History
2000s
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.
200929 entries6 score changes
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Debate โ
Croatia's government proposes the 'practical decriminalisation of light drugs'
Guidelines for a new criminal code said that Croatian law punished possession for personal use more strictly than any of the laws it had been compared with, and suggested milder penalties, wider powers for prosecutors to drop small cases, or community service. The prime minister, Jadranka Kosor, and her party had repeatedly said they were against decriminalising drugs. The code that followed took effect in 2013.
๐จ๐ด Colombia Tightening โ
Colombia writes a ban on drug use into its constitution
Legislative Act 02 amended Article 49 of the constitution to prohibit carrying and consuming narcotic or psychotropic substances except on medical prescription. It provided for preventive and rehabilitative administrative measures and treatment, requiring the dependent user's informed consent. The amendment itself attached no criminal penalty. Article 2 made it effective on promulgation, 21 December 2009. The Constitutional Court later held that the amendment did not criminalise possession exclusively for personal consumption.
๐น๐ผ Taiwan Tightening โ
Taiwan introduces specific quantity-based possession penalties for second-category drugs
Revised Article 11 retained up to two years, short-term detention or a fine for basic second-category possession, but prescribed six months to five years and an optional fine up to NT$700,000 where the statutory pure-net-weight threshold of twenty grams was reached. Cannabis remained in the second category. The amendment replaced the earlier general quantity-aggravation clause with specific offences. It was promulgated on 20 May and took effect six months later; the threshold was not a lawful personal-possession allowance.
๐ณ๐ฟ New Zealand Tightening โ
New Zealand introduces compulsory impairment tests for suspected drug driving
The drug-driving provisions of the Land Transport Amendment Act 2009 took effect. Police suspecting impairment could require a compulsory impairment test, with a blood specimen required after an unsuccessful test. The new offence combined impairment with evidence of drug use in blood; it was not the later random roadside saliva-testing regime.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Tightening โ
Indonesia adopts its current Narcotics Law
Law 35 kept cannabis in the most restricted class and prohibited medical use. Personal use carries up to four years or rehabilitation, while possession or growing carries four to twelve years and large-scale supply can bring life imprisonment or death.
๐ธ๐ง Solomon Islands Other law โ
Solomon Islands amends drug penalties within a wider penalty-unit revision
The Penalties Miscellaneous Amendments Act 2009, No. 14 of 2009, amends sections 35 and 39 of the Dangerous Drugs Act and commences on 1 October 2009, according to the authorised reprintโs endnotes. The resulting section 39 expresses fines as 5,000 penalty units on summary conviction and 100,000 units on conviction with assessors, alongside six-month and ten-year imprisonment maxima respectively. No current cash conversion or before-and-after increase is inferred without reviewing the older penalty and unit-value rules.
๐ฐ๐ฟ Kazakhstan Tightening โ
Twenty officers police a valley of wild cannabis the size of a small country
The interior ministry estimated that the Chu valley could yield 140,000 tonnes of marijuana and 5,000 to 6,000 tonnes of hashish a year. A local unit of just over twenty men patrols some 140,000 hectares, reinforced each summer from May to October in what is called Operation Poppy; the previous year's operation had seized 20 tonnes. A factory planned to turn the plants into industrial hemp had got as far as a fence.
๐ท๐ธ Serbia Other law โ Article
Serbia creates a separate offence for small personal drug possession
Small quantities held for personal use became a separate offence carrying a fine or up to three years in prison, with a court able to waive punishment. The September 2009 amendment also expressly punished unauthorised cannabis growing with six months to five years. The earlier law had already allowed punishment to be waived for personal use; cultivation sentences and rules for larger stocks became harsher in 2019.
๐ฒ๐ด Macau Other law โ
Macau keeps personal-use penalties and sets a daily drug reference table
Macauโs replacement drug law took effect on 9 September 2009, keeping illicit consumption and specified personal-use acts, including growing and possession, punishable by up to three months in prison or a fine of up to sixty day-rates. A lesser production and trafficking tier carried one to five years, assessed using circumstances and five times a listed daily reference quantity. It replaced the 1991 law; the 2016 amendment later raised personal-use penalties and extended the quantity rule.
๐ฆ๐ท Argentina Easing โ Article
Argentina's Supreme Court protects private use
In the Arriola ruling the court held that punishing an adult for holding a small amount for personal use in private is unconstitutional. The law itself was never changed and no gram limit was set, so judges decide case by case.
1120+9 points
๐ฒ๐ฝ Mexico Easing โ Article
Mexico stops prosecuting up to 5 g
A reform of the health law set personal-use thresholds for all drugs. Someone holding up to 5 g of cannabis is not prosecuted and is referred to treatment instead.
1117+6 points
๐ป๐ณ Vietnam Easing โ
Vietnam stops treating drug use as a crime
Resolution 33/2009/QH12 ended criminal liability for unlawful drug use under Penal Code Article 199 from promulgation of the amending law on 29 June 2009. Pending cases had to be discontinued and affected offenders received relief from unserved sentences and automatic expungement. The Supreme Court's July implementing letter confirmed the June date, ahead of the amending law's general 1 January 2010 commencement. Administrative measures and liability for other offences remained; cannabis possession and supply were not legalised.
56+1 point
๐ฐ๐ท South Korea Debate โ
A South Korean television interview renews debate over cannabis legalisation
Actress Kim Bu-seon used an MBC morning-show interview to advocate legalising cannabis and challenge the treatment of entertainers accused of using it. The interview drew criticism from viewers and calls for a broadcaster apology. Her statements about cannabis and medicine were advocacy claims, not a change in law or a medical finding.
๐ฒ๐ฉ Moldova Easing โ
Moldova's new Contravention Code takes effect with small-possession and use penalties
The Contravention Code adopted on 24 October 2008 entered into force on 31 May 2009, replacing the earlier administrative code. Article 85(1) treated unauthorised acquisition or possession of small quantities without intent to supply, and non-prescribed consumption, as contraventions punishable by a fine of three to ten conventional units or up to 40 hours of community work. The commencement date does not establish that such conduct first left criminal law then.
1119+8 points
๐ฎ๐น Italy Hemp โ
Italy allows hemp seeds in food
Companies had asked to use hemp in baked goods, flour, sweets, oils and supplements. The health ministry answered that hemp seeds and products made from them could be used as food, because the seeds contain no THC; traces come only from flower parts clinging to them. Producers stayed responsible for safety checks, and the drug law's ban on advertising for cannabis still applied.
๐ป๐จ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Tightening โ
Operation Vincy Pac sweeps the hills
Local police and soldiers from Regional Security System countries, Trinidad and Tobago among them, burned cannabis fields and shanties in an anti-crime operation. Three men, one a Barbadian, were shot dead at Vermont on 21 May. Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves contrasted it with the US-led operation of December 1998, which he said was done for public relations.
๐ง๐ฎ Burundi Other law โ Article
Burundi lowers the minimum for drug use but toughens production penalties
Burundi lowered the minimum prison term for illicit drug use from three years to one, while keeping the five-year maximum and allowing a fine instead of prison. Illicit production, import, manufacture or export now carried ten to fifteen years and a fine, with doubled penalties for organised groups. Judges also had to add supervision for consumption offences, which could include treatment or training backed by further imprisonment if refused. The revision replaced the 1981 code, and its core drug penalties continued in 2017.
๐บ๐ฆ Ukraine Tightening โ Article
Ukraine cuts the criminal-growing threshold to ten cannabis plants
From 7 April 2009, ten cannabis plants reached the ordinary criminal-growing threshold, replacing the rule requiring more than 100 plants introduced in 2008. A fine of 18 to 100 non-taxable minimum incomes and confiscation applied to the smaller administrative band; ordinary criminal growing carried a fine, up to six monthsโ arrest or up to three years of restriction of liberty. The aggravated cannabis threshold fell from 500 to 50 plants, carrying three to seven years in prison, with separate rules for specified prior crimes and group growing for sale.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Easing โ
Indonesia's Supreme Court issues initial guidance on rehabilitation for drug users
Supreme Court Circular 7/2009 addressed placing drug users in therapy and rehabilitation facilities. The court's archive dates it to 17 March 2009. A later Transnational Institute review describes conditions and procedures distinguishing users from dealers by quantities found at arrest, and records that a 2010 circular revised the guidance. This introduced a route within the criminal-law framework, not decriminalisation or an automatic entitlement to rehabilitation. The account relies on the official catalogue and the retrospective review; the original scanned circular has not been successfully read.
๐ฑ๐ฆ Laos International โ
Laos joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Laos acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 16 March 2009. 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.
๐ณ๐ฆ Namibia International โ
Namibia joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Namibia acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 6 March 2009. 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.
๐ฟ๐ฆ South Africa Debate โ
The Dagga Party is founded in South Africa
Jeremy Acton founded the Dagga Party to campaign for legal cannabis. He was one of the three applicants, with Gareth Prince and Jonathan Rubin, whose case led to the 2017 and 2018 rulings protecting private use.
๐ International Debate โ Article
A Latin American commission calls for rethinking drug prohibition
A commission convened by former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico proposed a health-focused approach and evaluation of decriminalising personal cannabis possession. Its declaration paired reform with prevention and action against organised crime. These were recommendations for governments, without an accompanying change in national law.
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom Tightening โ Article
The United Kingdom moves cannabis back to Class B
Five years after downgrading it, the government returned cannabis to Class B against the advice of its own drugs advisory council. The maximum for possession went back up from two to five years in prison.
2014โ6 points
๐ป๐ณ Vietnam Other law โ
Vietnam adds harm reduction and mandatory post-treatment supervision
Law 16/2008/QH12 revised the drug-control framework. New Article 34a recognised harm-reduction interventions through programmes and projects. Revised Article 33 also required one to two years of supervision after compulsory institutional treatment, either at home or in a dedicated institution for people assessed as having a high risk of relapse. Revised Article 27 set family and community treatment at six to twelve months and allowed compulsory community treatment by local decision. The amendment was adopted on 3 June 2008 and took effect on 1 January 2009. These provisions concerned dependent drug users generally; they created no lawful cannabis-use exemption.
๐บ๐ธ United States Easing โ
The Justice Department steps back from medical cannabis
The Ogden memo advised federal prosecutors not to spend resources on people complying with state medical cannabis laws.
๐ผ๐ธ Samoa Tightening โ
Samoa doubles drug penalties and introduces drug classes
The second amendment to the Narcotics Act raised penalties, for example from seven to fourteen years for possessing the seed of a prohibited plant, introduced Classes A, B and C with cannabis in Class B, and obliged health workers to report suspected illegal use to police.
๐ฑ๐ป Latvia Hemp โ
Latvian farmers sow hemp again
Fibre hemp was sown in Latvia again, 114 hectares of it by farmers around Krฤslava, in the east. Hemp had once stood beside flax among the country's main crops, and in the nineteenth century the British fleet used ropes of Riga hemp. A textile-industry leader warned growers that they could end up at a police station, proving for half a year that their plants held nothing harmful.
200837 entries2 score changes
๐ฆ๐น Austria Medical โ
Austria reserves medicinal cannabis cultivation to AGES or its controlled subsidiary
New section 6a permitted cannabis cultivation for obtaining narcotics to manufacture medicines and for related scientific purposes only by the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES), or a subsidiary in which it held at least 75 percent. Harvested and dried plants or cannabis could be supplied only to licensed pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers. This created an institutional production route, not a patient home-growing entitlement or general access to cannabis flower.
๐บ๐ธ United States ยท Michigan Medical โ
Michigan's voter-approved medical cannabis law takes effect
The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act took effect after the November vote. It provided protections for qualifying medical use and patient or caregiver cultivation, with a registry system and a separate medical-purpose defence. State Police noted that registration rules were still being prepared and that the Act did not itself establish a legal supply mechanism. Federal prohibition remained in place.
๐จ๐ญ Switzerland Debate โ
Swiss voters reject legalisation
A popular initiative to legalise possession, use and growing for personal needs was rejected by 63% of voters.
๐ณ๐ท Nauru Other law โ
Nauru keeps medicinal drug imports under annual Cabinet licences
Medicinal drug importers could obtain a one-year licence from Cabinet on the ministerโs recommendation, with renewal and record-keeping conditions, under the 2008 revision. Travellers could carry lawfully prescribed drugs for up to one month of treatment. This continued the earlier medicinal import-licensing approach, which had expressly covered Indian-hemp preparations in 1952.
๐ต๐พ Paraguay Culture & science โ
The United Nations puts Paraguay's crop at 5,900 tonnes a year
A UN report named Mexico and Paraguay as the world's largest producers of cannabis and estimated Paraguay's output at 5,900 tonnes a year. Its red soil was said to yield about three tonnes a hectare, with more than one harvest a year on some plots. Most of it is pressed into bricks for the neighbouring countries.
