch hashish sales from VAT
In Happy Family, arising from hashish sales at an Amsterdam youth centre, the Court of Justice held that unlawful cannabis-drug supplies outside strictly controlled medical and scientific channels fell outside VAT under the Sixth Directive. Selective non-prosecution did not turn those sales into lawful trade. The judgment preserved national powers to punish drug offences; it did not legalise retail cannabis or exempt it from every kind of tax.
🇸🇪 Sweden Tightening ✓ Article
Sweden makes drug use itself a crime
Possession was already illegal; from July 1988 so was having used a drug. Prison was added as a penalty in 1993, which lets police compel a urine or blood test from anyone they suspect.
1110−1 point
🇺🇬 Uganda International ✓
Uganda joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Uganda acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 15 April 1988. 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 Tightening ✓
Spain strengthens drug-trafficking penalties and confiscation powers
Organic Law 1/1988 revised the drug-trafficking offences, increased penalties and fines, expanded aggravated cases and confiscation, and criminalised knowingly benefiting from trafficking proceeds. It retained a distinction between substances legally classified as causing serious harm and other drugs. The same reform allowed conditional suspension of sentences of up to two years for qualifying offences driven by drug dependence, subject to treatment and other conditions. It addressed the broader drug framework without criminalising possession exclusively for personal consumption.
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates International ✓
The United Arab Emirates joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
The United Arab Emirates acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 17 February 1988. 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.
🇮🇹 Italy Other law ✓
Italy's Constitutional Court again refuses to spare small imports for personal use
A Milan court asked again whether bringing a small amount of drugs into Italy for personal use could be treated like holding a modest quantity, which was not punished. The Constitutional Court dismissed the question as clearly unfounded: it had already answered it in 1982, and the Milan court offered no new arguments. Importing any amount stayed a crime.
🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article
A DEA judge says cannabis should be rescheduled
Administrative law judge Francis Young ruled that cannabis should be moved to Schedule II, calling it one of the safest therapeutically active substances known. The DEA administrator rejected the recommendation the following year.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Enforcement ✓
The cannabis smuggler Howard Marks is arrested
An agent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration arrested the Welsh smuggler Howard Marks, who claimed to have moved consignments of cannabis as large as 30 tons, and he was extradited to the United States. He was sentenced to 25 years, served seven in the federal prison at Terre Haute and was released in April 1995. His autobiography Mr Nice, published in 1996, became a best-seller, and he campaigned for changes in drug law.
🇹🇴 Tonga Other law ✓
Tonga passes its first Illicit Drugs Control Act
The 1988 Act set a maximum fine of 10,000 pa'anga or five years in prison for importing or exporting illicit drugs, and 1,000 pa'anga or two years for possession.
🇵🇦 Panama Enforcement ✓
The United States indicts Panama's ruler over a million pounds of marijuana
American grand juries charged General Manuel Noriega with conspiring to move more than a million pounds of marijuana, along with cocaine, through Panama. Smuggling and money-laundering schemes linked to him had run from 1983.
🇯🇴 Jordan Tightening ✓
Jordan passes its drug law
The Law on Drugs and Psychotropic Substances set harsh penalties for possessing cannabis.
🇩🇲 Dominica Other law ✓
Dominica enacts its modern drug-control framework
The Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 20 of 1988 prohibited unauthorised production, supply and possession of controlled drugs and separately prohibited cultivation of any cannabis plant. Its definition of cannabis covered the plant and every part of it.
🇨🇷 Costa Rica Easing ✓
Costa Rica stops treating drug use as a crime
Law 7093, the first version of the country's present drug law, made the use of drugs an administrative matter punished with day-fines. Production and trafficking stayed crimes.
1117+6 points
🌐 International Culture & science ✓
Scientists find the receptor through which cannabis acts
The first cannabinoid receptor, CB1, was identified and characterised in 1988 and cloned in 1990. A second, CB2, was cloned in 1993 by a group in Cambridge looking for a receptor that could explain more of the effects of THC; it gave a molecular explanation for the action of cannabinoids on the immune system. Together with the body's own cannabinoids they make up the endocannabinoid system.
198726 entries4 score changes
🇧🇳 Brunei International ✓
Brunei joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Brunei acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 25 November 1987. 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 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Hungary acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 12 November 1987. The Protocol, adopted in Geneva on 25 March 1972 and in force from 8 August 1975, strengthened the international control board and, among other changes, lets parties provide treatment, education, after-care and rehabilitation for people who use drugs, as an alternative to conviction or punishment or in addition to it.
🇧🇷 Brazil Culture & science ✓ Article
Thousands of tins of cannabis wash up on Brazil's beaches
Fishermen at Maricá, near Rio de Janeiro, found 18 tins holding about 1.5 kg of cannabis each and took them to the police. The crew of a ship bound for the United States had thrown its cargo overboard, an estimated 22 tonnes in more than 13,000 tins, which drifted ashore from Cabo Frio to Rio Grande do Sul. The police recovered about 2,500; people flocked to the coast to look for the rest. The season is remembered as the Verão da Lata, the summer of the tin. One crewman, the cook, was jailed for about a year and extradited.
