History
2010s
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.
201989 entries18 score changes
๐ฐ๐ฟ Kazakhstan Tightening โ
Kazakhstan makes advertising drugs a crime
Law No. 292-VI of 27 December 2019 added Article 299-1 to the Criminal Code, making propaganda or illegal advertising of narcotic drugs a crime of its own. The basic offence carries up to three years in prison; done by a group, repeatedly, in schools or places where many people gather, or through the media and online platforms, it carries three to six years. The article was amended in 2022 and 2024.
๐ฆ๐ผ Aruba Medical โ Article
Aruba recognises CBD medicines and exempts low-THC CBD from narcotics rules
Aruba designated cannabidiol and its preparations as medicines and excluded CBD preparations with no more than 0.2% THC from a narcotics designation. The minister cited growing use of cannabis preparations for health reasons and the need to protect consumers. A companion rule exempted specified external-use products, supplements, herbs and foods from medicinal classification, but was withdrawn the following month.
๐น๐น Trinidad and Tobago Legalisation โ Article
Trinidad and Tobago decriminalises cannabis
Adults may possess up to 30 g and grow four plants each with no penalty. Between 30 g and 60 g is a fixed-penalty ticket instead of a prosecution. Before, possession could mean years in prison. No legal market was created.
639+33 points
๐ป๐จ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Other law โ
Saint Vincent enacts plant-breeder protections
Parliament passed the Plant Breeders' Protection Act, creating intellectual-property protection for breeders of new plant varieties.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Easing โ Article
Italy's top court allows minimal home growing
The Court of Cassation ruled that growing a small number of plants at home with rudimentary methods, for the grower's own use, is not a crime.
2326+3 points
๐ง๐ฒ Bermuda Debate โ
Bermuda proposes locally grown cannabis for medical inhalation
Attorney-General Kathy Lynn Simmons opened consultation on a scheme for prescribed cannabis to be smoked or vaped, with a new authority licensing local cultivation and manufacturing. The proposal followed the 2014 pharmaceutical law and 2019 hemp exemption. After public feedback questioned the narrow scope and regulatory cost, the government shifted towards a wider adult-use licensing plan in 2020.
๐ฟ๐ฒ Zambia Medical โ
Zambia legalises cannabis for export and medicine
The cabinet approved growing cannabis under licence for export and medical purposes only.
๐ธ๐จ Seychelles Other law โ
Seychelles appeal court lifts an order to write medical drug rules
The appeal court set aside an order requiring ministers to write medical and scientific drug regulations in Alexander Geersโs separate cannabis case. The majority held that the Constitutional Court could not grant that remedy after finding no breach of his constitutional rights; Geersโs own appeal also failed. Two judges dissented on lifting the order, while agreeing that his appeal should be dismissed.
๐ญ๐ฐ Hong Kong Medical โ
Hong Kong makes CBD medicines prescription-only
CBD pharmaceutical products came under prescription-only medicine controls, with supply through authorised practitioners or a pharmacy dispensing a prescription. The governmentโs later legislative brief recorded 13 December 2019 as the start date and said no CBD pharmaceutical product had been registered in Hong Kong by October 2022.
๐ฒ๐น Malta Debate โ
A woman's jail term for one seedling prompts a change to Malta's drug law
Marie Claire Camilleri was sentenced to six months in prison for growing a single cannabis sapling, without buds, on her roof; the magistrate himself said the law failed to distinguish who truly deserved prison. Days later the justice minister, Owen Bonnici, presented amendments giving courts discretion not to jail people who showed that their cultivation was strictly for personal use. Cultivation stayed illegal.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Medical โ Article
Brazil allows cannabis products in pharmacies
The health regulator approved rules for selling cannabis-based products in pharmacies on prescription. Growing the plant in Brazil stayed prohibited, so everything was imported.
1415+1 point
๐ธ๐ฌ Singapore Medical โ
Singapore approves its first cannabinoid medicine
Authorities allowed a girl with treatment-resistant epilepsy to receive a cannabis-derived pharmaceutical after the available registered treatments had failed. Approval was exceptional and case by case; raw cannabis and a general medical-cannabis programme remained illegal.
๐ท๐ธ Serbia Tightening โ Article
Serbia raises cannabis-growing sentences and punishes large drug stocks
Unauthorised cannabis cultivation now carried two to eight years in prison, up from six months to five years. The amendment also created a three-to-ten-year offence for possessing a large quantity, while keeping a fine or up to three years for a small personal amount. It added aggravated supply cases involving minors and specified locations or abuse of professional roles; the large-quantity offence later upheld a three-year sentence for personal cannabis possession.
119โ2 points
๐ท๐ผ Rwanda Other law โ
Rwanda expressly includes possession in its drug-use offence
Rwandaโs amended drug offence expressly covered being caught with narcotics or psychotropic substances, alongside consuming them, from 29 November 2019. The clause retained one to two years in prison or community service, an alternative already written into the 2018 law. Separate production and supply offences kept their much heavier tariffs, including a statutory life sentence for the highest category.
๐ง๐ง Barbados Medical โ Article
Barbados legalises medical and sacramental cannabis
Two laws set up a licensed medical cannabis industry and allowed Rastafari to use cannabis as a sacrament at their places of worship.
1112+1 point
๐ง๐ฒ Bermuda Hemp โ Article
Bermuda excludes hemp with up to one per cent THC from cannabis controls
Bermuda defined hemp as cannabis sativa, or any part of it, containing no more than one per cent THC and excluded it from the drug lawโs definition of cannabis. The amendment was intended to allow hemp-product imports, possession, supply and sale. A medical-cannabis consultation followed in December, and the government later identified a need for clearer compliance rules for hemp-derived consumer products.
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom Medical โ
England's medicines watchdog approves two cannabis-based medicines
A year after specialist doctors were allowed to prescribe cannabis-based medicines, NICE changed its guidelines to allow two of them, for two forms of epilepsy and for multiple sclerosis. It did not allow them for other conditions such as chronic pain, which some patients' groups called a missed opportunity.
๐ฒ๐น Malta Medical โ
Over 400 Maltese patients use medical cannabis
The health minister, Chris Fearne, said more than 400 people were using medical cannabis under the 2018 law and that 32 doctors had recommended it, which he called a small number. He called for more research to build doctors' confidence.
๐ง๐พ Belarus Easing โ Article
Belarus cuts minimum prison terms for drug supply by two years
The minimum prison term for basic drug supply fell from five years to three; the minimum for several aggravated supply offences fell from eight to six. The changes took effect in October after years of campaigning by prisonersโ families. Mothers 328 leader Larisa Zhigar welcomed the reduction but wanted more relief, especially for young prisoners.
๐ฝ๐ฐ Kosovo Debate โ
Kosovo commentator calls for regulated cannabis legalisation
Pristina consultant Kushtrim Shaipi argued that regulated cannabis legalisation could serve Kosovo better than penalisation, criticising police checkpoints and raids in bars and clubs. His Kosovo 2.0 opinion appeared six months after the new criminal code retained prison exposure for cannabis possession, including a lower tier for first-time offenders with less than three grams.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Legalisation โ
Canada legalises edibles, extracts and vapes
A year after flower and oils, the second wave of products became legal: edibles capped at 10 mg of THC per package, plus extracts, vapes and topicals.
๐ฌ๐ฎ Gibraltar Medical โ Article
Gibraltar lets public health doctors supply cannabis-based medicines
Trained Gibraltar Health Authority doctors could authorise approved cannabis-based medicines from 16 October 2019 for four groups of conditions that had resisted standard treatment. Patients could lawfully hold medicines supplied through that route, with smoking prohibited; the government designated St Bernardโs Hospital pharmacy for public dispensing. In September 2023 the government announced completed doctor training and a supply agreement with Cantourage UK, subject to final detail.
1112+1 point
๐ต๐พ Paraguay Hemp โ
Paraguay authorises industrial hemp for small farmers
President Mario Abdo Benรญtez signed a decree allowing non-psychoactive hemp to be grown, processed and sold under authorisation from the agriculture ministry. A trial followed in five departments, with about forty growers and sixty hectares by 2021. The peasant federation was sceptical, recalling earlier crops promoted by the state that found no market.