๐จ๐ด Colombia Easing โ
Colombia's Supreme Court acquits a cannabis user carrying above the personal-dose limit
In cassation 29183, the Supreme Court acquitted a habitual cannabis user caught with 29.9 grams, above the statutory 20-gram personal dose. As the Constitutional Court later explained, the circumstances showed personal consumption without distribution or sale and no injury to the interests protected by the trafficking offence. The decision applied the requirement of substantive harm to this case; it did not replace the statutory limit with a general 29.9-gram allowance or permit dealing.
๐ธ๐ธ South Sudan Other law โ Article
Southern Sudan sets prison or fines for cannabis possession and use
Southern Sudanโs replacement penal code punished personal possession, use and cultivation with up to five years, a fine, or both, and let courts order treatment for drug abuse or addiction. Ordinary dealing carried up to fourteen years, a fine, or both. Its death-or-life tier required a dangerous drug other than cannabis plus an aggravating circumstance. The code replaced the 2003 code and commenced on presidential signature on 22 August 2008.
๐ฏ๐ต Japan Debate โ
Japan adopts a third five-year drug strategy with a focus on young cannabis users
Japan's third five-year drug strategy combined prevention education, treatment and rehabilitation, action against trafficking networks and border controls. It identified rising cannabis arrests and the predominance of younger people among cannabis and synthetic-drug cases as concerns, and called for stronger school and university prevention work. The strategy set policy priorities without itself creating a new cannabis offence.
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Hemp โ
EU court rejects Lithuania's blanket prohibition of qualifying fibre hemp
In criminal proceedings against Edgar Babanov, the Court of Justice held that EU agricultural rules precluded national legislation prohibiting cultivation and possession of fibre hemp covered by Regulation 1782/2003. National courts could not apply conflicting prohibitions to that hemp. The order concerned qualifying agricultural hemp, not a general right to grow intoxicating cannabis.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Other law โ
Italy's highest criminal court rules that growing cannabis for yourself is a crime
A grower in Lombardy had been convicted for seven cannabis plants. Lower courts disagreed on whether growing for your own use was a crime, and the Court of Cassation's united sections settled it: any unauthorised growing was, however small and whatever the purpose, and the conviction stood. Only plants that could not produce anything with a noticeable drug effect fell outside the offence. Later rulings changed this, and in 2019 the court accepted minimal home growing.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Easing โ
Italy's Court of Cassation orders a retrial for a Rastafarian convicted of dealing
Carabinieri found a man asleep in his car, and he handed them 97 grams of loose marijuana, saying it was for his own use as a Rastafarian. He was sentenced to sixteen months in prison and a โฌ4,000 fine for holding it for supply, and the conviction was upheld on appeal in 2004. The Court of Cassation found the courts had relied on the weight and ignored his religion and the circumstances, and sent the case to the Florence appeal court to be judged again.
๐ฆ๐ฒ Armenia Easing โ
Armenia decriminalises drug use
Two amendments effective on 5 July repealed the criminal offence of drug use and introduced administrative offences for non-prescribed use and small-quantity possession and related acts without intent to supply. The original fine for use was 100โ200 statutory minimum-salary multiples, doubling for repetition within a year; small possession carried 200โ400 multiples, also doubling on repetition. The administrative schedule included up to 0.5 grams of dried marijuana, two grams undried or 0.2 grams of cannabis resin. Voluntary surrender could exempt small possession, while voluntarily seeking medical help could exempt use. The reform did not legalise supply.
1118+7 points
๐ช๐จ Ecuador Easing โ
Ecuador approves a conditional pardon for small-scale drug couriers
The Constituent Assembly approved a pardon for a defined group of people convicted of drug offences, including first offenders caught with no more than two kilograms, subject to sentence and time-served requirements. It covered controlled drugs generally, rather than cannabis alone. The measure relieved existing sentences; it did not legalise drug transport or possession and was separate from the new constitution adopted later that year. A contemporary report documented the release of a man sentenced to eight years after being caught with 61 grams of cannabis.
๐ต๐น Portugal Other law โ
Portugal's Supreme Court confirms criminal liability above a ten-day personal supply
In judgment 8/2008, the Supreme Court of Justice resolved conflicting case law by holding that article 40(2) of the 1993 drug law remained applicable to acquisition or possession for personal consumption exceeding a ten-day supply. This included cannabis: exceeding the threshold could remain a personal-consumption crime, rather than automatically establishing trafficking. The ruling preserved the administrative regime for quantities within the decriminalisation threshold.
๐จ๐ณ China Other law โ
China's Narcotics Control Law takes effect
The law, adopted on 29 December 2007, replaced the 1990 decision. It lists cannabis among the drugs, has police register drug users, and sets community rehabilitation at three years and compulsory isolated rehabilitation at two, which can be extended by one more. A user who comes forward to register or seeks treatment is not punished for the use.
๐ต๐ฆ Panama Other law โ
Panama's new Penal Code sets a separate penalty for small personal-use possession
The Penal Code adopted by Law 14 of 2007 took effect on 23 May 2008. Its drug chapter distinguished small personal-use purchase or possession, punishable by fifty to two hundred fifty day-fines, weekend arrest or community work, from possession shown not to be for consumption, punishable by five to ten years' imprisonment. Qualifying dependent users instead faced a security measure, with the personal quantity assessed individually by forensic specialists. The provisions remained criminal law and set no universal cannabis gram allowance. The June 2008 consolidated text numbers these provisions as Articles 316 and 317.
๐บ๐ฆ Ukraine Easing โ Article
Ukraine moves the ordinary growing crime above 100 plants
From 7 May 2008, the ordinary criminal offence of unlawful cannabis or opium-poppy growing applied only above 100 plants, narrowing the offence in the 2001 code. The reform also added a fine and other sentencing options for ordinary possession without intent to sell. Its final provisions ordered release and case closures for conduct whose criminal liability it removed, while aggravated growing remained separately punishable. Parliament lowered the cannabis thresholds again in 2009.
1719+2 points
๐ต๐ช Peru Other law โ
Peru's Constitutional Court overturns a retroactive cannabis-cultivation conviction
In Jorge Isidro Murga's habeas corpus case, the Constitutional Court annulled a conviction and returned the proceedings to the prosecution stage. The cultivation facts occurred in May 2003, before Law 28002 introduced the cannabis-cultivation offence applied to him. The court found that applying that provision retroactively violated criminal legality. It required the trial judge to reconsider the custody measure rather than ordering immediate release, and did not establish a general right to cultivate cannabis after the 2003 law.
๐ถ๐ฆ Qatar Death penalty โ
A Doha court sentences a man to death over 160 kg of hashish
An Iranian man was sentenced, unanimously and in his absence, to death by firing squad for trying to bring 160 kilograms of hashish into Qatar. He had slipped away from detectives about seven months earlier.
๐ฒ๐ท Mauritania Debate โ
Mauritania's deputies back prescription controls on narcotic medicines
Deputies approved a bill requiring strict control of the manufacture, import, export and distribution of narcotic medicines, with prescribing doctors and dispensing pharmacists overseeing medical use. Health Minister Mohamed Lemine Ould Raghani said the government would enforce the controls rigorously. After the Senate's January vote, deputies stressed the need to curb uncontrolled medicines while protecting pharmacy outlets.
๐ฝ๐ฐ Kosovo Tightening โ Article
Kosovo restricts cannabis to research, education and police work
Kosovo placed cannabis, resin, extracts and tinctures in a table restricted to scientific research, education and police purposes; ordinary medical prescribing belonged to other tables. The law also prohibited growing plants from which narcotics could be obtained and included supplying and holding seeds within its definition of cultivation for narcotic production. Promulgated by the UN mission, it operated alongside the provisional criminal codeโs prison terms for drug production and supply.
๐จ๐ฑ Chile Tightening โ
Chile places cannabis in its serious-harm drug category
Published on 19 February, Decree 867 listed cannabis flowering or fruiting tops, resin, extracts and tinctures in the category of drugs considered capable of causing serious toxic effects or considerable harm to health, alongside cocaine and heroin. The classification linked cannabis to the more severe trafficking category under Law 20.000; it did not make private personal consumption a new offence.
๐น๐ท Tรผrkiye Tightening โ
Turkey sets penalties for growing hemp without a permit
Effective on publication, Law 5728 amended Article 23 of the narcotics law. Sowing hemp without a permit, or knowingly exceeding its area or using a different location, carried a judicial fine of at least fifty days. A separate paragraph prescribed one to seven years in prison for sowing hemp exclusively to obtain cannabis. Cultivation covered the whole process from sowing the seed to harvesting. The law was adopted on 23 January 2008; its commencement date was 8 February.
๐จ๐ฟ Czechia Medical โ
Czech Supreme Court requires individual assessment of therapeutic cannabis cultivation
In case 3 Tdo 52/2008, the Supreme Court quashed an appeal decision against a woman growing cannabis for therapeutic preparations and returned the case for reconsideration. It rejected the offence classification used below and found that the specific treatment circumstances could lack the social harmfulness required for a crime. The ruling did not create a general medical-cannabis licence or prevent other production or possession offences from applying in different cases.
๐ธ๐ช Sweden Medical โ
A Swedish court jails a multiple sclerosis patient for cannabis
The woman, a first offender, was given an unconditional prison sentence; the court treated her statement that cannabis eased her symptoms as an aggravating circumstance. The medicines agency reported that year that no cannabinoid drug was available in Sweden.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Medical โ
Canada's Federal Court strikes down the one-patient limit on designated growers
In Sfetkopoulos, the Federal Court declared paragraph 41(b.1) of the medical-access regulations invalid under section 7 of the Charter. The rule prevented a designated grower from holding more than one production licence. The court set aside refusals of applications naming a common producer and returned them to the minister for reconsideration; it did not abolish medical licensing or legalise recreational cultivation.
๐ฒ๐ท Mauritania Debate โ Article
Mauritania's senators back drug controls despite fears about cultivation
Senators voted 23 to five for a bill controlling the legal market in narcotics and psychotropic drugs, including their medical and scientific uses. Some opposition senators feared it would authorise cultivation and drug imports and exports, and asked for a delay. Health Minister Mohamed Lemine Ould Raghani said failure to implement UN drug treaties had nearly caused a rupture with the international drug-control board.
๐ฆ๐น Austria Tightening โ
Austria explicitly criminalises growing cannabis to obtain narcotics
The 2007 amendment, effective in January 2008, added cultivation of cannabis, opium poppy or coca for obtaining narcotics to section 27's offences. The basic penalty was up to one year in prison or 360 day-fines; conduct exclusively for personal use carried up to six months or the same fine ceiling. Section 28 separately covered cultivation to obtain quantities above the statutory threshold. The change addressed growing before production of the drug; it did not ban every cannabis plant regardless of purpose or remove the law's diversion provisions.
๐ธ๐ด Somalia Enforcement โ
Al-Shabaab flogs men for hashish in Kismayo
After Al-Shabaab seized the port city of Kismayo, three local men were arrested for possession of hashish. Their supply was burned and they were publicly flogged by the militants.
๐ธ๐ฑ Sierra Leone Tightening โ Article
Sierra Leone gives drug officers powers to destroy cannabis crops
Drug officers gained powers to enter land without a warrant and destroy unlawfully cultivated or wild cannabis, after collecting evidence and when urgent action was needed to prevent harvesting, concealment or danger. The new law created a national enforcement agency and repealed the colonial Dangerous Drugs Act, while preserving existing regulations and proceedings. Parliament rushed it through after a cocaine-laden aircraft landed in the country, exposing weaknesses in drug enforcement.
๐ป๐จ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Tightening โ
Saint Vincent raises cannabis penalties to cocaine levels
According to a defence lawyer speaking in court in 2020, a 2008 amendment lifted the maximum for possession and trafficking of cannabis from three years and EC$100,000 to seven years and EC$500,000, the same as for Class A drugs. He added that the old EC$1,000 fine for a single seed disappeared in the same amendment.
๐ฑ๐ธ Lesotho Other law โ
Lesotho passes the Drugs of Abuse Act
The Act replaced the Dangerous Medicines Act of 1973 and brought the law into line with the UN conventions. It also allowed licences for medical and scientific use.
๐ฏ๐ต Japan Enforcement โ
Four sumo wrestlers are expelled over cannabis
A cannabis scandal in professional sumo ended with the expulsion of four wrestlers. Cases involving athletes and entertainers followed: a rugby player suspended in 2009, and actors and singers given suspended sentences in 2017, 2019 and 2020.
๐จ๐ณ China Culture & science โ
Cannabis from a 2,700-year-old grave at Yanghai is shown to have been psychoactive
A study in the Journal of Experimental Botany analysed 789 g of plant matter from a leather basket and a wooden bowl in tomb M90 of the Yanghai cemetery near Turpan, the grave of a man of about 45. Its breakdown products and a THC-synthase gene showed that the plant had been a drug type. The authors suggested medicinal, psychoactive or divinatory use; how it was taken is unknown.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Enforcement โ
Police break up Brazil's marijuana marches
Marches for legalisation called in ten state capitals by Growroom, the largest Portuguese- language cannabis forum, and other growers' groups were met with police violence. The neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro writes that the repression strengthened the movement, which spread across the country in the following years.