🇫🇲 Micronesia Other law ✓
Kosrae’s court upholds seizure of cannabis plants visible from a road
In Kosrae State v. Winfield Paulino, the State Court denies suppression of two marijuana plants after an officer saw one from a road and police obtained a warrant. The court applies possession section 13.531 and explains that weight determines the penalty category rather than whether possession is an offence. This suppression ruling does not establish a usual sentence or an exemption for a small home grow.
🇧🇯 Benin Other law ✓
Benin promulgates narcotics penalties with a treatment route for drug users
Law 87-009 regulated offences involving substances and plants classified as poisonous or narcotic. Article 8 punished unlawful narcotic use with two months to one year in prison and a fine of 25,000–400,000 CFA francs, or either penalty alone. Article 9 provided non-prosecution for qualifying first offences when the user complied with prescribed treatment or medical supervision; repeat cases remained subject to prosecutorial discretion. Separate provisions punished supply and production. The date is presidential promulgation, not a verified first cannabis ban or the introduction of a legal market.
🇳🇵 Nepal International ✓
Nepal joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Nepal acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 29 June 1987. 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.
🇺🇿 Uzbekistan Tightening ✓ Article
Uzbekistan's hemp growers face up to five years in prison
On 22 June 1987 a Soviet edict set the prison terms for growing hemp. Sowing or growing Indian hemp, or the southern Manchurian, southern Chui, southern Arkhonskaya or southern Krasnodar kinds, could bring up to five years, and up to eight years for a repeat offence. Any other hemp drew a warning or a fine of 20 to 100 rubles the first time, and up to three years, or up to two years of corrective labour, if the person was punished for the same act again within a year. Unauthorised cultivation of Indian hemp had already been prohibited since 1934, Uzbekistan included, and the 1974 edict told each union republic to amend its own laws to match.
🇷🇺 Russia Tightening ✓
The Soviet Union makes drug use itself an offence
A decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet made the illicit use of drugs a misdemeanour and, when repeated, a crime: a second case within a year of the first brought up to two years of imprisonment or corrective labour. Possession without intent to sell had been a crime since a 1974 decree, with up to three years in prison.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong Debate ✓
Hong Kong expands anti-cannabis publicity aimed at young people
The government announced more broadcasts, posters and school materials addressing cannabis and mandrax after reports of growing use among young people. Answering a lawmaker’s question, the security secretary said the school talks programme would expand to older secondary pupils; about 600 talks had already reached some 200,000 students in its first cycle.
🇦🇺 Australia · South Australia Easing ✓
South Australia starts fining instead of prosecuting
South Australia replaced criminal charges for small amounts and a few plants with an on-the-spot fine, under a law passed in 1986. The Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory copied the scheme in the 1990s, and the other states moved to cautions and diversion.
1119+8 points
🇱🇷 Liberia International ✓
Liberia joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Liberia ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 13 April 1987. 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.
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia Death penalty ✓
Saudi Arabia authorises death sentences for drug smuggling
A Council of Senior Scholars fatwa prescribed death for people who bring drugs into the kingdom or receive them from abroad, and for repeat drug dealers. Judges soon began applying the rule to trafficking cases, including hashish.
20−2 points
🇲🇵 Northern Mariana Islands Enforcement ✓ Article
Northern Mariana Islands’ court upholds a pest inspection that found cannabis
Cannabis found during a warrantless agricultural inspection could be used against Daniel Atalig, the appellate court ruled. An inspector found five pounds with deer meat after his flight from Rota to Saipan in September 1981, during a fruit-fly quarantine. Atalig received a year in prison, suspended except for thirty days, and a $1,000 fine; the court held that this quarantine search required neither a warrant nor consent.
🇸🇳 Senegal Tightening ✓
Senegal's parliament adopts stronger drug-trafficking penalties
Parliament adopted an amendment to the 1972 narcotics law setting two to ten years' imprisonment and fines of one to ten million CFA francs for the offences covered by revised Article 3. Imprisonment was mandatory and suspended sentences were generally excluded, with an exception for voluntary cooperation with the investigation. The explanatory memorandum identified traffickers, excluding simple users, as the target. Revised provisions also covered knowing financial assistance and confiscation. This date is parliamentary adoption; the government catalogue identifies the resulting Law 87-12 as dated 24 February 1987. Commencement is not established by the parliamentary file.
🇲🇦 Morocco International ✓
Morocco and Spain provisionally apply a drug-cooperation agreement
The agreement signed in Rabat provided for information exchange on prevention, treatment, social reintegration and legislation, alongside cooperation against trafficking through airports, borders and ports. It created a joint commission with representatives of both countries' justice, interior, health and foreign-affairs ministries. Article 8 made it provisionally applicable from signature on 21 January 1987; formal entry into force followed on 24 February 1991. The framework covered drugs generally and did not change domestic cannabis penalties.