๐ฟ๐ผ Zimbabwe Hemp โ Article
Zimbabwe lets approved farmers grow industrial hemp
Farmers authorised in writing by the agriculture minister, and the state on its own farms, could lawfully acquire, possess and supply industrial hemp and grow it on approved farms. The exemption used a limit of no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight and covered seeds and derivatives. It created an industrial route alongside the existing medical-production licences, followed by detailed hemp permits in 2020.
๐ช๐ช Estonia Medical โ
Epidyolex gains authorisation in Estonia
The European Commission authorised the prescription cannabidiol medicine Epidyolex throughout the EU. Estonia also permits doctors to request unauthorised cannabinoid medicines or standardised cannabis for individual patients.
1920+1 point
๐ช๐จ Ecuador Medical โ
Ecuador legalises medical cannabis and hemp
A reform of the criminal code took cannabis with less than 1% THC out of the list of controlled substances and allowed cannabis medicines on prescription.
2223+1 point
๐จ๐ผ Curaรงao Debate โ
Curaรงao proposes an office to oversee a medical cannabis industry
By September 2019, a bill sent to Curaรงaoโs Parliament proposed a Medicinal Cannabis Curaรงao Office to work with growers and sellers. The Advisory Councilโs earlier review described a system in which licensed growers would sell their cannabis plants exclusively to the proposed bureau. In April 2023, opposition lawmakers were still pressing for approval after two parliamentary discussions.
๐ฒ๐ต Northern Mariana Islands Other law โ Article
Northern Mariana Islands protect home growers while filling licensing gaps
Adults could continue growing within the legal limits while homegrown-registry regulations were unfinished, provided they obtained a card once it became available. The amendment set a $75 annual registry fee and business licence fees after the governor vetoed the original fee proposals. It also imposed a 15% cannabis excise tax and retailer surtaxes of 15%, or 7.5% on medical cannabis revenue, as the territory prepared to license businesses.
๐ง๐ฟ Belize Hemp โ
Belize establishes a registered industrial-hemp system
S.I. 54 of 2019 created a Hemp Industry Oversight Committee and a registration system for commercial hemp cultivation, processing and seed import or export. The consolidated regulations set the industrial-hemp limit at 0.3% THC.
๐ต๐ผ Palau International โ
Palau joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Palau acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 14 August 2019. 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.
๐ณ๐ฟ New Zealand Easing โ Article
New Zealand tells police to consider health first
An amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act requires police to consider whether a health-based response would do more good than prosecution. Many possession cases now end in a warning or referral.
1318+5 points
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Debate โ
Croatia's Social Democrats prepare a bill to legalise cannabis
The opposition party led by Davor Bernardiฤ announced a law under which any adult could grow up to nine flowering plants for personal use and growing, processing and trade would be open to adults. Mirela Holy, a former environment minister, said a month's dose of imported medical cannabis cost about 400 euros. A debate on the party's hemp bill followed in parliament in 2020, where the governing majority called it a facade for legalising marijuana.
๐ฐ๐ณ Saint Kitts and Nevis Easing โ Article
Saint Kitts and Nevis decriminalises after a court ruling
In May the High Court ruled that adults may possess and use cannabis in private. Parliament followed in July, turning small amounts and up to five plants into a ticket with a small fixed fine instead of a crime. The possession limit was raised from 15 g to 56 g in 2020.
1129+18 points
๐ซ๐ด Faroe Islands Medical โ
The Faroese pharmacy service orders cannabis flower for a patient
The Faroese Pharmacy Service placed an order for cannabis buds from a Dutch supplier after a doctor requested them. Existing cannabis drops were already prescribed to 61 patients, but this order concerned flower. The order followed the April 2019 opening of the medical trial scheme, which the Chief Medical Officer later confirmed.
๐จ๐ผ Curaรงao Debate โ Article
Curaรงaoโs advisers question financing of a medical cannabis industry
Curaรงaoโs Advisory Council asked the government to strengthen its medical-cannabis production bill before sending it to Parliament. It found insufficient support for the economic case and asked how the proposed cannabis bureau would finance harvest purchases and recover its money from buyers. By September, local reporting said a bill for that bureau had reached Parliament.
๐ป๐จ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Medical โ
Saint Vincent issues its first cannabis licences
The Medicinal Cannabis Authority approved more than 30 licences: eight farmers' cooperatives with over 100 traditional growers between them, individual traditional growers, three other local farmers and ten companies.
๐ซ๐ท France Debate โ
French deputies from four groups propose a state cannabis monopoly
A bill to create a state monopoly on the production and sale of cannabis was tabled by deputies from four political groups, including the governing party. In January 2017, 150 public figures in Marseille, among them lawyers, judges and doctors, had called for controlled legalisation, saying that most of the city's gangland killings were tied to the cannabis trade. A poll in 2021 found 51 per cent of the French in favour of decriminalisation.
๐ฌ๐ฆ Gabon Other law โ Article
Gabon rewrites penalties for drug use, possession and direct supply
Illicit drug use carried up to a year and a fine of up to 1.5 million CFA francs under the new Penal Code, while the general possession offence set ten years and a fine of up to 100 million. The older code had set two months to a year for use and two to ten years for general possession, with different fines. The new code retained treatment instead of the use penalty and set up to five years for giving drugs directly for another person's use.
๐ฎ๐ช Ireland Medical โ Article
Ireland starts its Medical Cannabis Access Programme
A five-year pilot allows consultants to prescribe approved cannabis products for three conditions where other treatment has failed.
1112+1 point
๐ฌ๐ฌ Guernsey Medical โ
Guernsey lets Bailiwick specialists prescribe medicinal herbal cannabis
The Committee for Health & Social Care moved pharmaceutical-standard medicinal herbal cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Ordinance, 1997, so that authorised specialists based in the Bailiwick could prescribe it in defined circumstances. In practice the route went unused: the Committee later said practical barriers had to be removed before islanders could obtain prescribed cannabis.
๐จ๐ณ China Culture & science โ Article
Braziers from a 2,500-year-old cemetery give the earliest clear evidence of cannabis smoked for its effect
A study in Science Advances analysed wooden braziers from tombs at the Jirzankal cemetery in the Pamir mountains of western China, about 2,500 years old. The residue matched cannabis with more THC than wild plants usually have, which suggests that people chose stronger plants to burn at burials. It is some of the earliest clear evidence of cannabis used for its psychoactive effect.
๐ท๐บ Russia Enforcement โ
A journalist's arrest puts Russia's drug article on trial
Moscow police arrested the investigative reporter Ivan Golunov on drug charges; they published photographs of a drug laboratory and then admitted that only one had been taken in his flat. Three leading newspapers ran the same front page, the case was dropped after four days, and five officers were later sentenced to between 5 and 12 years. The case revived calls to soften Article 228. On 20 June President Putin answered that liberalisation was not needed, even for small amounts.
๐จ๐ด Colombia Easing โ
Colombia's Constitutional Court strikes down the ban on public use
In ruling C-253 of 2019 the court struck the words covering alcohol and psychoactive substances out of two articles of the 2016 police code, one on consumption in public space and one on stadiums, sports centres and parks. It held that a broad, general prohibition violates the right to free development of personality.
๐ธ๐จ Seychelles Medical โ Article
Seychelles court orders medical drug rules after a motherโs access case
Ralph Volcere won an order giving ministers 24 months to issue medical and scientific drug regulations after seeking cannabis access for his mother, who had Alzheimerโs disease. The court found a duty to write rules under the 2016 law and left their content to ministers, with effect for the future. In 2020 the government issued a permit system for tightly defined CBD medicines.