200723 entries1 score change
๐ธ๐ณ Senegal Tightening โ
Senegal raises trafficking penalties
Law 2007-31 rewrote articles 95 to 103 of the Drug Code. Growing, producing and international trafficking of high-risk drugs carry ten to twenty years of forced labour and a fine of three times the value of the drugs seized; giving or offering drugs to a person for personal use carries five to ten years.
๐ฑ๐ฆ Laos Tightening โ
Laos passes its Law on Narcotics
Law 10/NA prohibits narcotics; its 2009 implementing decree names the cannabis plant as a narcotic-producing plant and bans growing and possessing it. Drug offences had previously been covered only by an article of the criminal code.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Death penalty โ
Indonesia's Constitutional Court upholds capital punishment under the narcotics law
In cases 2-3/PUU-V/2007, the Constitutional Court rejected Indonesian applicants' constitutional challenge to death-penalty provisions of the 1997 Narcotics Law. Foreign applicants' petitions were inadmissible for lack of standing. The judgment preserved existing capital sanctions within the broader drug-control framework; it did not introduce a new cannabis penalty or concern cannabis alone.
๐ฑ๐บ Luxembourg Tightening โ
Luxembourg introduces a statutory framework for roadside drug testing
The Law of 18 September 2007 took effect on 1 October and introduced a legal framework for roadside testing for illicit drugs. The national drug report records a THC threshold of 2 ng/ml, alongside separate thresholds for other substances, for the covered traffic offence. It also records immediate eight-working-day licence withdrawal for refusing alcohol or drug testing. These were traffic controls, distinct from the fine-only treatment of simple cannabis use introduced in 2001; the threshold is recorded as historical law.
๐ธ๐ฎ Slovenia Hemp โ
Slovenia aligns permitted hemp varieties with the referenced EU list
An amendment replaced the hemp-permit rules' national variety-list reference with Annex II of Commission Regulation 796/2004 as amended, while retaining the ceiling of 0.2 percent THC in dry matter. It also revised application details to identify the farm and the agricultural land-use units and areas planted with each variety. This adjusted the existing agricultural permit system without establishing personal recreational cultivation rights. The reproduced original identifies publication on 24 September 2007 and commencement the following day.
๐ป๐จ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Tightening โ
Regional forces destroy 870,000 plants in a week
A multinational Regional Security System squad, finishing a training course, spent a week with Saint Vincent's police cutting and burning cannabis in the Soufriรจre hills. The official count was 870,161 plants and 111 shacks destroyed.
๐ง๐ญ Bahrain Death penalty โ Article
Bahrain keeps capital drug penalties and offers users a treatment route
Bahrainโs new drug law retained death or life imprisonment for trafficking and required death in specified aggravated cases, while personal possession and growing carried imprisonment and a fine up to 3,000 dinars. It allowed treatment instead of punishment for proven addiction and protected some people seeking treatment before being caught using or prosecuted. Taking effect on 17 August 2007, it replaced the 1973 decree and its later penalty amendments; unpaid provision for use had a separate offence carrying up to seven years.
๐ซ๐ท France Tightening โ
France promulgates sentencing floors for qualifying repeat offences
Law 2007-1198 introduced sentencing floors for legally defined repeat offences. For non-felony offences, the floors were one, two, three or four years where the statutory maximum was respectively three, five, seven or ten years. Courts could depart from the floors under specified conditions, with tighter rules for further recidivism. Cannabis cases therefore depended on the charge, its maximum penalty and the legal requirements for recidivism; the law did not impose a blanket minimum on every cannabis-use or possession conviction. The date is promulgation on 10 August, before publication on 11 August 2007.
๐ฉ๐ฟ Algeria Other law โ Article
Algeria sets a medical route for drug users to avoid prosecution
The implementing decree required medical assessment and reports to support treatment or medical supervision for people who used illicit drugs. Doctors had to notify the prosecutor of progress or interruption, and a completion certificate supported a decision not to prosecute. Seized drugs and plants still had to be confiscated; the decree was signed on 30 July and published on 5 August.
๐ฉ๐ฟ Algeria Medical โ
Algeria sets approval rules for medical and scientific cannabis work
Health-ministry authorisation was required for the listed controlled-drug operations, including cannabis cultivation, and could be issued only for medical or scientific purposes. Applicants had to identify the product, quantity and intended use and supply a criminal-record extract; import and export permits lasted three months per operation. The decree also required stock records and secure storage.
๐ต๐ช Peru Other law โ
Peru retains its cannabis limits while revising the personal-possession article
Legislative Decree 982 revised Article 299 while retaining non-punishable possession for one's own immediate use of up to 8 g of marijuana or 2 g of its derivatives. It also retained the exclusion for possession of two or more types of drugs and added an ecstasy threshold. The cannabis quantities were not newly reduced by this amendment. The decree was published on 22 July and took effect the following day under the constitutional commencement rule.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Other law โ
Indonesia reorganises its national and regional narcotics boards
Presidential Regulation 83/2007 replaced the 2002 decree governing the National Narcotics Board. It set out separate national, provincial and district or city organisations, their executive staff, task forces, reporting and funding. Provincial boards answered to governors and district or city boards to regents or mayors, with national coordination through BNN. Regional boards had already been authorised in 2002; this was a more detailed organisational framework, not a new cannabis offence or the first regional enforcement presence. It took effect when signed on 23 July 2007.
๐ฉ๐ฐ Denmark Tightening โ
Denmark raises possession fines and clarifies social grounds for warnings
Law 526 strengthened the fine policy for unlawful drug possession and required sentencing to consider the substances' harmful effects. It qualified the normal restriction on warnings where social circumstances favoured a warning and possession resulted from strong dependence after prolonged, persistent drug misuse. The Danish Health Authority reported both the tougher fine policy and wider warning exception. The law took effect on 1 July 2007, following signature on 6 June.
๐ฉ๐ฐ Denmark Tightening โ
Denmark introduces a blood-based prohibition on driving after specified drugs
Law 524 added a Traffic Act rule prohibiting driving or attempting to drive with substances classified as dangerous to road safety in the blood, alongside the existing impairment rule. It exempted substances taken in accordance with a lawful prescription and allowed police saliva and sweat samples and eye inspections. The reform covered illicit drugs including cannabis; its statutory rule did not require proof of impaired driving for the new blood-based offence. Implementing Order 655 counted THC only above 0.001 mg per kg of blood.
๐ฐ๐ต North Korea International โ
North Korea joins two UN drug conventions on one day
North Korea acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 19 March 2007. 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. On the same day it acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐ซ๐ท France Other law โ
France introduces drug-awareness courses as a judicial response to drug use
The delinquency-prevention law of 5 March 2007 introduced drug-awareness courses that prosecutors could offer as alternatives to prosecution or through a penal settlement, and courts could order as an additional penalty. Course costs generally fell on participants, with exemptions depending on the legal procedure. A September decree and May 2008 justice circular set out delivery rules. This added a response to offences involving cannabis and other drugs; it did not remove the criminal offence of drug use or require every user to attend a course.
๐ฑ๐ฎ Liechtenstein International โ
Liechtenstein joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Liechtenstein acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 9 March 2007. 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.
๐ฑ๐ง Lebanon Enforcement โ
Lebanon abandons crop eradication after farmers open fire
Police estimated that about 6,500 hectares of cannabis had been planted in the northern Bekaa, the largest crop since the 1980s. The year's eradication campaign was called off after farmers shot at the police.
๐ฎ๐ฑ Israel Medical โ
Israel sets up its medical cannabis programme
The health ministry began licensing patients and growers on a regular basis. The programme grew into one of the largest in the world relative to population.
1720+3 points
200626 entries6 score changes
๐ฒ๐ช Montenegro International โ
Montenegro joins two UN drug conventions on one day
Montenegro deposited its succession to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 23 October 2006. 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. On the same day it deposited its succession to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Easing โ Article
Bulgaria sets one to six years for possession
After two years in which any possession was treated as a serious crime, the penal code was amended: one to six years in prison, or a fine in minor cases that still counts as a conviction. The amendment, which rewrote every drug offence in the code to match a European Union framework decision, was published in State Gazette 75 of 2006 and took effect on 13 October. The courts had been filling up: 525 people were convicted of drug crimes in 2003, 921 in 2005 and 1,587 in 2006.
18+7 points
๐ง๐ท Brazil Easing โ Article
Brazil ends prison for users
A new drug law kept possession for personal use a crime but removed prison as a penalty, replacing it with a warning, community service or an educational course. Penalties for dealing went up.
914+5 points
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Tightening โ
Lithuania publishes a higher prison maximum for unlawful large-scale cannabis cultivation
Law X-711, adopted on 22 June and published on 14 July, rewrote Criminal Code Article 265. It raised the maximum prison term for growing a large quantity of cannabis, poppies or other listed plants contrary to the prescribed rules from two to five years, while retaining community service, a fine, restriction of liberty and arrest as alternatives. It also added liability for legal entities. This entry uses the verified publication date; the amendment was not the original prohibition of cannabis growing.
๐ฌ๐ฆ Gabon International โ
Gabon joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Gabon ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 10 July 2006. 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.
๐ท๐ด Romania Other law โ Article
Romania requires prescriptions and licences for cannabis medicines
Romaniaโs new controlled-substances law placed cannabis, resin, extracts and tinctures among drugs with recognised medical interest under strict control. Patients could receive them only as pharmaceutical preparations made industrially or in a pharmacy, on prescription; cultivation and commercial handling required authorisation. The law was published in December 2005 and took effect seven months later.
๐ต๐ญ Philippines Death penalty โ
The Philippines abolishes the death penalty again
Republic Act 9346 prohibited death sentences and substituted life imprisonment for capital offences under the drug law. People whose sentences were reduced to life imprisonment under the Act were made ineligible for parole.
๐ฑ๐ป Latvia Hemp โ
Latvia rewrites its statutory hemp-cultivation framework
An amendment adopted on 11 May took effect on 13 June and replaced Articles 6 and 7 of the controlled-drugs law. It prohibited cultivation of Indian hemp while expressly allowing Cannabis sativa subsp. sativa for fibre, seed and horticultural purposes in open fields, excluding indoor and covered growing. It delegated cultivation procedures to the Cabinet and provided an authorisation route for scientific research and teaching involving controlled plants. This was a differentiated cultivation framework, not permission to grow cannabis for recreational drug use.
๐ฒ๐บ Mauritius Easing โ
Mauritius's final appeal court upholds judicial power to consider bail in drug cases
In State v Khoyratty, the Privy Council dismissed the State's appeal against the invalidation of an absolute bar on bail in specified drug cases. It upheld the Supreme Court's separation-of-powers reasoning: the constitutional amendment supporting the bar had not met the special requirements protecting the democratic state, leaving Section 32 of the Dangerous Drugs Act without valid constitutional support. The defendant faced a heroin-selling charge; the ruling concerned the wider drug-case bail framework, including cannabis offences within its scope. It restored judicial consideration of bail rather than requiring release in every case.
๐จ๐ณ China Other law โ
China moves the penalty for drug use into its public security law
The Public Security Administration Punishments Law, adopted on 28 August 2005, took effect. Article 72 punishes using drugs or possessing a small amount with 10 to 15 days' detention and a fine of up to 2,000 yuan, or up to 5 days or 500 yuan in minor cases; Article 71 sets the same detention for growing a small number of drug plants.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Tightening โ Article
Italy puts cannabis in the same class as hard drugs
The Fini-Giovanardi law merged Italy's drug lists, so dealing cannabis carried the same basic six to twenty years in prison as dealing any other drug. Possession for personal use stayed an administrative offence, but it became a crime when the amount, the packaging or other circumstances suggested the drugs were not only for the holder. The law took effect on 28 February 2006; the Constitutional Court struck it down in 2014.
2117โ4 points
๐ง๐ท Brazil Easing โ
Brazil's Supreme Court rejects the blanket ban on prison-regime progression
By six votes to five in HC 82,959, the Supreme Federal Court held unconstitutional the provision requiring an entire sentence under the Heinous Crimes Law to be served in a closed regime. That provision also covered drug trafficking. The case itself concerned a sexual offence; the court's report discussed its relevance to cannabis suppliers. Progression required assessment by the execution judge rather than automatic release, and the ruling arose from review in an individual case.
๐ท๐บ Russia Tightening โ Article
Russia cuts the decriminalised amount to 6 g
Less than two years after setting generous thresholds, the government lowered them sharply. Above 6 g of cannabis, possession is a crime again.
1511โ4 points
๐ป๐บ Vanuatu International โ
Vanuatu joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Vanuatu acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 26 January 2006. 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.
๐ฒ๐ฉ Moldova Other law โ
Moldova adopts a government framework for drug-quantity classifications
Government Decision 79 adopted lists of controlled drugs and plants found in illicit circulation, together with quantities distinguishing small, large and particularly large amounts. These classifications helped determine whether conduct attracted contraventional or criminal liability and the applicable punishment. The Constitutional Court later confirmed the decision's adoption date and role in the statutory scheme. This entry records adoption, rather than a separately verified commencement date, and does not backdate later numerical thresholds.