🇨🇳 China Tightening ✓
China's first national penalty for using drugs takes effect
The Regulations on Public Security Administration Punishments, adopted on 5 September 1986, took effect. They were the first national rule to punish drug use: smoking opium or injecting morphine or other drugs in breach of government bans brought up to 15 days' detention, a fine of up to 200 yuan or a warning. Growing opium poppy or other drug plants brought the same detention, a fine of up to 3,000 yuan and the uprooting of the crop. The regulations say nothing about possessing a drug, and the Criminal Law of 1979 punished only making, selling and transporting; possession became an offence with the decision of 1990.
🇺🇾 Uruguay Debate ✓
Uruguay's lower house sets up a drug commission
Two years after the return to democracy, the Chamber of Representatives created a Special Commission on Drug Addiction, prompted mainly by a rise in cannabis use. It reviewed drug policy for years; the first change to the law came in 1998.
🇶🇦 Qatar Death penalty ✓ Article
Qatar passes its narcotics law
A study of Qatar's drug policy calls this the country's first law on narcotic drugs, although it repealed a decree-law of 1966. Law 9 of 1987 punishes importing, producing or growing for trade with ten to twenty years in prison, and a repeat offender with death or life imprisonment. Possession for personal use and use itself bring prison and a fine. A court may send an addict to a clinic for three months to a year in place of the sentence, no case is brought against a user who comes forward for treatment, and a spouse or close relative may ask for a user to be committed.
1002−98 points
🇬🇷 Greece Other law ✓
Greece establishes KETHEA within a major drug-law reform
Law 1729/1987 reformed Greece's drug legislation, distinguishing dependent from non-dependent offenders in drug-use and trafficking cases. It also created KETHEA, the Therapy Center for Dependent Individuals, as a central treatment and rehabilitation institution. This was a reform of the wider drug-control and treatment framework, not medical access to cannabis or decriminalisation of personal cannabis use.
🇪🇨 Ecuador Tightening ✓
Ecuador's 1987 law brings sentences of 12 to 16 years
A new narcotics and psychotropics law let judges order 12 to 16 years for production or trafficking, though in marijuana cases sentences were only one to five years depending on the accused's age. Users were still not jailed and had to undergo a medical evaluation.
🇧🇩 Bangladesh Ban ✓
Bangladesh bans growing cannabis
The Ershad government banned cultivation in 1987. Sales were prohibited two years later. At Naogaon, where ganja had been grown under licence since colonial times, the ban left about 50,000 people from 7,000 families without their living; many turned to rice, mustard and vegetables. The government sealed the growers' cooperative's warehouses, which still hold more than 226 maunds of ganja.
198610 entries2 score changes
🇨🇴 Colombia Other law ✓
Colombia clarifies that small quantities held for sale remain trafficking
Article 4 of Decree 3788 directed that drugs held for distribution or sale be punished under Article 33 of Law 30 even when the quantity did not exceed the personal-dose threshold. This implemented the statute's existing distinction between personal consumption and supply; it did not create a new cannabis quantity limit or exempt small sales. Article 60 made the decree effective on publication, recorded as 31 December 1986 in Official Gazette 37746.
🇵🇦 Panama Other law ✓
Panama revises drug penalties and creates a national prevention commission
Law 23 revised the Penal and Judicial Codes and took effect on promulgation on 30 December. It prescribed five to ten years for illicit drug cultivation or supply and one to three years plus day-fines for the general illicit-possession offence. A new provision required only security measures for medically assessed dependent users with a small personal dose. The law restricted bail in drug cases but included exceptions for marijuana possession and use, and for proven small personal-use quantities. It also created the national commission for studying and preventing drug-related offences. These were revisions within an existing drug-control system.
🇧🇷 Brazil Other law ✓
Brazil creates a fund for drug prevention, treatment and enforcement
Law 7,560 established FUNCAB within the Justice Ministry, managed by the Federal Narcotics Council. Its revenue included federal allocations, donations, controlled-drug fees and fines, and proceeds of forfeited drug-trafficking assets after a final decision, preserving victims' and good-faith third parties' rights. Spending covered prevention, treatment and recovery as well as enforcement against use and trafficking. It financed the existing drug framework rather than creating a cannabis offence.
🇺🇸 United States Tightening ✓ Article
The United States brings back mandatory minimums
At the height of the "war on drugs", the Anti-Drug Abuse Act restored the mandatory federal sentences repealed in 1970 and tied them to quantity. Arrests for marijuana rose for the next two decades.
1614−2 points
🇶🇦 Qatar International ✓
Qatar joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Qatar acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 3 October 1986. 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.
🇲🇺 Mauritius Easing ✓
Mauritius's Supreme Court rejects removing judicial control of drug-case bail
In Nordally v Attorney General, reported at 1986 MR 204, the Supreme Court held that the Dangerous Drugs Act's statutory exclusion of bail was inconsistent with the Constitution. It protected the judiciary's role in deciding bail and other matters incidental to criminal proceedings against executive interference. This was a procedural safeguard within the drug-control system, not an exemption from cannabis offences or an automatic entitlement to release. The ruling is documented retrospectively in the Privy Council's 2006 Khoyratty judgment.