๐บ๐ธ United States ยท Colorado Other law โ
Colorado's top court rules a marijuana-trained dog's sniff is a search
In People v. McKnight a police dog named Kilo, trained to alert to marijuana as well as methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and MDMA, barked at a pickup in Craig, and officers found a pipe with methamphetamine residue. Because adults in Colorado may lawfully carry an ounce of marijuana, the Colorado Supreme Court held that such a dog "can no longer be said to detect 'only' contraband": its sniff is a search that needs probable cause, and the conviction was overturned. Reason noted that police would have to retrain such dogs to ignore marijuana or replace them.
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Medical โ
Lithuania allows cannabis-based medicines
A law permitted doctors to prescribe registered medicines made from cannabis. Flower and home growing stayed illegal.
1112+1 point
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Hemp โ
Bulgaria certifies CBD food supplements for open sale
The agriculture ministry and the food safety agency issued a free-sale certificate to the Californian firm Kannaway for its hemp-derived CBD products, classing them as traditional food supplements. It was reported as the first such decision in the European Union, three months after the European Commission had classed CBD as a novel food needing approval before sale. Under Bulgarian law CBD may be imported and sold but not produced in the country.
๐ง๐ช Belgium Debate โ
Belgium's Socialist Party promises a legalisation bill
Elio Di Rupo's party announced that it would resubmit legislation to legalise cannabis. Monthly use had risen from 2.7% of Belgians in 2001 to 4.3% in 2018, and 8.2% in Brussels.
๐ธ๐ธ South Sudan Enforcement โ
Torit police report two arrests over four sacks of cannabis
Torit police said they arrested a man and a woman over four sacks of bangi, each reported as 100 kg, transported from Ketire into the town. The spokesperson said the suspects were in custody during the investigation and would be sent to court.
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Medical โ
Croatia allows domestic production of medical cannabis
An amendment in force from 25 April 2019 let cannabis be grown and produced for medical purposes by companies holding a medicines-manufacturing licence, with approval from the health ministry and the medicines agency. It also defined industrial hemp as EU-listed varieties with no more than 0.2% THC and made growers register before sowing.
๐ฒ๐ฒ Myanmar Enforcement โ
Myanmar police raid an American's hemp plantation
Police raided a 20-acre plantation on an industrial estate in Ngunzun township, Mandalay region, and arrested the American entrepreneur John Frederic Todoroki and two Myanmar employees. Six days later the region's chief minister said his government had allowed the firm to grow fibre plants for one year. Todoroki was released on medical bail in July 2019 and reportedly left the country. On 10 March 2020 the Myingyan District Court sentenced Shein Latt, a supervisor who had installed the irrigation, to 20 years for growing prohibited cannabis plants; the case against the translator was dismissed.
๐น๐ผ Taiwan Debate โ
Taiwan holds its first cannabis rally
Two to three hundred people gathered outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei at a demonstration organised by a group called Green Sensation, asking that cannabis be regulated as a medicine. A justice ministry spokesman said the campaign was unlikely to change anything, and a governing-party lawmaker said no legislator was keen to sponsor a bill. The rally became an annual event.
๐ช๐จ Ecuador Other law โ
Ecuador's Constitutional Court upholds the personal-use table
In ruling 7-17-CN/19 the Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of the 2013 table of maximum amounts for personal use and ordered only that the criminal code be adjusted to the standards it set. Lawyers cited the ruling in November 2023 to argue that the president's decree repealing the table breached it.
๐ซ๐ด Faroe Islands Medical โ Article
Faroese doctors can prescribe cannabis through a medical trial scheme
Doctors in the Faroe Islands gained access to a medical-cannabis trial scheme in April 2019, as confirmed by the Chief Medical Officer and Pharmacy Service. Joint prescribing guidance recommends trying conventional medicines first, documenting the reason for treatment and monitoring the patient; it identifies pain, multiple sclerosis, spinal-cord injury and chemotherapy-related nausea among the treatment areas. The wider access followed parliamentary pressure, and by July the pharmacy service had ordered cannabis flower from the Netherlands.
๐ฝ๐ฐ Kosovo Other law โ Article
Kosovo keeps prison possible for first-time cannabis possession
Kosovoโs replacement criminal code retained a fine or up to one year in prison for a first offence involving less than three grams of cannabis or hashish for personal use. Ordinary unauthorised possession carried a fine and one to three years. The small-amount rule was already present in the code that took effect in 2013.
๐ฑ๐ป Latvia Debate โ
Latvia's interior ministry says decriminalising drug use may go to parliament
A senior official, Jฤnis Bekmanis, said a proposal to decriminalise drug use might soon reach the Saeima, and that the justice ministry was examining whether criminal liability for use deters anyone. The ministry's own position he called extremely cautious. That summer the government moved drug policy from the interior ministry to the health ministry.
๐ฌ๐บ Guam Legalisation โ Article
Guam legalises adult use of cannabis
Adults 21 and over could possess one ounce of cannabis, eight grams of concentrate or infused products containing up to 800 mg THC, and give cannabis to another adult without payment. The law also allowed six plants per residence, with no more than three flowering, in an enclosed and locked growing area. Governor Lou Leon Guerrero signed it with immediate effect, citing patientsโ long wait for access and the illicit market; business rules and operating permits followed over the next seven years.
2043+23 points
๐ซ๐ด Faroe Islands Debate โ
Faroese MPs reopen the debate over access to medical cannabis
MP Jenis รก Rana resubmitted a proposal to let Faroese patients join Denmarkโs medical-cannabis trial after parliament rejected it in 2018. Many MPs now supported wider access but argued that the health minister could add products to the medicines list without a new law. Minister Siriรฐ Stenberg offered to discuss that route with the social affairs committee; official medical guidance dates the trial schemeโs start to April 2019.
๐ฎ๐ฑ Israel Easing โ Article
Israel replaces prosecution with fines
Adults caught with a small amount in public now receive a fixed fine and no criminal record, instead of a criminal case. Possession at home in small amounts is generally not enforced. Growing even one plant is still a crime.
2025+5 points
๐ช๐น Ethiopia Medical โ
Ethiopia refuses a medical cannabis farm after a public outcry
Africana Cannabis Holding, a venture of Ethiopian and Canadian investors, proposed a farm and factory in Dembecha, in the Amhara region, to grow cannabis for medicine and export. When the local administration posted news of a meeting with residents, protests spread online. The health minister, Amir Aman, said growing cannabis for medical purposes had neither been recognised nor approved and that such requests had been and would be denied; the head of the Investment Commission said no permit to grow cannabis in Ethiopia would be issued.
๐จ๐ท Costa Rica Debate โ
Costa Rica considers a medical cannabis pilot
A pilot project to legalise and regulate medical cannabis and cannabis oils was put before the Legislative Assembly. The law that followed was signed three years later.
๐ท๐ผ Rwanda Other law โ
Rwanda places cannabis in its highest drug category
Rwandaโs health ministry expressly listed cannabis with cocaine, heroin and opium in the highest narcotics category when its classification order took effect on 11 March 2019. The 2018 criminal law tied that category to a statutory life sentence and a fine for unlawful production and supply activities. The order also allowed controlled medical and research use under the drug-control law.
๐จ๐พ Cyprus Medical โ Article
Cyprus creates licences for medical cannabis farms and pharmacy supply
New regulations created a licensed route for growing, processing and supplying medical cannabis, with an initial opening for three producers. They also set pharmacy-preparation and prescription rules, including separate approval for patients under eighteen. The framework followed the earlier cannabis-oil route for cancer patients; imported oils were documented reaching the government in March 2021.
๐ป๐บ Vanuatu Enforcement โ
Vanuatu suspends a young cannabis sellerโs ten-month prison sentence
Kaston Niawiye received concurrent ten-month sentences, suspended for two years, for possession, cultivation and sale of cannabis, plus twelve monthsโ supervision. He had been eighteen when he sold rolls for an older relative; the court found no evidence that he grew his ten plants commercially or personally shared the sale proceeds. The judgment applied the personal-growing guidance and distinguished low-level sellers from people cultivating cannabis for profit.