๐ธ๐ฐ Slovakia Other law โ
Slovakia's new Criminal Code sets dose categories for personal possession
The new Criminal Code defined possession for personal use as no more than three usual single doses, and a larger personal-use category as no more than ten. Section 171 provided imprisonment of up to three years for the first category and up to five years for the larger category. The rules applied to controlled drugs generally, including cannabis. These were categories within criminal law, not quantities that could legally be possessed or fixed gram allowances.
๐ International International โ
The UN drugs office says the world has failed to come to terms with cannabis
A special chapter of the World Drug Report, requested after the disputes of 2002 and 2003, acknowledged that much early material on cannabis is now considered inaccurate and that studies in several countries had cleared it of many of the charges made against it. It concluded that either the gap between the letter and the spirit of the Single Convention had to be bridged or the parties needed to discuss redefining the status of cannabis. The preface by the office's director spoke of a cannabis pandemic all the same.
๐ช๐ธ Spain Medical โ
Catalonia operates a pilot programme supplying a cannabis medicine
Catalonia's Health Department put a pilot therapeutic-cannabis programme into operation in 2006. Patients received the standardised extract Sativex through foreign-medicine or compassionate-use routes, with observational follow-up in the Seguivex and Seguivex-Emesis studies. The programme involved hospital selection and dispensing with pharmacy follow-up; it was not general retail access to cannabis.
๐ผ๐ธ Samoa Tightening โ
Samoa adds manufacturing and precursor offences
The first amendment to the Narcotics Act 1967 defined controlled precursors and added offences for unlawfully manufacturing a narcotic and unlawfully selling a precursor.
๐ณ๐ฆ Namibia Debate โ
Namibia proposes 20 to 40 years for drug offences
Parliamentary debate on the Combating of the Abuse of Drugs Bill proposed exceptionally severe penalties. Contemporary reporting described parliamentary adoption, but this review did not establish assent or commencement. The proposal must not be substituted for the operative 1971 Actโs penalty provisions.
๐ฌ๐ท Greece Other law โ
Greece consolidates its drug legislation in a Code on Drugs
Greece brought its existing drug legislation together in a Code on Drugs. The national human-rights commission later identified the codification as a legislative milestone following the 1987 reform and the 1993 legislation that established OKANA, the Organization Against Drugs. The record concerns the wider controlled-drug framework rather than a cannabis-specific law.
๐ฌ๐ช Georgia Tightening โ
Georgia adopts zero tolerance
The Saakashvili government began forcing people to take street drug tests by the tens of thousands a year. A positive result meant a heavy fine, and a second within a year meant a criminal case.
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland Medical โ
Finland begins granting patient-specific medical cannabis permits
Medical cannabis became available through individual special permits, with one permit recorded in 2006 and one in 2007. This was a narrow route for named patients, not general marketing authorisation: a 2011 report described annual permits and specialist assessment after other treatments proved unsuitable or ineffective. Sativex's separate marketing authorisation followed in 2012.
1314+1 point
๐ง๐ช Belgium Debate โ
Belgium's first cannabis social club is founded in Antwerp
Trekt Uw Plant was founded three years after the law set cannabis apart from other drugs and tolerated an adult's single plant. It harvested its first formal crop in 2010. In 2013 a second club became independent in Hasselt and three more were founded in Liรจge, Andenne and Namur. Over the same years the police dismantled ever more plantations: 35 in 2003, 1,212 in 2013.
200534 entries0 score changes
๐ง๐ฆ Bosnia and Herzegovina Other law โ
Bosnia and Herzegovina adopts a state narcotics law
The Law on Prevention and Suppression of the Abuse of Narcotic Drugs put the UN drug conventions into effect nationwide. In 2016 the Ministry of Civil Affairs set up a task force on legalising cannabis for medical use.
๐ฐ๐ท South Korea Other law โ
South Korea's Constitutional Court upholds cannabis smoking and receipt penalties
In case 2005Hun-Ba46, the Constitutional Court unanimously upheld the challenged cannabis smoking and receipt provisions. It rejected proportionality and equality challenges, including comparison with alcohol and tobacco. The decision preserved existing penalties rather than creating a new offence.
๐ฑ๐ฆ Laos Other law โ
Laos adopts prison terms for cannabis trading in its revised penal law
People trading one to ten kilograms of dried cannabis faced three to seven years in prison under the penal-law revision adopted by parliament. Regular or organised trading, or more than ten kilograms, carried five to ten years; people addicted to smoking cannabis were directed to treatment. The revision preceded the 2007 narcotics law and the later amendment adding separate THC and hashish penalty bands.
๐จ๐ฉ DR Congo International โ
The DR Congo joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
The DR Congo ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 28 October 2005. 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.
๐ฆ๐ด Angola International โ
Angola joins two UN drug conventions on one day
Angola acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 26 October 2005. 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. On the same day it acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐ฆ๐ฉ Andorra Other law โ
Andorra's first Criminal Code takes effect
The Criminal Code approved on 21 February 2005 took effect, codifying Andorran criminal law. In its current text, article 499 makes using, growing, bringing in or possessing cannabis for one's own use a minor offence punished with arrest and a fine of 500 to 1,200 euros, and article 500 sets 600 to 1,500 euros for using it in a public place or in a group.
๐ฑ๐ท Liberia International โ
Liberia joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Liberia acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 16 September 2005. 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.
๐จ๐ญ Switzerland International โ
Switzerland joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Switzerland ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 14 September 2005. 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.
๐ง๐น Bhutan International โ
Bhutan joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Bhutan acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 24 August 2005. 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.
๐ผ๐ธ Samoa International โ
Samoa joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Samoa acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 19 August 2005. 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.
๐ธ๐ฆ Saudi Arabia Other law โ
Saudi Arabia codifies its modern anti-narcotics law
Royal Decree M/39 created the present framework. Personal possession or use carries six months to two years in prison; supply carries long terms, and importing, exporting, manufacturing or receiving drugs for distribution can be punished by death. Cannabis is a prohibited plant.
๐ต๐ฑ Poland Other law โ
Poland's new drug act keeps possession a crime
Health minister Marek Balicki had proposed that small amounts for personal use should again go unpunished, and the government's bill would have let a court waive the penalty in such cases. That provision was dropped during the work in the Sejm, and the act passed by 315 votes to 55 with four abstentions. It widened the ways a prosecutor could suspend a case while a user underwent treatment. The act took effect on 4 October 2005 and is still the law.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Enforcement โ
Canadian police arrest the seed seller Marc Emery for the United States
Acting on a request from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Canadian police raided the BC Marijuana Party bookstore in Vancouver and arrested Marc Emery in Nova Scotia for extradition. From 1998 until then he had paid nearly 600,000 dollars in taxes as a declared marijuana seed vendor. Canada's justice minister signed the surrender order on 10 May 2010.
๐ฐ๐ญ Cambodia International โ
Cambodia joins two UN drug conventions on one day
Cambodia ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 7 July 2005. 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. On the same day it acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom Medical โ
England and Wales rejects medical necessity defences in cannabis appeals
In Quayle and related cases, the Court of Appeal rejected attempts to justify continuing unlicensed cannabis activities through a medical necessity defence. It held that the proposed defence conflicted with the statutory licensing scheme and rejected the claimed grounds involving chronic pain. The judgment concerned England and Wales and did not establish a new cannabis offence or a prescribing route.
๐ฉ๐ช Germany Medical โ
Germany's administrative court opens the way to individual medical cannabis permits
In case 3 C 17.04, the Federal Administrative Court held that treating an individual patient could serve the public interest required for an exceptional cannabis acquisition permit. It ordered the federal medicines authority to reconsider a multiple sclerosis patient's application. The court did not itself grant a permit; the authority still had to exercise its discretion and examine the other statutory requirements.
๐ฒ๐ฆ Morocco Tightening โ
Morocco launches a major cannabis-eradication campaign in the Rif
The International Narcotics Control Board recorded a campaign launched in early May 2005. The subsequent UNODCโMorocco survey described mechanical and chemical eradication concentrated in Larache and Taounate, prioritising areas where cannabis cultivation was more recent. Morocco reported 15,160 hectares eradicated that year. UNODC explicitly said it neither implemented nor verified eradication activities, so this is a government-reported total. The campaign combined enforcement with awareness and alternative-development measures. The survey's broader fall in cultivated area also reflected adverse weather and should not be equated with land destroyed by the campaign.
๐ช๐น Ethiopia Other law โ
Ethiopia's new criminal code separates personal use from trafficking
Ethiopia's new criminal code punished unauthorised drug possession, growing or supply for private use with up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to 50,000 birr. Trafficking carried at least five years, rising to at least ten for organised or professional dealing, repeat offences and other aggravated cases. It replaced the 1957 code while preserving the application of special criminal laws.
๐ฐ๐ญ Cambodia Other law โ Article
Cambodia rewrites prison and fine penalties for personal drug use
People storing, buying or growing drugs for themselves, or using them unlawfully, faced seven days to one month in prison under amended personal-use rules, with a possible additional fine of 25,000โ100,000 riel. The original law had allowed six days to one month, a fine of 100,000โ1,000,000 riel, or both. The amendments kept discretion for very small quantities used in non-addictive customary village practice and doubled the ordinary penalties for repeat offences or health professionals.
๐ท๐ธ Serbia Debate โ
Belgrade holds its first Ganja March
About fifty people took part. The second march, planned for 5 May 2007, was cancelled after the interior ministry received a threatening message. Marches resumed in Belgrade in 2015 and reached Novi Sad in 2016.
๐ธ๐ฎ Slovenia Other law โ
Slovenia's Constitutional Court upholds challenged cannabis-control provisions
The Constitutional Court upheld the challenged criminal-code provisions and statutory authority for government drug scheduling. It held that referring to the published cannabis schedule satisfied the requirement that offences be sufficiently defined. It also rejected the challenge to cannabis's Group I listing as manifestly unfounded, while explaining that cannabis consumption itself was not a criminal offence. Challenges to possession-penalty and driving provisions were dismissed without a decision on their merits. The ruling preserved existing controls.
๐ท๐ด Romania Easing โ Article
Romania cuts cannabis possession penalties and lets courts impose fines
People caught growing, buying or possessing cannabis for themselves could receive six months to two years in prison or a fine from 7 March 2005. The amendment separated cannabis and other โrisk drugsโ from the higher drug category, whose personal-use penalty remained two to five years. Its treatment-linked alternatives to punishment were deferred until the new Penal Code took effect.
๐จ๐ฑ Chile Other law โ
Chile passes Law 20.000
The new drug law kept private personal use unpunished and created a lesser offence of small- scale dealing. It set no gram threshold, so police and prosecutors decide who is a user and who is a dealer.
๐ณ๐ฎ Nicaragua International โ
Nicaragua joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Nicaragua ratified the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 15 February 2005. 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.
๐ง๐ช Belgium Easing โ
Belgium restores uniform low-priority handling for small cannabis possession
A joint directive signed on 25 January took effect on 1 February, replacing regional instructions issued after the 2004 annulment. Adult personal possession of at most 3 g or one cultivated plant, without indications of sale or trafficking, aggravating circumstances or disturbance of public order, received the lowest prosecution priority and a simplified police report. Police sent monthly report summaries to prosecutors and did not seize cannabis in qualifying cases. The directive retained the quantity guideline from 2003; it did not legalise possession.
๐ช๐น Ethiopia Enforcement โ
The United States warns American Rastafari about Ethiopia's drug law
The American authorities warned Rastafari travelling from the United States that cannabis is illegal in Ethiopia and that possession could bring up to six months in prison.
๐บ๐ธ United States Other law โ
US Supreme Court permits a drug-dog sniff during a lawful traffic stop
In Illinois v. Caballes, a marijuana prosecution, the Supreme Court held that a trained drug dog's exterior sniff during an otherwise lawful traffic stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment without separate suspicion of drug activity. The decision accepted that the stop had not been improperly prolonged; it did not authorise extending a traffic detention simply to conduct a sniff.
๐ป๐บ Vanuatu Medical โ
Vanuatuโs revised drug rules exempt travellersโ labelled medicines
The drug lawโs exemption, revised in 2005, covered a personal-use preparation in a reasonable amount, correctly labelled and accompanied by a doctorโs letter from the travellerโs country of origin. The same law separately provided medical or scientific import permits and exemptions for medicines properly prescribed and supplied by qualified practitioners or pharmacists. Cannabis and resin remained listed drugs, with cultivation prohibited outside the later licensed industry route.
๐บ๐ธ United States Other law โ
The Supreme Court upholds federal power over home-grown medical cannabis
In Gonzales v. Raich the court held that Congress can criminalise cannabis grown and used at home under a state medical law.