🇲🇾 Malaysia Tightening ✓
Malaysia doubles the fine for possession and raises the minimum caning
The Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act 1986, Act A659, raised the maximum fine for possessing cannabis under Section 6 from ten thousand to twenty thousand ringgit, alongside up to five years in prison, and raised the minimum whipping for the heaviest possession tier, 50 grams of cannabis or more, from six strokes to ten. An amendment of 2017 later lowered the minimum whipping for trafficking, where death is not imposed, from fifteen strokes to twelve.
198520 entries5 score changes
🇬🇮 Gibraltar Tightening ✓
Gibraltar extends drug-supply wording to recipients abroad
Gibraltar amended its drug law to say that supply included supplying a person who was outside Gibraltar. The change followed a cannabis case involving drugs intended for England, according to the later appeal court’s account. In 1995 that court ruled that the amendment still required the intended act of supply to take place in Gibraltar.
🇻🇪 Venezuela International ✓
Venezuela joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Venezuela ratified the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 4 December 1985. The Protocol, adopted in Geneva on 25 March 1972 and in force from 8 August 1975, strengthened the international control board and, among other changes, lets parties provide treatment, education, after-care and rehabilitation for people who use drugs, as an alternative to conviction or punishment or in addition to it.
🇯🇵 Japan Other law ✓
Japan's Supreme Court rejects constitutional challenges to cannabis controls
In decisions on 10 and 27 September, the Supreme Court's First Petty Bench dismissed appeals challenging cannabis controls on constitutional grounds. It accepted the lower courts' findings of harmfulness and rejected the appeals' premise that cannabis was harmless or minimally harmful. The decisions concerned cannabis importation and associated possession controls, leaving the existing restrictions in place.
🇦🇹 Austria Easing ✓
Austria revises small-quantity diversion and adds treatment-based sentence deferral
The 1985 Narcotics Act amendment rewrote the offences and diversion rules. Under revised section 17, prosecutors had to provisionally shelve cases confined to acquiring or possessing a small quantity for personal use, for two years, subject to the statutory health-related conditions. New section 23a allowed qualifying prison sentences of up to two years to be deferred for necessary medical treatment, with later conditional remission considered after successful treatment. Possession remained criminal: revised section 16's basic offence carried up to six months or a fine. This revised an existing diversion framework.
🇪🇸 Spain Debate ✓
Spain approves its National Plan on Drugs
The government approved the Plan Nacional sobre Drogas to coordinate a multidisciplinary response across public authorities. It became the institutional framework for national drug policy, including cannabis, although the immediate political and health crisis centred on heroin. Approval of the plan did not itself alter the legal status of personal cannabis possession.
🇬🇷 Greece International ✓
Greece joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Greece ratified the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 12 July 1985. The Protocol, adopted in Geneva on 25 March 1972 and in force from 8 August 1975, strengthened the international control board and, among other changes, lets parties provide treatment, education, after-care and rehabilitation for people who use drugs, as an alternative to conviction or punishment or in addition to it.
🇨🇱 Chile Other law ✓
Chile replaces its drug law with Law 18.403
Law 18.403 replaced the 1973 drug law. It punished unauthorised cultivation of cannabis where circumstances suggested trafficking, while its trafficking provision distinguished substances intended exclusively for personal use or medical treatment. People found consuming or carrying drugs for personal use could nevertheless be sent for medical examination and, where habitual use was found, inpatient or supervised treatment. The law also punished public promotion of drug use; the personal-use distinction was not an unrestricted right to possess or grow cannabis.
🇵🇱 Poland Other law ✓ Article
Poland passes a drug act that does not punish possession
Written after a decade of home-made opiates from poppy straw, the Act on preventing drug addiction treated addiction as a health problem: treatment was voluntary and free. It punished making, smuggling and supplying drugs, but set no penalty for possessing them in any quantity; unlawfully held drugs could only be confiscated. For the plant it was stricter than before: hemp could be grown only for the textile industry with a permit, growing it otherwise carried up to two years in prison, and collecting cannabis herb or resin was allowed only for science. It took effect on 1 March 1985.
3127−4 points
🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article
Jack Herer publishes The Emperor Wears No Clothes
Herer says he completed the first edition in 1985 after collecting cannabis information since 1973. The book made industrial hemp, medical use and opposition to prohibition part of one reform argument. The supplied later text argues that hemp could replace major uses of timber and fossil fuels; these are the author's claims, not findings of this index.
🇳🇴 Norway Debate ✓
Norway adopts a drug-free society as a national policy goal
Government white paper 13 for 1985–86 introduced a drug-free society as the aim of Norway's response to narcotics, including cannabis. It sought a systematic framework for future action rather than presenting concrete new measures. The policy statement did not itself amend possession penalties.