๐ช๐น Ethiopia Other law โ Article
Ethiopia sets fifteen-day prescription checks for controlled medicines
Ethiopia's replacement medicine law required pharmacies dispensing narcotic or psychotropic medicines to check an original prescription issued within the previous fifteen days, with the prescriber's name, the institution's stamp and a readable serial number. Each prescription could cover only one controlled medicine. The law replaced the 2010 medicine controls while keeping special import permits and locked storage.
๐ฆ๐ฒ Armenia Debate โ
Armenia's health minister vows to veto any legalisation
Answering rumours that the government meant to legalise cannabis, Arsen Torosyan wrote that there was not and could not be any initiative on the free sale, circulation and use of narcotics, and that he would personally veto one as long as he sat in the cabinet.
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Medical โ Article
Croatia's president pardons a patient jailed for growing cannabis
Four weeks after a court confirmed two years in prison for Huanito Luksetiฤ, who has multiple sclerosis and had grown cannabis for oil, President Kolinda Grabar-Kitaroviฤ signed a full pardon from serving the sentence. She had announced on Twitter that she would do so if he asked. The decision was published in the official gazette on 1 March and the court stopped the enforcement of the sentence.
๐น๐ญ Thailand Medical โ Article
Thailand legalises medical cannabis
Thailand became the first country in South-East Asia to allow cannabis for medical use and research. Recreational possession stayed a narcotics offence for three more years.
67+1 point
๐ฎ๐ถ Iraq Enforcement โ
An Iraqi court fines personal-use offenders; inspectors challenge the amounts
A Badra court imposed one-million-dinar fines in three personal-use drug cases, relying on general sentencing mitigation to impose a fine alone. Judicial inspectors said that choosing a fine did not allow judges to go below the drug law's five-million-dinar minimum, and recommended appeals against the judgments. Their later published review concerns drug offences generally and does not identify these as cannabis cases.
๐บ๐ฆ Ukraine Debate โ
A petition for medical cannabis reaches Ukraine's parliament
The Ukrainian Association of Medical Cannabis, backed by sixteen organisations, said more than two million Ukrainians could benefit. The petition passed the required 25,000 signatures in March, and on 18 April Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview that he supported medical legalisation.
๐ฎ๐ฑ Israel Medical โ
Israel approves exports of medical cannabis
The government approved the export of medical cannabis; shares of eight cannabis companies rose sharply on the Tel Aviv exchange. From 1 April 2019 about 100 specially trained doctors could also write prescriptions to be filled at the Super-Pharm pharmacy chain.
๐ท๐ธ Serbia Enforcement โ Article
Serbiaโs top court keeps three years for preparing cannabis to sell
Marko Lukoviฤโs three-year prison sentence stood after the top court found that drying cannabis flowers and packaging them for sale amounted to drug production. He had collected flowers near the Morava and later carried the prepared cannabis to Kraljevo for sale. The court distinguished this processing from growing a plant, which then had a separate six-month-to-five-year penalty.
๐ฆ๐ฌ Antigua and Barbuda Easing โ Article
Antigua and Barbuda passes its Cannabis Act
The Cannabis Act, 2018 (No. 28 of 2018) regulates cannabis for medicinal and scientific use through an Antigua and Barbuda Medicinal Cannabis Authority. It lets adherents of religious bodies, including Rastafari, register to cultivate more than four plants and possess more than 15 grams for sacramental use. The Governor-General assented on 22 January 2019 and it was gazetted on 24 January 2019. The four-plant household limit and the 15 g decriminalisation came earlier, in the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2018.
3637+1 point
๐ป๐ฎ US Virgin Islands Medical โ Article
US Virgin Islands approve medical cannabis for registered patients
Governor Albert Bryan Jr. signed the medical cannabis law sponsored by Positive T.A. Nelson, after final legislative approval in December. The programme provided practitioner certification, patient cards, licensed businesses and home cultivation for residents whose cards authorised it. Its preamble cited the 2014 vote supporting medical-cannabis legislation; the broader Cannabis Use Act replaced the programme in 2023.
๐ง๐ญ Bahrain Enforcement โ Article
Bahrain jails a home cannabis grower and acquits him of selling
A 56-year-old former flight attendant received three years in prison and a 1,000-dinar fine after convictions involving growing cannabis at home and unlawful possession of a weapon and ammunition, The Daily Tribune reported. Police had raided his home after a tip-off; he said he grew for himself and learned online. The court acquitted him of selling because the evidence was insufficient.
๐ฌ๐ณ Guinea Enforcement โ
Guinea defence challenges cannabis charges against eleven young men
Eleven young men appeared in Dixinn after cannabis arrests in Ratoma; prosecutors sought prison for some and acquittal for four. Their lawyer challenged the possession evidence and the requested fines, arguing that the law linked fines to the value of drugs seized.
๐ต๐พ Paraguay Debate โ
A Paraguayan senator proposes legalising cannabis outright
Senator Paraguayo Cubas presented a bill to legalise growing, selling and using cannabis for medical and recreational purposes. It was sent to committees. In September the Senate passed a narrower bill, by Vรญctor Rรญos and Patrick Kemper, on cannabis for medical use.
๐ฐ๐ฌ Kyrgyzstan Tightening โ Article
Kyrgyzstan puts small drug possession under fines and probation rules
The new misdemeanour code punished small drug possession without intent to supply, and small unauthorised cultivation, with a fine and restrictions supervised by probation officers. For adults, the restriction category ran for three to six months and required reporting to probation and permission for foreign travel; a misdemeanour finding did not create a criminal record. Harm-reduction workers had warned that the incoming fines would be unaffordable for many users.
1813โ5 points
๐ฏ๐ช Jersey Medical โ Article
Jersey brings its wider medical cannabis prescribing rules into force
The No. 7 Order made in December 2018 placed qualifying cannabis-related medicinal products within Schedule 2. The exemption required good manufacturing practice and manufacturer certification; smoking the products remained prohibited. Article 4 set commencement on 1 January 2019, with Article 2 following immediately after the other provisions. This was a controlled medicines route, not general cannabis legalisation.
๐น๐ท Tรผrkiye Hemp โ
Turkey's president calls for a return to hemp
President Erdoฤan said the country should start the process of cultivating industrial hemp because of its many benefits.
๐น๐ฟ Tanzania Debate โ
A Tanzanian MP calls for medical cannabis
Kahama Urban MP Jumanne Kishimba advocated in parliament for the legalisation of cannabis for medicinal use.
๐ต๐พ Paraguay Tightening โ
Paraguay uproots a record 1,468 hectares of cannabis in a year
It was the highest figure of a decade in which 15,045 hectares were destroyed, nearly two thirds of them in Amambay. The plantations were estimated at 6,000 to 8,000 hectares, with two to four harvests a year and a crop that could approach 30,000 tonnes; 77% went to Brazil and 20% to Argentina. Paraguay seized more than 1,000 tonnes a year, more than any other country.
๐ณ๏ธ Northern Cyprus Enforcement โ
Northern Cyprus reports counselling 98 people on supervised release
The Social Services Department reported regular interviews and psychosocial support for 98 people benefiting from the supervised-release law. The figure covered drug users together; the report gave no separate cannabis count. It documented the support work following the 2016 lawโs treatment alternative to sentencing.
๐ณ๐ฌ Nigeria Debate โ
An Ondo State governor proposes growing cannabis for medicine
Governor Rotimi Akeredolu proposed legalising cannabis cultivation in Ondo State for medical use, and repeated the call in 2020.
๐ฑ๐ฎ Liechtenstein Medical โ
Liechtenstein authorises cannabis medicines
Marketing authorisation was given to the cannabis-based medicines Epidyolex and Sativex.
1314+1 point
๐ฌ๐ฑ Greenland Debate โ
Greenlandโs parliament calls for access to low-THC cannabis oils
Greenlandโs parliament instructed the government to take steps allowing cannabis products and oils containing no more than 0.2% THC. The decisions sought access comparable with Denmarkโs 2018 change, which did not automatically apply in Greenland. A local law and an authorised-import exception followed in January 2023.