๐ฐ๐ต North Korea Other law โ
North Korea's Narcotics Control Law lists cannabis
The law names cannabis and hemp resin as narcotics. Low-THC hemp stayed legal, and reports from the early 2010s suggested the ban on smoking it was often not enforced.
๐ฑ๐ฎ Liechtenstein Tightening โ
Liechtenstein bans hemp entirely
A decree extended the ban to all use of hemp, including as cattle feed, because of the THC it contains.
๐ฌ๐ฒ Gambia Other law โ
Gambia gives drug enforcement to an autonomous agency
Drug enforcement moved into an autonomous National Drug Enforcement Agency through a 2005 amendment. The agency took responsibility for enforcing, regulating and coordinating action against illicit drug trafficking and use, following earlier policing by a specialised unit of the police. A further amendment renamed it the Drug Law Enforcement Agency, The Gambia, in 2014.
200429 entries4 score changes
๐ฉ๐ฟ Algeria Death penalty โ Article
Algeria repeals its drug-law death clause but keeps life sentences
Algeriaโs replacement drug law repealed the 1985 drug provisions, including their capital clause, while setting life imprisonment for unlawful cannabis cultivation and certain supply offences. Illicit use or possession for personal use carried two months to two years in prison, a 5,000โ50,000-dinar fine, or either penalty alone. Qualifying users who followed treatment or medical supervision could avoid prosecution.
๐ณ๏ธ Transnistria Other law โ Article
Transnistriaโs top court tells judges to treat drug gifts as supply
Giving cannabis to another person without payment counted as supply under the Supreme Courtโs guidance, alongside selling, exchanging or lending drugs. Judges were also told to treat gathering wild hemp as acquisition and unauthorised sowing as completed once seeds or seedlings were planted, even if nothing grew. The court drew on the 2002 drug law to explain how the existing offences applied.
๐ฉ๐ช Germany Easing โ
Germany's Constitutional Court rejects driving penalties based solely on trace THC detection
In 1 BvR 2652/03, the Federal Constitutional Court overturned a cannabis driving fine and driving ban and remanded the case. The lower courts had relied on THC below 0.5 nanograms per millilitre without distinguishing detection from a possible effect on driving. The Court required a concentration capable of supporting the statutory assumption of an abstract traffic danger and discussed the then-used 1 nanogram threshold. This limited trace-only findings under the existing traffic offence; it was neither a general guarantee of safe driving nor the later statutory THC limit.
๐ญ๐บ Hungary Tightening โ
Hungary's constitutional court narrows drug diversion exemptions
In decision 54/2004, dated 13 December, the Constitutional Court ordered several diversion exemptions annulled on publication, including provisions covering offering or handing over drugs for joint consumption. It found the joint-consumption criteria too uncertain and also required legislation addressing the protection of minors. The ruling retained the exemption for small-quantity cultivation, production, acquisition or possession for personal use, conditional on six consecutive months of treatment, other drug-use assistance or preventive counselling certified before the first-instance judgment. It rejected the broader challenge to criminal penalties for personal cultivation and possession.
๐ International International โ
EU trafficking framework excludes conduct solely for personal consumption
Framework Decision 2004/757/JHA entered into force, setting minimum criminal-law requirements for illicit drug trafficking, including cannabis cultivation. Conduct solely for personal consumption, as defined by national law, was excluded from its scope. That exclusion did not require national decriminalisation. Member states had until 12 May 2006 to comply with the framework.
๐ซ๐ท France Tightening โ
France's Court of Cassation upholds a cannabis-promotion conviction
In appeal 04-82.312, the Court of Cassation upheld a 1,000-euro fine imposed on an association president for incitement to use narcotics. The case involved cannabis-themed shirts, stickers, postcards and posters, including slogans encouraging cultivation or consumption. The Court found that the appeal judges had adequately established the material and intentional elements of the offence and rejected the challenge invoking freedom of expression. This applied an existing offence to the facts of the case; it did not enact a blanket ban on every depiction of a cannabis leaf.
๐ฐ๐ท South Korea Debate โ
A Korean actress seeks a constitutional referral over cannabis penalties
During her criminal appeal, Kim Bu-seon sought a trial-court referral for constitutional review. That request was rejected in April 2005; her direct constitutional complaint followed in June. The 2004 request preceded the Constitutional Court's November 2005 ruling.
๐ง๐ช Belgium Other law โ
Belgium's constitutional court annuls the vague cannabis registration exception
In judgment 158/2004, the Court of Arbitration annulled Article 16 of the Law of 3 May 2003, which allowed police registration alone for adult personal cannabis possession without problematic use or public nuisance. It found the quantity, problematic-use and nuisance criteria insufficiently precise for criminal-law legality. The Court preserved the provision's effects until publication of the judgment in the Belgian Official Gazette, which followed on 28 October. The ruling concerned the special reporting exception; personal possession had remained an offence under the 2003 framework.
๐ฒ๐ด Macau Enforcement โ
Macauโs top court treats shared-cost cannabis supply as trafficking
Macauโs top court upheld a cannabis trafficking conviction, ruling that providing cannabis to other people counted as supply even when they shared the purchase cost. The old lawโs lesser-quantity tier used a three-day personal-use reference, which the court placed at six to eight grams for cannabis; the quantity supplied exceeded it. Macauโs 2009 replacement later introduced a daily-reference table for assessing lesser production and trafficking.
๐น๐ฒ Turkmenistan Other law โ
Turkmenistan adopts a national drug-control law
Turkmenistan adopted a law covering narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, precursors and measures against their illegal trade on 9 October 2004. It remained the principal drug law until its replacement took effect on 1 January 2018, retaining enterprise permits and state quotas for controlled cultivation.
๐ฑ๐ฆ Laos International โ
Laos joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Laos acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 1 October 2004. 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.
๐ซ๐ท France Other law โ
France creates a consultation network for young cannabis users and their families
A health-ministry circular created consultations for young consumers of cannabis and other psychoactive substances and their families. The network offered free assessment, individual advice, brief care and referral to specialist services, alongside support for parents. Its establishment preceded the February 2005 national cannabis prevention campaign. The programme expanded prevention and treatment services without authorising cannabis use or prescribing cannabis.
๐ณ๐ท Nauru Other law โ
Nauru puts cannabis possession, use and growing under one drug law
Cannabis possession, use, growing and supply without lawful authority came under a national drug-control law that commenced on 6 September 2004. Its combined offence carried up to ten years in prison and a fine of A$50,000; courts later used fines and community service for small cannabis cases. The law replaced the earlier dangerous-drugs legislation.
๐ซ๐ฏ Fiji Other law โ Article
Fiji adopts shared penalties for cannabis use, growing and supply
Fiji signed a drug law placing unauthorised cannabis possession, use, cultivation and supply under the same maximum: a FJ$1 million fine, life imprisonment, or both. It also covered imports and exports and gave police and customs powers to investigate drug offences. Corresponding parts of the older drug law would be replaced when the new Act commenced by ministerial notice; courts later developed separate sentencing guidelines.
๐ซ๐ฒ Micronesia International โ
The Micronesia joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
The Micronesia acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 6 July 2004. 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.
๐ฉ๐ฐ Denmark Tightening โ Article
Denmark replaces warnings with fines
Law 445 inserted a rule that warnings could not normally be issued for drug-law violations, making fines the standard response to possession for personal use. It also strengthened aggravating factors for sales at nightlife venues and youth events, and authorised prison urine testing. The law was signed on 9 June but took effect on 1 July 2004. The warning restriction was expressed as a general rule rather than an absolute prohibition on exceptions.
2218โ4 points
๐ฉ๐ช Germany Other law โ
Germany's Constitutional Court rejects a renewed cannabis-law referral as inadmissible
In 2 BvL 8/02, the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a referral from Bernau's youth court seeking reconsideration of cannabis penalties after the 1994 constitutional decision. It found that the referral failed to establish the relevance of the challenged provisions to the case and did not satisfy the requirements for reopening questions covered by the earlier ruling. The operative decision was procedural inadmissibility, although its reasons addressed the renewed arguments. Existing cannabis penalties remained in place.
๐น๐ฏ Tajikistan Other law โ Article
Tajikistanโs top court tells judges to apply lighter laws to old sentences
The Supreme Court told judges to review existing sentences under a criminal-law reform that had taken effect on 22 May. Its public guidance required release where conduct was no longer criminal and a reduction to the new maximum where a penalty had been lowered. The code separately grouped possession and cultivation into quantity bands in the later consolidated text.
๐จ๐ญ Switzerland Debate โ
Switzerland's proposed cannabis reform fails in parliament
The National Council again refused to consider the proposed revision of the Narcotics Act, ending the reform despite support in the Council of States. The rejected package included decriminalising cannabis consumption and associated preparatory acts. Its failure left those proposals unimplemented.
๐ธ๐ฎ Slovenia Hemp โ
Slovenia sets hemp cultivation permits with a 0.2 percent THC ceiling
Cultivation rules required an agriculture-ministry permit for listed hemp varieties containing no more than 0.2 percent THC in dry matter, on a contiguous area of at least 0.3 hectares. Permitted purposes included seed propagation, oil, cosmetics, animal feed and fibre. Permits covered a single sowing, with crop sampling and harvest reporting. This regulated agricultural hemp rather than recreational cannabis cultivation. Article 14 brought the rules into force the day after publication in the Official Gazette on 28 April 2004.
๐ฝ๐ฐ Kosovo Other law โ
Kosovo sets prison terms for cannabis suppliers under a new code
Cannabis suppliers faced a fine and one to eight years in prison under Kosovoโs new provisional criminal code; buying or holding drugs with intent to supply carried a fine and one to five years. Growing or producing drugs for sale carried a fine and one to ten years. The UN-administered code preceded the 2008 law that expressly placed cannabis in its most restricted table.
๐ฆ๐บ Australia ยท Western Australia Easing โ
Western Australia starts its cannabis infringement notices
The Cannabis Infringement Notice scheme made minor possession and growing a ticketable offence.
๐จ๐ฌ Congo International โ
The Congo joins two UN drug conventions on one day
The Congo ratified the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 3 March 2004. 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. On the same day it acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom Easing โ Article
The United Kingdom downgrades cannabis to Class C
Cannabis moved from Class B to Class C. The maximum for possession fell from five to two years, and police were told that adults caught with a small amount should normally get a warning, not be arrested.
1420+6 points
๐น๐ผ Taiwan Other law โ
Taiwan revises compulsory treatment and repeat drug-use prosecution
The 2003 statutory revision took effect after a six-month delay. For use offences involving first- or second-category drugs, including cannabis in the second category, Article 20 allowed observation and detoxification for up to two months, followed where required by compulsory treatment lasting six to twelve months. Article 23 required release and non-prosecution after completion, but repeat use within five years of release went to prosecution. This revised an existing treatment system rather than legalising cannabis use.
๐จ๐ฌ Congo Culture & science โ
Congo surveys 239 drug users in three cities
Researchers surveyed 239 people encountered through police, customs, prisons and psychiatric services in Brazzaville, Dolisie and Ouesso. The government later cited the 2004 survey while describing cannabis, cocaine and heroin as the main drugs accessible in the country. It used this evidence to discuss gaps in prevention, treatment and support for vulnerable children and former combatants.
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Tightening โ
Bulgaria abolishes the personal dose
Paragraph 3 of Article 354a of the penal code had exempted a dependent person holding a single dose from punishment. An amendment known as the single dose law repealed it, so that possessing any drug in any quantity became a crime, whether or not the person was dependent; wholesalers, small dealers and users were treated alike. A study a year later found the ban and its effects to be part of a wider failure of law and institutions. It made Bulgarian law among the harshest in Europe.
121โ11 points
200335 entries3 score changes
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Other law โ
Canada's Supreme Court upholds cannabis possession prohibitions
In Malmo-Levine and Caine, the Supreme Court dismissed constitutional challenges to prohibitions on simple possession and possession for trafficking. The majority held that Parliament could criminalise cannabis possession while remaining free to decriminalise it through legislation. The judgment upheld existing offences rather than introducing a new possession ban.
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Other law โ
Croatia's first decriminalisation is struck down with the law that carried it
A large amendment to the criminal code, passed in July 2003 and due to apply from 1 December, limited the possession offence to drugs held for sale. Possession 'for one's own needs', as it was called in the debate, would have stopped being a crime, as it had not been before 1996. The Constitutional Court repealed the whole amending act, and possession stayed a crime until 2013.
๐น๐ด Tonga Tightening โ
Tonga raises drug penalties to 25 and 30 years
The Act to Control Illicit Drugs, Controlled Chemicals and Equipment was signed into law. Possession, cultivation, use or supply of illicit drugs, including marijuana, could bring a fine of up to 750,000 pa'anga or 25 years in prison, and import or export up to 1 million pa'anga or 30 years.
๐ธ๐ป El Salvador Tightening โ
El Salvador sets a two-gram line
Decree 153 of 2 October 2003 replaced the 1991 drug law. As amended in December 2003 and January 2004, Article 34 punishes possessing less than two grams of illicit drugs, seeds, leaves or plants with one to three years in prison and two grams or more with three to six; possession with intent to supply carries six to ten.