🇳🇱 Netherlands Culture & science ✓
A hash and hemp museum opens in Amsterdam
The Hash, Marihuana & Hemp Museum opened in Amsterdam's old centre, showing the medicinal, spiritual, cultural and industrial uses of the plant, with a live cannabis garden. It was founded by Ben Dronkers, who also founded the seed company Sensi Seeds. By the museum's count more than two million people have visited; a second museum opened in Barcelona in 2012.
🇫🇲 Micronesia Culture & science ✓
A study finds marijuana grown on every island of Chuuk Lagoon
A five-month study traced the plant's arrival to a foreigner on Nama Island at the end of the 1960s and to seeds brought from Saipan in 1973. Police recorded their first case in 1978 and 56 in 1984. None of the people arrested for possession or trafficking had been convicted, and few had been brought to trial.
🇮🇱 Israel Easing ✓
Israel's attorney general tells police not to arrest first-time users
Under attorney general's directives issued in 1985 and renewed in 2003, people caught with a small amount of cannabis were not supposed to be arrested for a first offence, and police had discretion over later ones. The law itself still allowed up to three years in prison for possessing up to 15 g.
1117+6 points
🇨🇦 Canada Culture & science ✓
Polls show cannabis use levelling off in Canada
Gallup polls during the 1980s indicated that cannabis use in Canada was stabilising after the surge of the 1960s and 1970s. Possession remained a crime under the Narcotic Control Act of 1961. The year given here stands for the decade.
🇧🇿 Belize Tightening ✓
Belize uproots its export crop
Until the 1980s Belize was the fourth-largest supplier of cannabis to the United States, after Colombia, Mexico and Jamaica. From the middle of the decade eradication campaigns backed by the United States cut production sharply, and by 1994 it was negligible.
198420 entries1 score change
🇧🇼 Botswana International ✓
Botswana joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Botswana acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 27 December 1984. 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 Other law ✓
Soviet Ukraine adopts its Code of Administrative Offences
The code, still in force, contains Article 44 on making, buying or keeping small amounts of narcotics without intent to sell; today it carries a fine, community work or up to fifteen days' arrest. A decree of 21 August 1987 amended that article and added Article 106-2 on illegally sowing or growing poppy or hemp.
🇩🇰 Denmark Other law ✓
Denmark's replacement narcotics order retains cannabis in its strictest list
Order 559 replaced the 1981 narcotics order. List A defined cannabis as the above-ground parts of cannabis plants with resin still present, excluding hemp seeds and isolated hemp fibres. Section 2 prohibited possession, production, trade and import or export of List A substances except under exceptional permission from the health authority. The order continued existing controls rather than introducing Denmark's first cannabis ban. It took effect on publication on 30 November, after signature on 9 November 1984.
🇩🇯 Djibouti Other law ✓
Djibouti excludes drug offenders from a collective pardon
People convicted under the poisonous-substance and narcotics laws were excluded from a collective pardon that fully remitted eligible prison terms of eight months or less. The decree marked the Islamic New Year and was immediately enforceable. Its drug exclusion cited the French 1970 law, showing the older legislation still used as a reference after independence.
🇮🇪 Ireland Tightening ✓
Ireland widens the legal definition of cannabis
The Misuse of Drugs Act 1984 replaced the 1977 definition, which covered only the flowering or fruiting tops, with one covering any plant of the genus Cannabis or any part of it. Mature stalk, fibre from it and seed were left outside the definition.
🇩🇪 Germany Other law ✓
West Germany's highest criminal court defines a serious cannabis quantity by THC content
In 3 StR 183/84, the Federal Court of Justice fixed the threshold for a non-small quantity of cannabis at 7.5 grams of THC for the aggravated import offence and the corresponding serious-case sentencing rule. The threshold concerned active THC rather than the weight of the cannabis product. The Court upheld the quantity classification in a hashish-import case but set aside the sentence for a separate sentencing error and ordered a new sentencing hearing. The threshold differentiated criminal penalties; it was not a lawful personal-possession allowance.
🇧🇭 Bahrain Death penalty ✓ Article
Bahrain introduces death or life imprisonment for drug supply
Bahrain introduced death or life imprisonment, plus a fine of 5,000–50,000 dinars, for unauthorised drug import, export and supply, and growing drugs for trafficking. The rule covered providing drugs for payment or free of charge; the previous amendment had set life imprisonment or at least five years. Published on 12 July 1984, it retained at least six months’ imprisonment for personal possession.
20−2 points
🇲🇽 Mexico Other law ✓
Mexico restates cannabis prohibition in its new General Health Law
The General Health Law replaced the 1973 Sanitary Code. Article 234 listed cannabis, its resin, preparations and seeds as narcotics. Article 237 prohibited the activities listed in Article 235 for cannabis in any form, derivative or preparation, covering cultivation, possession, trade and consumption. Article 238 allowed authorised institutions to acquire the listed substances solely for scientific research with an approved protocol. This consolidated an existing prohibition; it was not Mexico's first cannabis ban.