๐ฌ๐ฒ Gambia Debate โ
Gambiaโs drug agency calls for treatment and alternatives to prison
The drug agencyโs five-year plan called for rehabilitation facilities, counselling, skills training and alternatives such as community service for young and first-time offenders. It described a system dominated by punishment, with burdensome fines and limited help during and after imprisonment. The plan proposed a review of drug laws after the 2014 first-offender reform.
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland Debate โ
A Finnish citizens' initiative calls for decriminalisation
A petition to stop punishing cannabis use gathered more than the 50,000 signatures needed to put it before parliament, which did not act on it.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Medical โ
Brazil's medical cannabis associations form a national federation
Dozens of patients' associations, which had grown up to supply cannabis oil in the absence of regulated access, formed the National Federation for Therapeutic Cannabis (FACT). By then, according to the Rede Reforma lawyers' collective, more than 140,000 patients were supplied by associations or by individuals with court orders.
201880 entries17 score changes
๐ฌ๐บ Guam Medical โ
Guam protects permitted medical growers from arrest and forfeiture
Guam expressly extended medical-cannabis protections to patients and caregivers using the home-growing permits introduced in October. The amendment counted permitted plants separately from the patientโs allowable cannabis amount and protected qualifying conduct from arrest, prosecution and property forfeiture. Sponsored by Dennis Rodriguez Jr. and Louise Muรฑa, it also protected custody and visitation rights unless the conduct endangered a child.
๐บ๐ธ United States Hemp โ
The United States legalises hemp
The Farm Bill removed cannabis with up to 0.3% THC from the Controlled Substances Act. It was meant for fibre and CBD, but it also opened a national market in intoxicating hemp products that Congress later moved to close.
๐ธ๐ท Suriname Medical โ
Suriname sets up a committee to study medical cannabis
A committee was appointed in 2018 to look into the medical use of cannabis. Eight years earlier Chan Santokhi, then chair of the inter-American drug commission, had argued for keeping and enforcing the ban.
๐ต๐ฑ Poland Medical โ Article
The first medical cannabis reaches Polish pharmacies
More than a year after the law took effect, the first registered product went on sale: dried flower with about 19% THC from Spectrum Cannabis, part of Canada's Canopy Growth, which had applied for registration in June 2018. It was sold on prescription in three pharmacies, in Poznaล, Konin and Wrocลaw, at about 60 to 65 zloty a gram. The first delivery was seven kilograms; it served about 300 patients and was gone within days.
1214+2 points
๐จ๐ฉ DR Congo Medical โ
DR Congo writes a medical exception into its narcotics law
DR Congo promulgated a public-health law allowing narcotics cultivation, production, possession and sale for medical and scientific purposes, subject to authorisation. The law tasked the health minister with setting permission conditions and required records and access for inspections. It specified commencement three months after promulgation; cannabis licensing conditions followed through the 2021 ministerial order.
๐ป๐จ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Medical โ
Saint Vincent legalises a medical cannabis industry
Parliament passed laws licensing cultivation for medical use and export, with an amnesty meant to bring the island's traditional growers into the legal system.
๐ป๐จ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Debate โ
Rastafari reject a religious-use cannabis law
The government withdrew its Permitted Use of Cannabis for Religious Purposes Bill before the debate on the medical cannabis laws. Rastafari representatives had told the select committee that the state cannot grant a right to their sacrament, and that a law would expose their worship to scrutiny by international drug control bodies.
๐ธ๐ฝ Sint Maarten Other law โ Article
Sint Maarten tells prosecutors to drop many cannabis cases up to 25 g
Sint Maartenโs prosecutors applied a cannabis policy providing for confiscation and dismissal, potentially conditional, in the 0โ25 g band. Exceptions include minors, repeat offending, indications of dealing, other offences and places such as carnival parades, workplaces or government buildings. The next 25โ50 g band carries a proposed fine of up to NAf 500, while cultivation cases require an individual sentencing assessment. The guideline replaced the 2015 version.
๐จ๐ผ Curaรงao Other law โ Article
Curaรงao renews guidance to drop most cases involving up to 25 grams
Curaรงaoโs renewed prosecution guideline directs seizure and a potentially conditional dismissal for cannabis in its 0โ25 g band, and a fine request up to NAf 500 in its 25โ50 g band. Exceptions cover minors, repeat offending, signs of dealing, another offence and settings such as carnival parades, workplaces or government buildings. The guideline replaced July 2015 instructions and leaves cultivation cases to individual assessment; Curaรงaoโs later replacement law kept the underlying possession and growing bans.
๐ฌ๐ช Georgia Tightening โ
Georgia limits the cannabis use its court had freed
Four months after the Constitutional Court ruled out any punishment for consuming cannabis, parliament restricted it to people aged 21 or over, at home. Use in public, at work, in schools or in front of children brings a fine of 800 to 1,500 lari, and doctors, teachers and public servants can be barred from their professions. A plan in the same package to license cannabis production for export was withdrawn after opposition from the Orthodox Church.
๐ฐ๐ท South Korea Medical โ
South Korea legalises medical cannabis
The National Assembly allowed a small number of cannabis-derived medicines to be imported for patients with rare diseases, through a state agency. It was the first country in East Asia to do so.
23+1 point
๐ซ๐ท France Debate โ
French deputies vote for a fixed fine
The National Assembly approved replacing prosecution for cannabis use with an on-the-spot fine of โฌ200. It came into use nationwide in September 2020.
๐ธ๐ฉ Sudan Enforcement โ
Sudanโs Supreme Court upholds a life sentence for hashish trafficking
In Sudan Government v. Z. A. A. J., the National Supreme Court confirms an article 15 conviction involving 657.3 grams of hashish found in the accusedโs locked bag. It treats the quantity as evidence of trafficking intent, upholds life imprisonment and reduces the fine to 10,000 pounds. The final order is dated 16 November 2018, although the judiciary publishes the case in its 2019 collection with a 2019 docket reference. The judgment does not establish a universal quantity threshold or typical sentences for personal use.
๐ฑ๐บ Luxembourg Debate โ
Luxembourg's government says it will legalise cannabis
The government announced that recreational cannabis would be legalised, without a timetable. The project was delayed by the pandemic in 2020 and reduced in 2021 to growing at home.
๐ฏ๐ช Jersey Debate โ
Jersey backs medical cannabis prescribing beyond hospital consultants
The States Assembly backed the principle that medical professionals who already had prescribing rights should be able to prescribe medicinal cannabis. The subsequent ministerial decision records that this departed from advisory recommendations to limit the new route to hospital consultants. The vote was a policy decision; the implementing Order followed in December and commenced in January 2019.
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom Medical โ Article
The United Kingdom allows medical cannabis
Specialist doctors may prescribe cannabis-based medicines. In practice almost all prescriptions come from private clinics, as the health service funds very few. Recreational law did not change.
1415+1 point
๐ฑ๐ฆ Laos Other law โ Article
Laos sets treatment and prison bands for personal cannabis possession
People possessing under five grams of cannabis for consumption were to receive treatment under the replacement Penal Code, which took effect on 1 November 2018. Possessing five to ten grams of dried cannabis for consumption carried six months to two years in prison and a fine of five to twenty million kip. The code retained separate dried-cannabis trading and THC/hashish penalties, and set escalating sanctions for addiction recurring after certified treatment.
๐ฎ๐ฒ Isle of Man Medical โ
Medical cannabis rescheduling also takes effect in the Isle of Man
The DHSC's subsequent consultation explained that the UK instrument rescheduling cannabis-based medicinal products applied in the Isle of Man through earlier Manx legislation. This permitted medical use in limited circumstances, but did not itself establish a local pharmacy dispensing service. The consultation separately sought views on the island's future approach.