๐ฒ๐ต Northern Mariana Islands Enforcement โ
Northern Mariana Islandsโ crop raids shift cannabis supply toward imports
A federal drug assessment linked the decline of local cannabis growing in 2000โ2001 to eradication campaigns and a greater reliance on supplies from the Philippines and Palau. It reported a sharp rise in retail prices and said local cultivation was largely confined to small amounts for personal use. Officers were focusing on undercover purchases and border interception; adult use remained prohibited until 2018.
๐ฉ๐ฏ Djibouti Other law โ
Djibouti keeps cannabis and khat outside its free-trade zones
Cannabis, hashish, cannabis resin and khat leaves were expressly barred from entering Djibouti's free zones. The decree otherwise opened those zones to goods of any origin, broad commercial activity and extensive tax and customs exemptions. The drug exclusion kept these substances outside the commercial privileges offered to zone businesses.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada ยท Ontario Other law โ Article
Ontario's appeal court confirms that possessing cannabis was no offence for two years
In R. v. J.P. the Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed the Crown's appeal over a teenager charged with possession in April 2002. Since the 2000 Parker ruling the ban was valid only with an adequate medical exemption, and the court held the same day in Hitzig that the 2001 regulations had not provided one. From 31 July 2001 until that day, the possession offence was therefore of no force in Ontario. Repairing the regulations in Hitzig revived it.
๐ฌ๐ฒ Gambia Other law โ Article
Gambia replaces its drug-control decree with a new law
Gambia replaced the 1996 drug-control decree with a law regulating prohibited and controlled drugs, including cannabis. It prohibited unauthorised growing, supply, use and possession, while reserving tightly limited medical and scientific authorisations to approved establishments. Later amendments reorganised the enforcement agency and changed penalties, including a separate first-offender cannabis scale in 2014.
๐บ๐ธ United States Enforcement โ
Tommy Chong receives nine months for a paraphernalia conspiracy
Following a guilty plea in a case involving Nice Dreams Enterprises, Tommy Chong receives a nine-month federal prison sentence. The offence concerns drug-paraphernalia sales, rather than personal cannabis possession or his comedy performances.
๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands Medical โ
Dutch pharmacies start dispensing medical cannabis
The Netherlands became the first country where pharmacies supplied cannabis flower on prescription, grown under contract for a government office.
๐ต๐น Portugal Hemp โ Article
Portugal puts non-sowing cannabis seed under its drug law
Law 47/2003, the tenth amendment to the 1993 drug law, added "cannabis seeds not intended for sowing" to Table I-C, alongside the drug PMMA in another table. It took effect the day after publication.
๐ฒ๐ฒ Myanmar International โ
Myanmar joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Myanmar acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 22 August 2003. 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.
๐ณ๐ฟ New Zealand Debate โ
New Zealand's cannabis inquiry ends without agreement on its legal status
Parliament's Health Committee reported on cannabis and public health. Members could not agree on the most appropriate legal status, but the report recommended reconsidering classification, exploring prescription of clinically tested cannabis products and further consideration by the Justice and Electoral Committee. These were recommendations, not enacted possession or medical-access reforms.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Medical โ Article
Health Canada starts selling cannabis grown in a Manitoba mine
In December 2000 Health Canada gave its first contract to grow cannabis, worth $5.75 million over five years, to Prairie Plant Systems, which grew it 360 metres underground in a disused section of a copper and zinc mine at Flin Flon, Manitoba. After an Ontario judge ruled in January 2003 that patients needed a legal source, the department began selling it in August, at about $5 a gram, collected from a doctor's office. Few of the 580 or so authorised patients bought any.
๐ฒ๐ณ Mongolia International โ
Mongolia joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Mongolia acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 25 June 2003. 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.
๐ต๐ช Peru Easing โ
Peru fixes the personal-use limit at 8 g
Law 28002 specified non-punishable possession for one's own immediate use: up to 8 g of marijuana or 2 g of its derivatives. Possession of two or more types of drugs was excluded. The same law introduced Article 296-A on cannabis cultivation, with a lower penalty of two to six years where the number of plants did not exceed one hundred. Published on 17 June, the law took effect the following day under the constitutional commencement rule.
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Debate โ
Sofia sees its first march for cannabis
The Promena movement demonstrated in Sofia in June 2003. A march has been held in the city every year since; by 2018 its organisers counted fifteen years and said the number of Bulgarians who had tried cannabis had grown from about 200,000 to more than a million.
๐ฎ๐ถ Iraq Death penalty โ
Iraq's occupation authority suspends the death penalty
The Coalition Provisional Authority suspended capital punishment across Iraq, halting its availability under the drug law as well as other criminal laws. Its order allowed life imprisonment or a lesser lawful penalty where death had been the sole punishment and said the former government had used criminal law to repress people. Iraq's interim government restored death penalties for selected offences in August 2004, including drug trafficking aimed at funding or assisting the violent overthrow of the government.
๐ง๐ช Belgium Easing โ
Belgium limits police reporting for adult personal cannabis possession
The Law of 3 May 2003 took effect on publication on 2 June. Article 16 required only police registration for an adult's personal-use quantity of cannabis without public nuisance or problematic use. Possession remained an offence. The accompanying 16 May prosecution guideline treated up to 3 g or one cultivated plant as personal use absent indications of sale or trafficking. The Court of Arbitration later annulled the reporting exception for its vague criteria.
1724+7 points
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Debate โ
Canada introduces a bill to replace some small-possession prosecutions with tickets
Government Bill C-38 received first reading. It proposed fine-only treatment for possession of up to 15 g of marijuana or 1 g of resin, with ticket procedures where the relevant contraventions arrangements applied; 15โ30 g of marijuana could follow either a criminal or ticket route. The bill did not reach third reading or become law in that parliamentary session. Its introduction did not decriminalise possession.
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Other law โ
Lithuania's new Criminal Code provides a separate small-possession tier
The new Criminal Code entered into force on 1 May. Article 259 provided a fine, arrest or up to two years' imprisonment for unauthorised drug possession and related acts without intent to distribute. For a small quantity, it instead classified the conduct as a criminal misdemeanour punishable by community service, restriction of liberty, a fine or arrest. It also provided release from criminal liability for specified acts when a person voluntarily sought medical help or surrendered the drugs. This was a tier within criminal law, rather than legal possession or supply.
๐จ๐ญ Switzerland Tightening โ Article
Swiss police end the hemp-shop boom in Ticino
Swiss law then banned hemp only when it was meant for use as a narcotic, so from 1996 shops in Ticino, following other cantons, sold it as scented sachets for wardrobes, dried flowers and bath additives. Visitors filled hotels and campsites and the press called the canton the new Amsterdam. Operation Indoor, begun in March 2003, seized 198,000 plants, four tonnes of marijuana and four million francs in cash within six months; shops were closed and 130 people jailed. That October thieves broke into a military depot and drove off with three vans of the confiscated hemp.
๐ท๐บ Russia Tightening โ
Russia creates a federal drug police
The Federal Drug Control Service began work on 1 July 2003 and grew to about 40,000 employees, led first by Viktor Cherkesov and from 2008 by Viktor Ivanov, a former KGB general. In 2004, after ketamine was scheduled, veterinarians who used it on animals found themselves breaking the law. The service was dissolved in 2016 and its work passed to the Interior Ministry.
๐ญ๐บ Hungary Easing โ Article
Hungary reopens diversion for all users
A new government reversed the 1999 tightening: anyone caught with a small amount for personal use could again avoid prosecution by completing six months of treatment or counselling.
812+4 points
๐ฉ๐ฟ Algeria International โ
Algeria joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Algeria acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 26 February 2003. 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.
๐บ๐ธ United States Tightening โ
Federal agents announce Operation Pipe Dreams
The Justice Department announces a national drug-paraphernalia crackdown, including internet retailers and distributors. Operation Pipe Dreams and related enforcement produce charges against 55 people nationwide. This context event records enforcement, not a new possession statute.
๐ซ๐ท France Tightening โ
France promulgates a specific offence of driving after narcotics use
Law 2003-87 rewrote Road Code Article L235-1 to punish driving, or accompanying a learner driver, after narcotics use established by a blood analysis. The original penalty was two years in prison and a 4,500-euro fine, rising to three years and 9,000 euros when combined with unlawful alcohol levels. The law also set screening and verification procedures. This date records promulgation on 3 February; publication followed on 4 February 2003. The previously recorded 23 January date was not the law's commencement.
๐บ๐ธ United States Culture & science โ
A bestselling book turns "reefer madness" against prohibition
Eric Schlosser called his book on America's black markets Reefer Madness. Its marijuana section follows Mark Young, an Indiana man given life without parole under federal mandatory minimums for a minor role in a marijuana deal, and sets that against the average of about eleven years served for murder. The film's title had become a name for the excesses of the drug law itself.
๐ฒ๐ฆ Morocco Culture & science โ
A survey finds 134,000 hectares of cannabis in Morocco
A crop survey by the UN drugs office and the Moroccan government found 134,000 hectares under cultivation, probably the peak, and the country was considered the largest hashish producer in the world. The government then greatly increased eradication, burning fields and spraying herbicides. Later surveys put the area at 72,500 hectares in 2005 and 47,500 in 2011, though higher-yielding strains may have kept hashish output from falling.
๐ฏ๐ต Japan Tightening โ
Hokkaido cuts down 1.47 million wild cannabis plants
The island's health bureau cut down 1.47 million wild cannabis plants in a year, about four fifths of Japan's total.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Tightening โ
Indonesia's provincial narcotics boards expand operations
The Transnational Institute's retrospective account dates the setting up of BNN's provincial branches to 2003, widening operations under the P4GN prevention and enforcement programme. This is a reported rollout milestone, not the first statutory authority for provincial boards: Article 11 of Presidential Decree 17/2002 had already allowed their establishment by governors. The account does not establish one nationwide day on which every provincial board began operating.
๐ฉ๐ฐ Denmark Tightening โ
Denmark adopts the action plan 'The Fight Against Drugs'
The government elected in 2001 on a tough-on-crime agenda published an action plan that ended the long practice of not penalising small-scale possession: possession of up to 9.9 g of cannabis was from then on to be punished at least with a fine. The plan also provided for closing the cannabis market in Christiania, and legal changes the same year made it easier for the police to use undercover agents and to confiscate money and valuables from people convicted of drug crimes who could not show a lawful origin for them.
200227 entries2 score changes
๐บ๐ธ United States Medical โ
A US appeals court protects doctors' medical cannabis recommendations
In Conant v. Walters, the Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction preventing federal action against physicians solely for recommending medical cannabis on the basis of sincere medical judgment. The protection concerned physician-patient communication, not dispensing cannabis or intentionally assisting its unlawful acquisition. It did not create a general federal right to prescribe or possess cannabis.
๐น๐ญ Thailand Other law โ
Thailand revises cannabis penalties and separates smaller supply offences
Narcotics Act No. 5 of 2002 revised category 5 penalties. Basic cannabis possession retained a five-year prison ceiling, but a fine up to 100,000 baht could now be imposed instead of, or alongside, imprisonment. New Section 76/1 set sale or possession for sale below ten kilograms at two to ten years, a 40,000โ200,000-baht fine, or both; ten kilograms or more attracted two to fifteen years and a 200,000โ1,500,000-baht fine. Previously, sale and possession for sale carried two to fifteen years and a 20,000โ150,000-baht fine. The amendment mixed reduced imprisonment exposure for smaller supply offences with higher fines. Its weight bands did not create a lawful possession allowance.
๐ฎ๐ถ Iraq Death penalty โ
Iraq extends death or life sentences across its drug-trafficking offences
Iraq replaced lifelong imprisonment and a fine for the drug law's principal trafficking offences with death or life imprisonment and confiscation of movable and immovable property. The offences included supplying drugs and growing cannabis for trade; the death penalty had already applied to specified aggravated cases since 1968. The government described the confiscation rule as a way to remove unlawful drug proceeds; the occupation authority suspended capital punishment in June 2003.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Debate โ
A Canadian Senate committee recommends a legal cannabis market
The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs publicly released its final cannabis report after a two-year study. It recommended a licensed exemption scheme for production and sales, an amnesty for possession convictions, and wider medical access. These were committee recommendations, not enacted legalisation; the entry uses the public release date.
๐ช๐ช Estonia Easing โ
Estonia makes small amounts a misdemeanour
A new penal code treats possession of a small quantity for personal use as a misdemeanour punished by a fine. The statute does not fix that quantity at 7.5 grams. A large quantity is enough to intoxicate at least ten people. A 2014 Supreme Court judgment records that 7.5 grams of marijuana at 7 to 10 per cent THC was treated as already enough.