🇸🇴 Somalia Other law ✓
Somalia converts the drug-offences decree into statute
Law 25 converts Decree-Law 5 of 18 May 1984 on drug offences into law. It is dated 24 June and published in the Official Gazette of 19 July 1984; article 2 provides that this conversion law takes effect fifteen days after publication. This should be distinguished from the decree’s own signature-date commencement provision.
🇧🇪 Belgium International ✓
Belgium joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Belgium ratified the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 13 June 1984. The Protocol, adopted in Geneva on 25 March 1972 and in force from 8 August 1975, strengthened the international control board and, among other changes, lets parties provide treatment, education, after-care and rehabilitation for people who use drugs, as an alternative to conviction or punishment or in addition to it.
🇪🇸 Spain Other law ✓
Spain's prosecution service distinguishes personal possession from drug supply
Circular 1/1984 interpreted the revised Article 344 of the Penal Code. It distinguished possession for the holder's own consumption from possession intended for others, and maintained that giving drugs away could constitute trafficking despite the absence of payment. It directed prosecutors to treat cannabis and its derivatives within the less severe statutory drug category, following Supreme Court case law. These were prosecution guidelines on the existing law, not permission for cannabis sales or unrestricted gifting.
🏳️ Somaliland Tightening ✓ Article
Somalia raises northern drug-supply penalties to ten years in prison
A Somali decree covering the north set ten years in prison and a 50,000-shilling fine for unlawful drug manufacture, production, import, dealing or supplying another person. Allowing a place to be used for consumption carried five years and a fine; entering it to consume carried three years and a fine. The decree transferred drug cases to the National Security Court and its regional branches, and parliament converted it into statute in June.
🇸🇴 Somalia Tightening ✓
Somalia raises penalties for supplying drugs and hosting consumption
Somalia set ten years in prison and a 50,000-shilling fine for unlawful drug manufacture, production, import, dealing or supplying another person. Hosting a place for drug consumption carried five years and a fine; entering it to consume carried three years and a fine. Drug cases went to the National Security Court and its regional branches, while earlier offences kept their earlier penalties.
🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓
US Supreme Court reaffirms the open-fields doctrine in cannabis cases
In Oliver v. United States and its companion case, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the Fourth Amendment did not require a warrant for police entry into open fields to investigate cannabis cultivation, even behind fences or no-trespassing signs. It distinguished these fields from the home and its immediately associated surroundings, which retain constitutional protection.
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Other law ✓
Sri Lanka certifies revised prohibitions on hemp and other drugs
Act 13 of 1984 replaced sections 28 and 29 of the drugs ordinance, expressly covering preparations of hemp in import and export prohibitions and revising controls on possession, preparation, supply and use, subject to statutory exceptions. It was certified on 11 April; operation required a ministerial Gazette order. It did not introduce the exception for lawful hemp extracts and tinctures: that provision already appears in section 30 of the 1956 revised ordinance.
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Other law ✓
Sri Lanka's National Dangerous Drugs Control Board begins operating
Established under Act 11 of 1984, the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board began operating as the principal national institution for drug-abuse policy. Its remit included coordinating prevention and control, advising the minister, and promoting treatment and rehabilitation. The institution addressed the wider drug framework, including cannabis, without itself authorising cannabis possession or supply.
🇻🇪 Venezuela Tightening ✓
Venezuela passes its organic drug law
The Organic Law on Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances of 1984 was Venezuela's first important drug legislation. A paper presented in Buenos Aires in 2009 says that before 1984 Venezuela had made no important legislative change in this area, despite the 1961 Single Convention coming into force.
🇳🇴 Norway Tightening ✓
Norway raises the drug maximum to 21 years
Parliament lifted the upper limit for serious drug crimes to 21 years, the most severe punishment in Norwegian law.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Death penalty ✓
Nigeria's second military government adds death for drug trafficking
During Nigeria's second military government the rulers issued Decree 20, which made the death penalty available for drug trafficking, and amended the Indian Hemp Decree to increase penalties and jail terms. The death penalty was used sparingly, was aimed at cocaine, and was removed in 1985. Cannabis use became popular among young Nigerians between 1980 and 1990.
🇩🇰 Denmark Enforcement ✓
A motorcycle gang takes over Christiania's drug market
After fighting among motorcycle gangs in the early 1980s, the Bullshit Motorcycle Club held sole control of the trade by 1984. It was cleared from the area in 1987, after a dismembered body was found in a bicycle shop. In 1989 the Danish parliament gave the freetown a legal footing.
198310 entries4 score changes
🇳🇬 Nigeria Tightening ✓
Nigeria raises cannabis cultivation’s prison term to at least 21 years
The military government raised the Indian Hemp Act’s prison term for cultivation and import or sale from at least ten to at least 21 years; smoking or possession brought at least four years without a fine option. The decree was made on 14 September 1984, published on 20 September, and declared effective from 31 December 1983. It amended the prison wording introduced by the 1975 removal of the cultivation death sentence.
🇵🇹 Portugal Easing ✓
Portugal hardens the law on trafficking and softens it for users
Decree-Law 430/83 revised the 1970 drug law in two directions at once: a harder line against trafficking and lighter penalties for consumption.