๐ฒ๐ฝ Mexico Easing โ
Mexico's Supreme Court rules a fifth time against the ban
Five rulings in the same direction make a precedent binding on every court. The court gave Congress 90 days to change the law; Congress missed that deadline and several extensions.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada ยท Newfoundland and Labrador Other law โ
Newfoundland and Labrador keeps home growing indoors
The Cannabis Control Regulations came into force on 17 October 2018. Up to four non-medical plants may be grown in the grower's ordinary dwelling, or in an enclosed structure on the premises. The yard itself is excluded. The plants must not be accessible to anyone under 19 or visible from a public place.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Legalisation โ Article
Canada legalises cannabis nationwide
The Cannabis Act made Canada the second country, and the first G7 member, to legalise. Adults may carry 30 g, grow four plants per household in most provinces, share with other adults and buy from licensed shops.
1553+38 points
๐ฐ๐ท South Korea Enforcement โ
South Korea warns its citizens not to use cannabis in Canada
The day before Canada legalised cannabis, the Korean embassy there posted a warning that Korean citizens who use, buy, possess or carry cannabis abroad can be punished under Korean law when they return, even where it is legal. Recreational use carries up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 50 million won.
๐ฌ๐บ Guam Medical โ Article
Guam lets medical patients apply to grow cannabis at home
Qualified patients or their designated caregivers could apply for a $15 annual permit to grow up to six flowering and twelve juvenile plants while no medical dispensary was operating. Senator Louise Muรฑaโs proposal required indoor, secured cultivation and medical certification. Governor Eddie Calvo called it an interim way to help people still waiting after the 2014 medical-cannabis vote.
๐จ๐ด Colombia Tightening โ
Colombia tells police to confiscate the personal dose
A decree from President Duque let police seize even a personal dose found on someone in public and fine them. The Constitutional Court struck down the blanket ban on public use the following year.
๐ท๐ผ Rwanda Other law โ Article
Rwanda allows community service for drug use and raises supply penalties
Rwanda offered one to two years in prison or community service for drug use when its rewritten criminal law took effect on 27 September 2018, replacing the earlier one-to-three-year term and fine. It also introduced much heavier production and supply tariffs, including life imprisonment for the highest drug category. A March 2019 health-ministry order expressly placed cannabis in that category.
๐ฒ๐ต Northern Mariana Islands Legalisation โ Article
Northern Mariana Islands legalise adult use, home growing and gifts
Adults aged 21 and over gained legal possession, home cultivation and capped gifts under a law signed by Governor Ralph Torres. Households could keep six mature and twelve immature plants and up to eight ounces of usable cannabis, with a larger plant allowance for medical patients on a doctorโs recommendation. Torres backed a regulated market for health, jobs and revenue but vetoed proposed fees and tax terms, which lawmakers revisited in 2019.
1148+37 points
๐ฟ๐ฆ South Africa Legalisation โ Article
South Africa's top court protects private use and growing
The Constitutional Court ruled that adults have a right to use, possess and grow cannabis in private, with no fixed gram or plant limit. Buying and selling stayed illegal, and so did use in public.
1149+38 points
๐ฒ๐พ Malaysia Debate โ
A death sentence prompts Malaysia to discuss medical cannabis
Public outcry over the death sentence given to a 29-year-old led the cabinet to discuss its medicinal value. Plans for medical legalisation lapsed after a change of government.
๐ฐ๐ช Kenya Debate โ Article
A Kenyan MP proposes legalising cannabis
Ken Okoth, the member for Kibra, drafted a Marijuana Control Bill to license growers and users and promote medical use. He died of cancer in July 2019 and the bill went no further.
๐ฆ๐ฒ Armenia Culture & science โ
Researchers find Armenians wary of talking about hemp
Botanists interviewed 26 people in 21 places across seven provinces, near stands of wild cannabis, about what the plant had been used for. Many of those approached declined to speak. Those who did said that the police exterminate the plants, and the study names legal restrictions as a main reason why the old uses for medicine and fibre have faded. Hemp seed powder was still sold in Yerevan's markets in 2020.
๐ฑ๐ป Latvia Medical โ
Latvia's health minister says there are more important things than medical cannabis
The interior ministry had said early in August that a discussion on allowing cannabis for medical use was possible in Latvia, though it planned no bill. The health minister, Anda ฤakลกa, replied that no doctors' organisation had asked for it and that she would debate legalisation for days once state-paid scans took ten days and medicines were affordable.
๐ฑ๐ป Latvia Enforcement โ Article
Latvian police pull up a pensioner's 363 hemp plants
The State Police opened a criminal case against Dzidra Bruzgule, a pensioner in the Viฤผฤni district, tore out the hemp growing in her kitchen garden and sent it for analysis. It contained no narcotic. The case was closed and the police apologised. A court first awarded her 27 euros for the plants; in January 2021 another awarded 1,500 euros for her distress, half of what she had asked. The press called her the hemp woman.
๐ฆ๐ด Angola Debate โ
Angolans argue over legalising liamba, with no bill in sight
A Voice of America report found liberalisation absent from the political and parliamentary agenda. Supporters said it made no sense to ban cannabis while beer was freely sold; a clinical psychologist warned of harm to thinking and behaviour; a jurist said any change would need a full parliamentary debate and an amendment of the law.
๐ฌ๐ช Georgia Easing โ Article
Georgia's Constitutional Court ends punishment for use
The court abolished the administrative fines for consuming cannabis, making private use legal. Growing and selling remain crimes, so there is no lawful way to get it.
1922+3 points
๐ฎ๐ฑ Israel Easing โ
Israel's Knesset approves fines in place of prosecution
The law passed on this day took effect on 1 April 2019: an adult caught with cannabis in public pays a fine of about 275 dollars for a first offence and 550 for a second, and only a third within seven years opens a criminal investigation. A survey of 2017 had found that 27% of Israelis aged 18 to 65 had used cannabis in the past year, the highest rate recorded anywhere.
๐ซ๐ด Faroe Islands Debate โ Article
A new Faroese party campaigns for the right to grow and use cannabis
Hallur Hjalgrรญmsson Djurhuus announced a party campaigning for people to grow and use cannabis, with medical access a particular priority. It sought the 800 signatures needed to contest an election while remaining neutral on other issues. The founders submitted those signatures in February 2019 as the separate medical-cannabis debate returned to parliament.
๐ฑ๐ง Lebanon Debate โ
Lebanon's parliament speaker says a medical cannabis law is coming
Nabih Berri told the American ambassador that parliament was preparing legislation to allow cannabis to be grown and processed for medicine, after a study by a consulting firm on reviving the economy. That October growers in the Bekaa said they opposed legalisation, fearing the income would pass to politicians. The law followed in April 2020.
๐ต๐น Portugal Medical โ
Portugal legalises medical cannabis
A law allowed doctors to prescribe cannabis-based medicines, dispensed by pharmacies, when conventional treatment has failed. Very few products have been approved, though Portugal has become a major grower for export.
2425+1 point
๐ International International โ
A Caribbean commission calls for an end to cannabis prohibition
After four years of consultations across the region, the CARICOM Regional Commission on Marijuana concluded that the existing laws were ineffective and unjust and recommended that member states treat cannabis like alcohol or tobacco. Most of the Caribbean reforms of the following years cite it.
๐จ๐ท Costa Rica Easing โ
Costa Rica's Supreme Court leaves a home-grow acquittal standing
The Criminal Chamber declared inadmissible the prosecution's appeal against the acquittal of a man who had repeatedly grown cannabis on his roof. That left intact the lower courts' finding that, without proof the crop was meant for trafficking or distribution, cultivation for personal use was not enough for a conviction.
2225+3 points
๐ฑ๐บ Luxembourg Medical โ
Luxembourg legalises medical cannabis
Parliament voted unanimously to allow medical cannabis. Doctors with special training may prescribe it for chronic pain, chemotherapy nausea and multiple sclerosis, dispensed free of charge by hospital pharmacies.
1920+1 point
๐ฎ๐ท Iran Culture & science โ Article
Most of Iran's senior clerics tell researchers cannabis is not forbidden outright
Researchers sent eight questions on cannabis to nineteen of the leading Shia authorities and published the answers of the eight who replied. Six treated its lawfulness as conditional. Grand Ayatollah Sistani answered that using cannabis is not forbidden in itself, though intoxicating or harmful derivatives are, and that growing and exporting it are allowed; Makarem Shirazi accepted pharmaceutical quantities under strict supervision. All eight held that hashish is not ritually impure. Most favoured supervised medical use.