1119+8 points
๐บ๐ธ United States Other law โ Article
Supreme Court upholds drug tests beyond student athletics
In Board of Education v. Earls, the Supreme Court upheld Tecumseh's testing policy for students in competitive extracurricular activities, including band, choir and academic teams. Tests screened for marijuana and other illegal drugs. Results were not supplied to law enforcement, and consequences concerned activity participation. The ruling extended the school-testing precedent without changing adult cannabis possession or cultivation law.
๐ต๐พ Paraguay Other law โ
Paraguay promulgates special drug-investigation and judicial-cooperation rules
Law 1881 added a framework for international judicial assistance and undercover operations to the drug-control law. Added Articles 82โ83 allowed investigators to use temporary assumed identities in operations authorised for a limited period by a judge, with prosecutorial involvement. Judicial cooperation included evidence gathering, seizures and asset freezing. These were investigative tools within existing prohibition, covering drugs generally, rather than a new cannabis possession ban or a change to the personal-use quantity exemption. The date is promulgation, confirmed by the signed original on 24 June 2002.
๐ต๐ญ Philippines Tightening โ
The Philippines adopts its present drug law
Republic Act 9165 replaced the 1972 law, created the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and lowered the life-or-death threshold from 750 g to 500 g of marijuana. Below 300 g, possession carried 12 years and one day to 20 years. From 300 g up to but not including 500 g, or from 5 g up to but not including 10 g of resin, it carried 20 years and one day to life imprisonment. Use remained a separate offence.
๐ท๐ผ Rwanda International โ
Rwanda joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Rwanda acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 13 May 2002. 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.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Hemp โ
Italian hemp farmers seeking EU aid must report their crop to the police
An agriculture ministry circular explained the new EU subsidy for fibre hemp. To be paid, farmers had to sow certified seed of listed varieties with no more than 0.2% THC, accept THC testing, and tell the nearest police or carabinieri station about the crop so it could be checked. The circular replaced guidance from 1997 and 1999.
๐น๐ญ Thailand International โ
Thailand joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Thailand acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 3 May 2002. 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.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Tightening โ
Indonesia establishes the National Narcotics Board
Presidential Decree 17/2002 replaced the earlier National Narcotics Coordination Board with BNN, a non-structural body reporting directly to the president and chaired by the national police chief. Its remit combined coordination of drug policy with inter-agency enforcement task forces. Articles 11โ12 also allowed provincial and district or city boards to be established by regional authorities and coordinate with BNN. The decree took effect on signature, 22 March 2002. It reorganised drug-control institutions without creating a new cannabis offence.
๐ฎ๐ฑ Israel International โ
Israel joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Israel ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 20 March 2002. 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.
๐ฒ๐ฆ Morocco International โ
Morocco joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Morocco ratified the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 19 March 2002. 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.
๐ช๐ท Eritrea International โ
Eritrea joins two UN drug conventions on one day
Eritrea acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 30 January 2002. 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. On the same day it acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐ฟ๐ฆ South Africa Other law โ
A Rastafarian law graduate loses his case to become an attorney
The Cape law society refused to register Garreth Prince's community service contract, the step before admission as an attorney, because he had two convictions for possessing cannabis and said his Rastafari faith required him to keep using it. South Africa's Constitutional Court held by five votes to four that the Constitution did not require a religious exemption from the cannabis laws. In dissent Justice Sachs wrote that the state was obliged "to walk the extra mile". Sixteen years later Prince won the privacy case that legalised private use.
๐จ๐ท Costa Rica Easing โ Article
Costa Rica replaces public drug-use fines with voluntary treatment
Law 8204's revision of the drug law replaced public-use day-fines with voluntary, free treatment under Article 79. Article 58 retained eight to fifteen years for unauthorised cultivation and supply, and possession for the purposes listed there; it did not make all personal possession trafficking. The law was signed on 26 December 2001 and took effect on publication, 11 January 2002. It did not create a legal cannabis market, and separate child-protection provisions remained.
1722+5 points
๐ International International โ
A WHO recommendation to loosen control of THC never reaches a vote
The WHO Expert Committee reviewed dronabinol again and recommended moving it to Schedule IV of the 1971 convention, the most lenient. According to the Transnational Institute the recommendation was kept from the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in 2003 through interference by the UN drugs office under American pressure. In 2006 the committee recommended Schedule III instead; in 2007 the Commission decided not to vote and asked for an updated review, and in 2013 it again held no vote.
๐ International Debate โ
The UN drug commission argues over lenient cannabis policies
The annual report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 2001 used strong language about the trend to leniency, and its president, Hamid Ghodse, asked the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to consider cannabis control in detail so that the 1961 convention would be applied consistently. Morocco pointed to the contradiction between decriminalising use in some countries and pressing southern countries to eradicate the plant by repressive means. The dispute continued in 2003 without result.
๐ณ๏ธ Transnistria Other law โ Article
Transnistria restricts cannabis growing under its own drug law
Transnistriaโs drug law prohibited growing cannabis for unlawful consumption or the illegal drug trade. It reserved authorised cultivation of listed plants to state enterprises within government quotas and required landholders to destroy prohibited plants. Signed on 7 June 2002, the law took effect on official publication; the Supreme Court later used it to explain the growing offence.
๐ฑ๐พ Libya Tightening โ
Libya redefines trafficking: even one act or a small quantity counts
Law 23 of 2002 amended Law 7 of 1990. Its new Article 35 bis says intent to traffic is established even for a single act, a small quantity, or when the offender cannot prove another purpose. Article 34 keeps death or life imprisonment for trading in drugs.
๐ฑ๐ง Lebanon Culture & science โ
Lebanon's cannabis fields double in a year
Ten years after the eradication carried out under American pressure, poverty had pushed many farmers of the Bekaa back to cannabis, and in 2002 the crop covered 37,000 acres, twice the area of the year before.
๐ง๐ณ Brunei Death penalty โ
Brunei applies the death penalty to smaller quantities
After cannabis was made a Class B drug in 2001, the Sultan worked with the Narcotics Control Bureau on stricter rules, and the death penalty was applied to trafficking in smaller amounts.
200140 entries10 score changes
๐ฎ๐ท Iran International โ
Iran joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Iran ratified the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 18 December 2001. 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.
๐ง๐ฟ Belize International โ
Belize joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Belize acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 18 December 2001. 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.
๐ธ๐ฑ Sierra Leone Other law โ Article
Sierra Leone sets at least 15 years in prison for cannabis offences
People convicted of cannabis offences under Sierra Leone's pharmacy law faced at least 15 years in prison. The law prohibited smoking cannabis, visiting places used for smoking it, allowing it on one's premises and possessing smoking equipment; cultivation required the Pharmacy Board's written consent. It replaced the 1988 pharmacy law while expressly leaving the colonial Dangerous Drugs Act in force, creating overlapping controls on the plant.
32โ1 point
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Hemp โ
Croatia's drug abuse act puts hemp under a minister's approval
The Act on Combating the Abuse of Narcotic Drugs, passed on 23 November, took effect. Hemp could be grown only with the prior approval of the agriculture minister, on pain of a fine of 5,000 to 20,000 kuna for an individual. The act prohibited possessing drugs but, as first written, set its fine for possession only for companies and their officers, a gap that later amendments closed. It allowed courts to order treatment for three months to a year.
๐ฒ๐บ Mauritius Tightening โ
Mauritius's consolidated drug law takes effect
The Dangerous Drugs Act 2000 took effect on 5 December 2001 under Proclamation 26 of 2001. It consolidated drug controls, listed cannabis and cannabis resin in Schedule I, and prohibited cultivation, possession, supply and use subject to its limited authorised research and teaching framework. It replaced earlier drug enactments while preserving proceedings for earlier offences. The year in the Act's title and its 2000 enactment date should be distinguished from commencement.
๐ป๐จ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines International โ
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines deposited its succession to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 3 December 2001. 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.
๐ฆ๐ฟ Azerbaijan Easing โ Article
Azerbaijan makes small-scale drug-plant cultivation an administrative offence
An amendment dated 12 October 2001 added Article 123-1 to the Code of Administrative Offences. It treated sowing, growing or gathering narcotic plants in an amount required for personal use, without intent to distribute, as an administrative offence punished by a fine. The amendment was published on 1 December. The current code retains the distinction in Article 208, although it now also permits up to two months of administrative detention when a fine is insufficient.
914+5 points
๐จ๐ซ Central African Republic International โ
The Central African Republic joins two UN drug conventions on one day
The Central African Republic acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 15 October 2001. 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. On the same day it acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐ฎ๐ณ India Easing โ
India grades drug sentences by quantity
Notification S.O. 957(E) of 27 September brought the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Amendment) Act, Act 9 of 2001, into force on 2 October. The President had assented on 9 May, and section 1 had left the date to the Official Gazette. The Act introduced small quantity and commercial quantity. A further notification on 19 October 2001 fixed the figures for each substance. The punishment sections, including the one for cannabis, then use three bands: below the small quantity, between the two, and above the commercial quantity. The strict bail rule applies only to the last.
1113+2 points
๐บ๐ฆ Ukraine International โ
Ukraine joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Ukraine acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 27 September 2001. 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.
๐ญ๐น Haiti Tightening โ
Haiti passes its drug trafficking law
The law on the control and repression of illicit drug trafficking passed the Senate on 19 June 2001 and the Chamber of Deputies on 7 August 2001, and was promulgated on 24 September 2001. It bans growing cannabis (Article 10) and sets up to 30 years for offering, selling or holding drugs for supply (Article 49). Growing, buying or holding a small amount for personal use carries up to six months and a fine, and the court may order treatment instead or in addition (Article 63).
๐ง๐พ Belarus International โ
Belarus joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Belarus acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 13 September 2001. 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.
๐บ๐ฆ Ukraine Other law โ Article
Ukraine rewrites penalties for small possession and home growing
From 1 September 2001, the new criminal code made ordinary unlawful cannabis growing punishable by a fine, up to six monthsโ arrest or up to three years of restriction of liberty, with no plant-count minimum. It replaced the 1995 requirement of repetition after an administrative penalty for that ordinary criminal tier. The old codeโs separate crime for repeated small personal possession disappeared; the Supreme Court later directed judges to handle small amounts administratively. Aggravated growing, including 500 or more plants and specified prior crimes, could bring three to seven years in prison.
1717+0 points
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland Easing โ
Finland creates a separate lower-penalty drug-use offence
Law 654 added Penal Code chapter 50 section 2a, covering unlawful drug use and possession or attempted acquisition of a small quantity for personal use, including cannabis. It carried a fine or up to six months in prison, compared with the ordinary drug offence's two-year maximum. Revised section 7 allowed prosecution or punishment to be waived for minor cases or where the person sought approved treatment. The reform took effect on 1 September 2001; it did not remove criminal liability.
1113+2 points
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland Tightening โ
Finland preserves bodily-examination powers for its new drug-use offence
Companion Law 655 amended the Coercive Measures Act so that a person suspected on probable grounds of the new drug-use offence could undergo a bodily examination, despite its six-month maximum sentence falling below the ordinary threshold for that power. Laws 656 and 657 made corresponding changes for prisoners and remand detainees. These measures accompanied the lower-penalty use offence rather than decriminalising cannabis or exempting users from investigative powers.
๐ฆ๐บ Australia ยท New South Wales Other law โ
NSW adds mandatory education to a second cannabis caution
New South Wales amended its Cannabis Cautioning Scheme to require an education session for people receiving a second caution, replacing the original voluntary contact approach for that group. The amendment altered a police diversion programme while cannabis offences remained on the books.
๐ฆ๐ฑ Albania International โ
Albania joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Albania acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 14 August 2001. 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.
๐ญ๐ฐ Hong Kong Enforcement โ Article
Hong Kong keeps a two-month sentence for selling two cannabis cigarettes
Chor Luiโs two-month prison sentence stood after he sold an undercover officer two cannabis cigarettes containing 0.24 g for HK$30. The appeal judge considered his prior drug convictions and the commercial sale in a discotheque important despite the small amount, while recognising the then-lower sentencing benchmark for herbal cannabis than resin.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Medical โ Article
Canada opens legal medical access
After courts ruled that a ban with no medical exemption was unconstitutional, federal regulations let authorised patients possess cannabis and grow their own or name a grower. Recreational possession stayed a crime.
1315+2 points
๐น๐ท Tรผrkiye International โ
Tรผrkiye joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Tรผrkiye ratified the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 20 July 2001. 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.
๐ฒ๐ฑ Mali Easing โ Article
Mali replaces long drug sentences with a lighter personal-use tier
Mali's replacement drug law set three months to one year, a fine, or both for a small personal supply of a high-risk plant or substance, including cannabis oil; cannabis derivatives other than oil carried two to six months, a fine, or both. The lighter tier covered possession, purchase and cultivation, replacing the earlier law's long forced-labour punishments. Ordinary high-risk drug cultivation and international trafficking still carried five to ten years and a fine, and landholders had to destroy cannabis plants growing on their land.