🇧🇷 Brazil Enforcement ✓
Federal police burn the Santo Daime community's cannabis at Colônia Cinco Mil
Federal police destroyed and burned the cannabis that the Santo Daime community of Padrinho Sebastião grew at Colônia Cinco Mil near Rio Branco, where it was used as a sacrament under the name Santa Maria. Sebastião was summoned to testify, and the Ministry of Justice set up a commission of police, army and prosecutors; whole families could hardly be jailed.
🇲🇱 Mali Tightening ✓ Article
Mali sets long forced-labour sentences for drug use and production
Mali punished illicit drug use with five to ten years of forced labour, a fine, or both, while illegal narcotic production, manufacture, import or export could bring life at forced labour and a fine. Courts could order medically assessed detoxification for defendants accused of attempted illicit use and withhold punishment; refusing treatment exposed them to the drug-use penalties. President Moussa Traoré signed the law, which also allowed special therapeutic or research authorisations and searches of drug production or storage premises at any hour.
145−9 points
🇱🇮 Liechtenstein Ban ✓ Article
Liechtenstein passes its narcotics law
The narcotics law of 20 April 1983, in force from 30 July, banned growing hemp for narcotics and making or circulating hashish. Dealing and possession carried up to three years, and one to twenty in serious cases; consumption or acts for one's own use up to six months or a fine, which a court could waive in minor cases.
10013−87 points
🇰🇼 Kuwait Other law ✓
Kuwait adopts a replacement law for drug controls
Emir Jaber Al-Ahmad approved a replacement drug-control law, with commencement set for six months after gazette publication. The statute repealed the 1960 law and regulated controlled-drug handling and cultivation; its later amended text restricted growing to authorised government and scientific bodies. A 1995 amendment expanded capital punishment for drug trafficking, and a combined law replaced the system in 2025.
🇲🇾 Malaysia Death penalty ✓ Article
Malaysia makes death mandatory for trafficking
An amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Act required the death sentence for trafficking, and presumed anyone holding 200 g of cannabis to be a trafficker.
92−7 points
19829 entries2 score changes
🇸🇧 Solomon Islands International ✓
The Solomon Islands joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
The Solomon Islands deposited its succession to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 17 March 1982. 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.
🇵🇭 Philippines Tightening ✓ Article
The Philippines makes six years the minimum for marijuana possession
Batas Pambansa 179 raised the sentence for possessing or using any amount of marijuana from six months and one day–six years to six years and one day–12 years. It also extended the definition to every part of the plant and strengthened testing and confiscation rules.
20−2 points
🇺🇸 United States Enforcement ✓
The US Supreme Court lets 40 years for nine ounces stand
Roger Trenton Davis was sentenced in Virginia to two consecutive 20-year terms and $20,000 in fines for possessing with intent to distribute, and distributing, about nine ounces of marihuana. A federal district court had found the sentence so grossly disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual. The Supreme Court reversed in a per curiam opinion, holding that its precedent in Rummel v. Estelle controlled. Justice Powell concurred while calling the sentence "unjust and disproportionate to the offense"; Justice Brennan, dissenting with Marshall and Stevens, called the ruling a "patent abuse of our judicial power".
🇸🇪 Sweden Other law ✓
Sweden's LVM law introduces compulsory care for qualifying drug and alcohol cases
Act 1981:1243 took effect alongside the new Social Services Act. It extended the compulsory-care framework to both alcohol and narcotic misuse. The original framework required an urgent care need arising from ongoing misuse, with voluntary or other care insufficient and additional statutory risk conditions met. It was a care law for qualifying serious cases, not an automatic detention rule for everyone who used cannabis. Parliament's 1982 committee report confirms the 1 January commencement.
🇩🇪 Germany Easing ✓
West Germany adopts therapy instead of punishment
A revised narcotics law let courts suspend a sentence of up to two years if the offender entered treatment. Maximum sentences for trafficking were raised at the same time.
19819 entries0 score changes
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka International ✓
Sri Lanka joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Sri Lanka acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 29 June 1981. The Protocol, adopted in Geneva on 25 March 1972 and in force from 8 August 1975, strengthened the international control board and, among other changes, lets parties provide treatment, education, after-care and rehabilitation for people who use drugs, as an alternative to conviction or punishment or in addition to it.
🇵🇪 Peru Other law ✓
Peru rewrites its drug offences with a dependence-based personal-dose exemption
Legislative Decree 122 replaced the drug law's principal criminal provisions. Its new Article 56 exempted possession of a personal dose for one's own immediate consumption, but required forensic medical evidence establishing dependence. It did not set a cannabis gram allowance or exempt every occasional user. The same reform prescribed ten to fifteen years for the basic illicit production and commercialisation offences, and two to ten years for specified lesser cases including small-scale cultivation. Signed on 12 June and published on 15 June, it took effect the following day under its express commencement clause.
🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea Enforcement ✓
An Equatorial Guinean ambassador's wife is held in Spain over cannabis
The wife of the ambassador to Spain and the country's police chief were detained at the Getafe air base near Madrid for trafficking cannabis, as reported by El País on 18 June 1981. Under the previous ruler, Francisco Macías Nguema, cannabis growing had been encouraged over food crops, according to one author.
🇺🇸 United States · California Enforcement ✓
Brownie Mary is arrested for selling cannabis brownies
San Francisco authorities arrest Mary Jane Rathbun after an undercover investigation of her cannabis-brownie sales. A guilty plea leads to probation and community service. Rathbun later becomes a hospital volunteer and gives cannabis brownies to people with AIDS, linking her public campaigning to patient care. This criminal case did not itself change cannabis law.
🇳🇴 Norway Tightening ✓
Norway raises the maximum for serious drug offences to fifteen years
The upper sentence under Penal Code section 162 for serious narcotics offences rose to fifteen years. This was part of the escalation in penalties for serious drug crime, including cannabis trafficking, between the ten-year maximum adopted in 1972 and the twenty-one-year maximum introduced in 1984. It was not the sentence for possession of a small amount for personal use.
198016 entries0 score changes
🇮🇪 Ireland International ✓
Ireland joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Ireland acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 16 December 1980. 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.
🇮🇹 Italy Debate ✓
Italy's cannabis referendum petition passes its signature check
In June 1980 campaigners handed in a petition for a referendum to take cannabis out of Italy's 1975 drug law. On 2 December the referendum office at the Court of Cassation confirmed that it had more than 500,000 valid signatures and met the legal requirements. That cleared the first hurdle. The Constitutional Court still had to decide whether such a vote was allowed, and in February 1981 it said no.
🇺🇸 United States Culture & science ✓ Article
A water-pipe patent later prompts a comparison with African designs
United States Patent 4,216,785, Water pipe or bong, was issued to William V. Erickson, Paul K. Jarvie and Fred L. Miller. Chris S. Duvall later compared its air-control tube with nineteenth-century Angolan calabash pipes. The grant concerned a particular design, not the invention of water-pipe smoking or the legal status of cannabis.
🇵🇭 Philippines Ban ✓
The Philippines brings marijuana seeds under the ban
Presidential Decree 1708 added cannabis seeds to the statutory definition of marijuana after a Court of Appeals ruling had exposed the omission and led to an acquittal for seed possession.
🇯🇵 Japan Enforcement ✓ Article
Paul McCartney is arrested at Tokyo airport with 219 grams
Customs officers at Narita airport found 219 grams of marijuana in the luggage of Paul McCartney, who had arrived for an 11-concert tour with his band Wings. Japan had refused him a visa in 1976. He was held for ten days, released without charge on 25 January and deported; his music was banned from Japanese television and radio.
🇮🇩 Indonesia Other law ✓
Indonesia sets reporting duties for licensed cannabis research cultivation
Government Regulation 1/1980 implemented the 1976 narcotics law for licensed scientific and educational institutions cultivating poppy, coca or cannabis. Institutions had to report every six months to the health minister on cultivation, harvests, use and stocks, and notify police within 24 hours of discovering losses. It prohibited unauthorised cultivation, maintenance or control of the plants and tied violations to the existing criminal provisions. This was a controlled institutional framework, not permission for personal growing. The regulation took effect on promulgation on 9 January 1980.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓
Britain's drugs advisers play down the risks of cannabis
An Expert Group on Cannabis set up by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, made up of medical and scientific authorities and chaired by the pharmacologist J. D. P. Graham, downplayed the risks of cannabis. Attention turned to its possible benefits, especially for the side effects of cancer treatment; the synthetic cannabinoid nabilone was licensed two years later.
🇳🇱 Netherlands Easing ✓
The Netherlands announces it will not prosecute coffeeshops
The government made public the guidelines under which shops selling small amounts of cannabis would be left alone, as long as they kept to set conditions.
🇫🇲 Micronesia Other law ✓
Micronesia carries the Trust Territory drug law into its own code
The Federated States adopted the former Trust Territory code as their own. Possessing an ounce of marijuana or less was punishable by a fine of up to $50, an ounce to a kilo by up to three months, and more than a kilo by up to a year, or up to five years when treated as trafficking. Chuuk state had no drug law of its own and used the national code.
🇲🇭 Marshall Islands Other law ✓ Article
Marshall Islands’ earlier territorial code records a $50 small-possession fine
The 1980 territorial code records a maximum $50 fine for possessing one ounce of marijuana or less, and the same penalty for giving away that amount without payment; larger quantities and sales could bring prison. The code’s geographical clause expressly included the Marshall Islands. The republic’s 1979 Constitution continued existing laws until changed, preceding its national narcotics law of 1987.
🇬🇲 Gambia Other law ✓
Gambia creates a police squad to investigate illicit drugs
A new Drug Squad took responsibility for illicit drug policing within the Gambia Police Force in the latter part of 1980. The drug agency’s later institutional history records its replacement by a National Drug Squad in 1991, followed by an autonomous enforcement agency in 2005.