๐ณ๏ธ Transnistria Enforcement โ Article
Transnistrian police seize a womanโs cannabis grown for rubbing tinctures
During the Mak-2018 campaign, police in the Dubossary district found thirteen cannabis plants and one poppy in a 55-year-old womanโs garden. She said she grew cannabis to make medicinal rubbing tinctures; officers also found her brother smoking cannabis in the basement and seized 2.62 g of dried material and a smoking device. Police opened a possession case against the brother and reported that the woman could face a fine, compulsory work or up to two years in prison.
๐ง๐ซ Burkina Faso Other law โ Article
Burkina Faso keeps small-quantity tiers but raises drug fines
The new Penal Code retained shorter sentences for small personal possession and growing, raised the fines and removed the drug clauses' explicit fine-only alternatives. Cannabis derivatives other than oil carried one to six months and a fine; high-risk plants and substances, including cannabis oil, carried one month to a year and a fine, lowering that tier's previous two-month minimum. Parliament adopted the code to replace the 1996 code and the 1999 drug law's penalty provisions.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Culture & science โ
Cannabis companies reach the big American stock exchanges
Canopy Growth, founded in Ontario in 2013 as Tweed, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the first cannabis producer there. In July Tilray, another Canadian licensed producer, became the first cannabis company to go public on a major US exchange, opening on Nasdaq at 17 dollars a share; the price reached 214 dollars in September and had fallen to 29 by August 2019.
๐ฐ๐ฎ Kiribati Enforcement โ
Kiribati fines a fisheries officer who kept and used cannabis
Fisheries officer Tebaatei Kourabi received a fine after being convicted of keeping cannabis he had found and used for about a month. The court held that his own evidence and admissions showed he knew what he possessed, and accepted the case without a new test of the seized material. The sentence provided four months in prison if the fine was unpaid, while taking account of his family obligations, cooperation and lack of previous offences.
๐ธ๐ช Sweden Medical โ
The European Court of Human Rights rules in a Swedish medical cannabis case
In Thรถrn v. Sweden the court dealt with the use of cannabis as medicine where conventional treatment is no longer available. Licences for unapproved cannabis products were reported to have risen in Sweden from 8 in 2016 to 63 in 2018, a figure from a weak source.
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Debate โ
Sofia's marchers ask for an end to prison for small amounts
The yearly procession, now called Freedom for Weed and organised by the Bulgarian Liberation Society, set out from Sveta Nedelya Square with two demands: stop imprisoning people for small amounts of cannabis for their own use, and decriminalise growing small quantities at home. The organisers said almost 20% of Bulgarians had tried cannabis.
๐ง๐พ Belarus Debate โ Article
Belarusโs drug prisonersโ mothers go on hunger strike for shorter sentences
Twenty-four women joined hunger strikes seeking shorter drug sentences, case reviews and a meeting with President Lukashenko. Most ended their protest on 11 May after the government forwarded proposed amendments to parliament. The campaign continued, and lower minimum sentences took effect in October 2019.
๐ฟ๐ผ Zimbabwe Medical โ Article
Zimbabwe lets licensed producers grow cannabis for medicine and research
Licensed producers could grow and process cannabis for medicinal and scientific purposes under five-year licences. Applications required site plans, security clearances and production records, with a published US$50,000 production-licence application fee. The medicines regulator later reported that the first licence was issued in 2019 and that production was directed towards exports, with local use limited to research.
๐ฎ๐ฑ Israel Medical โ
Israeli pharmacies begin selling cannabis oil
Under a pilot programme pharmacies were permitted to dispense cannabis oil to licensed patients. In January 2020 imports were allowed from countries with comparable rules, and in 2022 Israel brought in more than 33,000 kilograms, the largest importer of medical cannabis in the world.
๐ฆ๐ท Argentina Enforcement โ
Argentine police blame mice for half a tonne of missing marijuana
An audit of a police warehouse in Pilar, north-west of Buenos Aires, found about 540 kg missing from some six tonnes of seized marijuana. A former police commissioner and three subordinates told the court that mice had eaten it. Experts from the University of Buenos Aires, cited by the judge's office, said mice would not take the drug for food and that, if they had, many dead mice would have been found. Eight officers were dismissed.
๐ฒ๐น Malta Medical โ Article
Malta legalises medical cannabis
An amendment to the Drug Dependence Act, passed on 26 March, let doctors prescribe cannabis for chronic pain, spasticity in multiple sclerosis and the side effects of chemotherapy, to patients holding a control card from the Superintendent of Public Health; pharmacies dispense non-smoked forms. A second law the same year licensed production for medicine, research and export.
2122+1 point
๐ท๐ธ Serbia Debate โ
Serbiaโs parliament refuses to schedule a medical cannabis bill
Only ten MPs backed putting Goran ฤabradiโs medical-cannabis bill on the parliamentary agenda, while 149 did not vote. ฤabradi argued that seriously ill people should be able to obtain treatment openly and avoid the illicit market. The bill had been submitted in June 2017, after patientsโ groups and a ministry committee had proposed different routes to cannabis treatment.
๐ฎ๐ธ Iceland Medical โ
Iceland confirms prescription access to Sativex
The Icelandic Medicines Agency confirmed that Sativex had a marketing authorisation and could be bought at a pharmacy on a prescription from a neurologist. It remains a narrow route for multiple-sclerosis spasticity rather than a herbal-cannabis programme.
1617+1 point
๐ฏ๐ฒ Jamaica Legalisation โ
Jamaica's first licensed herb house opens
Three years after the reform, the first dispensary licensed by the Cannabis Licensing Authority opened. Patients, and visitors who sign a declaration, can buy and use cannabis there.
3135+4 points
๐ฌ๐ท Greece Medical โ
Greece legalises medical cannabis
Parliament allowed the cultivation, production and prescription of medical cannabis. Licences for producers came quickly; finished products reached patients only years later.
1314+1 point
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Medical โ
Croatian pharmacies run out of cannabis medicine, and nobody reorders
Two imports of cannabis oil, 1,200 bottles each, had been approved in 2016, after a Canadian firm briefly supplied capsules; in 2017 only fifteen bottles of Sativex came in. When the last stock expired in March 2018 the state institute that imported the drops placed no new order, for lack of demand. A month's treatment cost 2,000 to 3,000 kuna, the health fund paid nothing, and at one Zagreb hospital only two multiple sclerosis patients had asked for a prescription in 2017. In 2025 a market survey found no cannabis medicine on sale in the country.
๐ฆ๐ฌ Antigua and Barbuda Legalisation โ Article
Antigua and Barbuda legalises 15 g and four plants
The Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2018 (No. 3 of 2018) says a person holding up to 15 g of cannabis or resin is not guilty of an offence, lets each household grow up to four plants on its property and expunges earlier convictions for 15 g or less. Smoking in a public place brings a warning, then a $500 ticket, then a fine of up to $1,500. Assented on 1 March 2018 and gazetted on 5 March.
1136+25 points
๐ฒ๐ฒ Myanmar Debate โ
Myanmar's new drug policy calls for voluntary treatment
Myanmar's first national drug-control policy proposed replacing compulsory treatment with voluntary services, expanding harm reduction and treating drug users as patients. Developed by the drug-control committee with UNODC support and civil-society consultation, it also recommended considering repeal of drug-related death sentences. The policy followed a legal amendment that still allowed compulsory treatment and kept prison penalties for unauthorised possession.
๐ธ๐ฐ Slovakia Debate โ
A Slovak justice minister proposes fines for a first offence
Lucia ลฝitลanskรก proposed that a first possession of a small amount be a misdemeanour and only a repeat within twelve months a crime, with a limit of one gram for cannabis. Her proposal failed, and so did a more cautious one by her successor; a coalition party objected that demand for drugs would rise. At the time even one joint could bring a prison sentence.