59+4 points
๐จ๐ซ Central African Republic Other law โ Article
Central African Republic gives small personal supplies a separate penalty
Small personal possession, purchase and growing received separate penalties under the drug law signed by President Ange-Fรฉlix Patassรฉ: its cannabis-related prison ranges ran from one month to a year, with a fine alone also possible. Ordinary high-risk production and trafficking carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both, while courts could order treatment for a dependent person convicted of specified offences. The country joined two UN drug conventions later that year, and its 2010 Penal Code expressly kept this separate drug law in use.
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom Easing โ Article
Lambeth trials cannabis warnings instead of arrests
A local police pilot in the London Borough of Lambeth used confiscation and warnings for small amounts of cannabis held for personal use. It exercised existing police discretion while possession remained an offence. The Home Office said the pilot evaluation would help inform its decision on reclassification. The local experiment did not itself change the national drug classes.
๐ต๐น Portugal Easing โ Article
Portugal decriminalises all drugs
Possessing up to a ten-day supply, 25 g of cannabis flower, stopped being a crime. Police confiscate it and refer the person to a dissuasion commission, which can suspend the case or impose a fine. Growing and selling remain crimes.
1124+13 points
๐ฆ๐ฑ Albania International โ
Albania joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Albania acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 27 June 2001. 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.
๐ต๐น Portugal Debate โ
Portugal publishes a national framework for drug harm-reduction services
Decree-Law 183/2001 established a framework for outreach teams, contact and information points, shelters, needle exchange, low-threshold substitution and supervised-consumption programmes. Its supervised-use provisions targeted intravenous users and required separate authorisation, trained health support and evaluation. The framework complemented the separate decriminalisation reform and aimed to connect marginalised drug users with health care and treatment. Publication of the rules did not itself establish that the envisaged facilities had opened. The date is publication in the Official Gazette, following promulgation on 7 June 2001.
๐บ๐ธ United States Other law โ
US Supreme Court requires a warrant for thermal surveillance of a home
In Kyllo v. United States, involving indoor cannabis cultivation, the Supreme Court held that using technology not in general public use to obtain otherwise inaccessible details of a home's interior was a search, presumptively unreasonable without a warrant. It sent the case back to determine whether the later search warrant had independent support or the evidence could otherwise be admitted.
๐ป๐ณ Vietnam Tightening โ
Vietnam's national drug-control law takes effect
Law 23/2000/QH10 expressly included cannabis among drug-bearing plants and prohibited their cultivation, alongside unauthorised possession, supply and use of drugs. Article 28 provided compulsory institutional treatment lasting one to two years for dependent adults who remained dependent after family or community treatment or repeated local education, or who had no fixed residence. District-level authorities ordered admission. The law consolidated prohibition and treatment duties; this was not Vietnam's first cannabis ban. Adopted on 9 December 2000, it commenced on 1 June 2001 under Article 55.
๐ณ๏ธ Somaliland Other law โ
Somalilandโs constitution keeps compatible older laws in force
Somalilandโs referendum-approved constitution retained existing laws until replacement, provided they were compatible with Islamic sharia, individual rights and fundamental freedoms. It also required crimes and punishments to be set by law, presumed accused people innocent and provided court access within 48 hours of arrest. This continuity rule explains the use of an inherited penal code alongside the new constitutional order.
๐ฑ๐บ Luxembourg Easing โ
Luxembourg drops prison for simple cannabis use
The Law of 27 April 2001 took effect on 17 May. It removed imprisonment for simple cannabis use and differentiated penalties according to the substances and offences involved. It also provided a legal framework for treatment and harm-reduction measures. The reform reduced penalties within the drug-control framework; it did not establish a legal cannabis supply market.
1119+8 points
๐ฎ๐ณ India Other law โ
India's president assents to quantity-based drug sentences
Act 9 of 2001 received assent on 9 May. Section 1 left the new sentencing bands to a later notification in the Official Gazette. Notification S.O. 957(E) of 27 September appointed 2 October 2001.
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom Debate โ Article
Lords committee calls for faster progress on cannabis medicines
The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee published a follow-up to its 1998 medical-cannabis report. Its announcement criticised slow progress toward cannabis medicines and recalled the government's rejection of the earlier prescription recommendation. The report continued the debate over research and access; it did not enact a prescribing reform.
๐ท๐ธ Serbia International โ
Serbia joins two UN drug conventions on one day
Serbia deposited its succession to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 on 12 March 2001. 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. On the same day it deposited its succession to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐ฒ๐บ Mauritius International โ
Mauritius joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Mauritius ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 6 March 2001. 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.
๐บ๐ธ United States Other law โ
The US Supreme Court rejects a medical necessity defence
In United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative the court held that federal drug law leaves no room for a defence of medical necessity, so a state-legal cooperative could still be shut down under federal law.
๐จ๐ญ Switzerland Debate โ
Switzerland's government proposes decriminalising cannabis consumption
The Federal Council proposed a broad revision of the Narcotics Act, including decriminalisation of cannabis consumption and its preparatory acts, and new arrangements for cannabis cultivation, manufacture and trade. It was a legislative proposal, not an immediate change in what adults could legally possess or grow.
๐ช๐ธ Spain Easing โ
Cannabis social clubs take root in Spain
Because growing and sharing among a closed group of users is not treated as trafficking, associations began cultivating collectively for their members. The first, ARSEC, was founded in Barcelona in the early 1990s; hundreds opened in the 2000s, mostly in Catalonia and the Basque Country, tolerated but never legalised.
3033+3 points
๐ช๐ธ Spain Debate โ
Catalonia's Parliament asks the government to seek medical cannabis permission
The Parliament of Catalonia approved a non-legislative proposal urging the regional executive to work with the relevant administrations to obtain authorisation for therapeutic cannabis use. The initiative followed advocacy by the breast-cancer patients' association Grup รgata and preceded the regional pilot programme. The motion itself did not authorise prescriptions or supply.
๐ฏ๐ฒ Jamaica Debate โ
Jamaica's National Commission on Ganja recommends decriminalisation
The commission chaired by Barry Chevannes found overwhelming public support for allowing adults to use small amounts in private and for sacramental use. The United States warned against it, and nothing was done for fourteen years.
200023 entries1 score change
๐น๐ฉ Chad Other law โ Article
Chad's pharmacy law punishes group drug use and doubles grower penalties
Chad's replacement pharmacy law set one to six years in prison, a fine, or both for breaches of narcotics rules, possessing narcotics without a legitimate reason, group use and helping someone else use drugs, including free help. It doubled the penalties for illicit cultivation or manufacture and for supplying or helping a minor use drugs. The law adopted the drug lists in Chad's ratified international conventions and allowed judges to order people prosecuted for the listed drug offences into compulsory treatment.
๐ฐ๐ผ Kuwait International โ
Kuwait joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Kuwait ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 3 November 2000. 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.
๐ธ๐ฒ San Marino International โ
San Marino joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
San Marino acceded to the 1961 Single Convention, as amended by the 1972 Protocol, by Decree No. 89 of 18 September 2000, as its 2021 medical cannabis law recalls. The United Nations records its accession to that convention and to the 1988 convention against drug trafficking on 10 October 2000.
๐ฒ๐ป Maldives International โ
The Maldives joins two UN drug conventions on one day
The Maldives acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 7 September 2000. 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. On the same day it ratified the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada ยท Ontario Medical โ
An Ontario court rules the ban unconstitutional without a medical exemption
In R v. Parker the Ontario Court of Appeal held that prohibiting possession with no workable exception for patients violated the Charter, and gave Parliament a year to fix it. The medical access regulations of 2001 were the result.
๐ช๐ช Estonia International โ
Estonia joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Estonia acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 12 July 2000. 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.
๐ฒ๐ผ Malawi Debate โ
A Malawian minister proposes legalising hemp to replace tobacco
The deputy agriculture minister, Joe Manduwa, argued in parliament that Indian hemp could take the place of tobacco, and a member who was also a doctor backed him, calling it non- addictive. The government explored the idea briefly and dropped it. A UN report of the late 1990s had estimated that up to 156,000 hectares of Malawi were under cannabis, and seizures jumped to more than 312,000 kilograms in 2000.
๐ฆ๐บ Australia ยท New South Wales Easing โ
NSW starts a statewide cannabis cautioning trial
New South Wales began a twelve-month statewide trial allowing police to issue formal cautions instead of charges for eligible adult minor cannabis offenders. The original scheme covered up to 15 g of dried cannabis and allowed no more than two cautions, with eligibility conditions and police discretion. It changed enforcement procedures rather than legalising possession.
๐ฌ๐ช Georgia International โ
Georgia joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Georgia acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 27 March 2000. 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.
๐จ๐ญ Switzerland Hemp โ
Switzerland upholds cannabis-sachet convictions despite scent-product labelling
In BGE 126 IV 198, the Federal Supreme Court rejected a hemp-shop operator's challenge concerning cannabis sold as scented sachets and pillows. The products contained 0.5โ2.5 percent THC; the Court used existing agricultural and food limits as benchmarks, including the then 0.3 percent industrial-hemp limit. It held that conditional intent could suffice when the seller knowingly accepted narcotic use of the products. Signed warnings to customers did not overcome the circumstances demonstrating that acceptance. The judgment applied existing prohibition rather than creating a new statutory THC threshold.
๐ง๐ด Bolivia Other law โ
Bolivia's Constitutional Tribunal upholds challenged drug-case procedural rules
Constitutional Judgment 11/2000 rejected a challenge to Articles 108 and 109 of Law 1008 as amended by the 1996 sworn-bail law. The applicant argued that restrictions on preliminary issues and provisional release violated the presumption of innocence and defence rights. The Tribunal held that the procedural provisions did not contradict that presumption and also found the challenge insufficiently explained. The ruling preserved the challenged framework; it did not abolish provisional release altogether or identify the drug involved in the applicant's case.
๐ฐ๐ฒ Comoros International โ
The Comoros joins two UN drug conventions on one day
The Comoros acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 1 March 2000. 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. On the same day it acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Article 3 of the 1988 convention requires each party, subject to its constitutional principles, to make the possession, purchase and cultivation of drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence.
๐ญ๐ฐ Hong Kong Enforcement โ
Hong Kong cuts a repeat offenderโs cannabis-possession sentence to two months
Phung Haiโs six-month prison sentence for possessing 1.18 g of cannabis was reduced to two months on appeal. The original magistrate had relied on two earlier drug convictions to reject a fine, but the appeal judge accepted that the sentence was excessive in light of the sentencing authorities; the prosecution did not defend it.
๐ฉ๐ฏ Djibouti Other law โ
Djibouti puts the prime minister in charge of a national drug committee
A national committee chaired by the prime minister was tasked with coordinating drug policy, prevention, public information and monitoring supply and demand. President Ismaรฏl Omar Guelleh created it after recommendations from a 1999 youth conference. Health, education, justice, police and gendarmerie representatives were brought together, with a secretariat charged with collecting and publishing drug-policy information.
๐จ๐พ Cyprus Hemp โ Article
Cyprus bans seed sales made with knowledge of illegal growing plans
Supplying, offering or selling cannabis seeds became an offence when the seller knew the recipient intended to grow illegally. The new rule allowed up to eight years in prison, a fine of up to 1,500 Cyprus pounds, or both, subject to regulatory exceptions. Licensed industrial hemp received a separate route in 2016, and the seed clause was widened to imports in 2019.
๐ธ๐ฎ Slovenia Other law โ
Slovenia's drug law sets separate penalties for small personal-use possession
The Production of and Trade in Illicit Drugs Act took effect fifteen days after its 27 December 1999 publication. Original Article 33 made unlawful possession a minor offence carrying 50,000โ150,000 tolars or up to thirty days' imprisonment. A small quantity for a single personal use carried 10,000โ50,000 tolars or up to five days instead, with scope for leniency through voluntary treatment or approved social programmes. These are the original sanctions, not today's penalties. Article 9 provided agricultural permits for food and industrial cannabis cultivation; it did not legalise recreational growing.
๐ฌ๐ถ Equatorial Guinea Enforcement โ
Cannabis is smoked openly in Equatorial Guinea despite the ban
A news agency report from Malabo described cannabis, grown locally between cassava and banana plants, as smoked openly by street children, civil servants and ministers alike. A joint cost about 100 CFA francs. Smoking and dealing were illegal, but no one had been arrested for either in living memory.
๐บ๐ธ United States ยท Hawaii Medical โ
Hawaii establishes its medical cannabis law
Act 228 established Hawaii's initial medical cannabis law. The health department identifies this as the start of the medical-use framework and distinguishes it from the dispensary law adopted in 2015. The 2000 event should not be read as the opening of licensed dispensaries.
๐ฐ๐ท South Korea Other law โ
South Korea folds the Cannabis Control Act into a single narcotics law
The Cannabis Control Act of 1976 was merged with the laws on narcotics and psychotropic drugs into the Narcotics Control Act. Its definition excluded seeds, roots and mature stalks; it also recognised licensed cultivation for fibre or seed.
Read on from here in the whole history โ