๐ฒ๐ฒ Myanmar Easing โ Article
Myanmar replaces drug-registration prison terms with a treatment process
Myanmar removed the three-to-five-year prison penalty for failing to register for drug treatment or follow treatment directions. Police could still send suspected users for assessment, and a court could order six months in treatment after refusal or breach of a treatment bond. The amendment raised the cannabis quantity presumed to be for sale from 75 to 100 grams; unauthorised possession below it still carried five to ten years.
๐ณ๐ต Nepal Tightening โ
Nepal's police say they will arrest cannabis users at Shivaratri
Ahead of Mahashivaratri the Pashupatinath trust and police announced that visitors caught smoking or holding cannabis at the temple would be arrested, ending the tolerance long shown on the festival day. Sadhus stayed exempt but were told not to sell or offer it to visitors. Police said they had rounded up about 300 people for cannabis in the five months before.
๐ฐ๐ฌ Kyrgyzstan Debate โ
Kyrgyzstanโs harm-reduction workers warn against unaffordable drug fines
Harm-reduction workers warned that the fines planned for the 2019 justice reform could push people who use drugs further into debt and prison. Ranar Foundation lawyer Denis Kucheryaviy described a man who had served three years after a case involving 3.5 grams of hashish and was struggling with an unpaid fine and missing identity documents. Harm Reduction Network head Sergey Bessonov called for alternative penalties and effective treatment.
๐ฐ๐ท South Korea Medical โ
A Korean lawmaker proposes allowing cannabis medicines
Shin Chang-hyun introduced a bill to permit the medical use of cannabis with the approval of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. In July the ministry backed the change and said it would allow Epidiolex, Marinol and Sativex. The National Assembly passed it on 23 November.
๐ผ๐ธ Samoa Debate โ
Samoa's government rejects legalisation
A month after the Law Reform Commission recommended a regulated regime for medicinal cannabis, the prime minister rejected a call to legalise, and the health minister cited Biblical reasons for keeping the ban. A company's proposal to grow medicinal cannabis was turned down in April 2019.
๐ฎ๐ถ Iraq Other law โ Article
Iraq corrects its drug law so courts can treat personal-use offenders
A published correction linked the drug law's court-ordered treatment alternative to personal-use offences, replacing a reference to the separate offence of allowing drug use on premises. The corrected rule allowed hospital treatment for proven dependence or outpatient visits for people who used drugs, subject to medical reports and court decisions. The same notice corrected pharmacists' authority over psychotropic-drug schedules and replaced an earlier correction.
๐น๐ฒ Turkmenistan Other law โ Article
Turkmenistan reserves controlled cannabis growing for permitted enterprises
Turkmenistanโs replacement drug law restricted growing controlled plants to permitted enterprises and institutions within state quotas, with use confined to industrial, medical and scientific purposes. It prohibited consuming narcotic drugs without a doctorโs order and provided for court-ordered treatment for diagnosed dependent users who avoided treatment and continued using. Adopted in November 2017, it replaced the 2004 law on 1 January 2018.
๐ฉ๐ฐ Denmark Medical โ Article
Denmark starts a medical cannabis pilot
A four-year trial let any doctor prescribe cannabis products that were not approved as medicines. It was later extended and then made permanent.
1820+2 points
๐ป๐บ Vanuatu Debate โ
Vanuatuโs cabinet backs plans for a cannabis export industry
Vanuatuโs cabinet backed a policy direction proposing medical-cannabis and hemp production for overseas markets, with legislation still to follow. Agriculture Director Antoine Ravo saw agricultural potential, while farmer-network representative Lavinia Kaumaitotoya warned about diversion into illicit use. The proposal was to be reviewed by Agriculture Minister Hosea Nevu before parliamentary debate; the eventual licensing law began in January 2022.
๐ณ๏ธ Transnistria Other law โ
Transnistria defines cannabis cultivation to include breeding plants
A revised growing offence expressly covered preparing conditions for sowing, tending plants, developing varieties and improving yields or weather resistance. Large-scale cultivation still carried a fine, community work or up to two years in prison, and the aggravated tier three to eight years; those penalty ranges were already present in the 2014 code. The president signed the amendment on 26 July 2018, with commencement set for the day after official publication.
๐ต๐พ Paraguay Medical โ
Paraguay caps medical cannabis at thirteen licences
Decree 9303 of 2018, the regulation of the medical cannabis law, allowed the health regulator to issue no more than thirteen licences to produce, process and sell medical cannabis, and confined growing to the Central department. Licences went to twelve firms, pharmaceutical laboratories required to give at least 2% of their output to the health ministry for free distribution.
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Debate โ
Lithuania's parliament twice refuses to undo the criminalisation of 2017
Within a year of making possession of any amount a crime, the Seimas twice rejected amendments that would have returned small quantities of drugs to the administrative code.
๐ฑ๐ฎ Liechtenstein Debate โ
A Liechtenstein party campaigns to relax the cannabis law
The Free List toured the country arguing for reform and pointing to the money saved by not enforcing the ban. The social affairs minister, Mauro Pedrazzini, said he wanted to see what neighbouring countries did first and warned against becoming a stoner stronghold in the Rhine valley.
๐ฑ๐ธ Lesotho Medical โ
Lesotho issues cannabis regulations
The Drugs of Abuse (Cannabis) Regulations were the latest change to the cannabis law, after the government licensed five producers, several of them soon bought by Canadian and other foreign firms.
๐ช๐ช Estonia Culture & science โ
An Estonian municipality puts a cannabis leaf on its flag
Kanepi, a newly merged municipality in southern Estonia whose name comes from the Estonian word for hemp, adopted the cannabis leaf as the symbol on its flag and coat of arms.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Debate โ
Brazil's science society votes to legalise and regulate all drugs
At its annual meeting the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science unanimously approved a motion proposing that all drugs be legalised and regulated according to their specific benefits and harms, to protect groups at risk and respect users.
๐ง๐ผ Botswana Other law โ
Botswana grants, then withdraws, its first exemption to grow cannabis and hemp
In August 2018 a company, Fresh Standard, proposed to the agriculture minister to grow and process cannabis and hemp for medical and industrial use, and the ministry's permanent secretary approved an exemption under the Plant Protection Act. After the company acquired land and planted, police narcotics officers removed the crop, and in May 2019 the ministry revoked the exemption by letter.
๐ง๐ฉ Bangladesh Tightening โ
Bangladesh's anti-drug campaign leaves hundreds dead
Amnesty International counted 466 people allegedly killed by the security forces in 2018 in an anti-drugs campaign, three times the number of the year before and the highest in decades. The police described the deaths as gunfights. Witnesses told Amnesty they had been brought to the scene afterwards and asked to sign false statements, and that victims had been held for days or weeks before their bodies were found.
๐ง๐ฉ Bangladesh Tightening โ Article
Bangladesh's new narcotics act sets up to ten years for cannabis and death for harder drugs
Parliament passed the Narcotics Control Bill in October 2018, replacing the act of 1990. It introduced death or life imprisonment for the largest quantities of Class A drugs: 25 grams or more of heroin or cocaine, and 200 grams or more of yaba. Herbal cannabis is Class B: six months to five years for up to 5 kilograms, five to seven years for 5 to 15 kilograms and seven to ten above that, and for plants one to five years for up to fifty. Hashish is classed with the Class A drugs. Consuming a drug carries three months to two years. An earlier version of this entry said death was possible for two kilograms of cannabis, which the report of the act does not support for herbal cannabis.
53โ2 points
201776 entries14 score changes
๐ต๐ธ Palestine International โ
Palestine joins two UN drug conventions on one day
Palestine acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 29 December 2017. 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.
๐ง๐ฎ Burundi Other law โ Article
Burundi keeps prison or a fine for drug possession and use
Burundi kept illicit drug possession and use punishable by one to five years in prison, a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 Burundian francs, or both, when its revised criminal code took effect on 29 December 2017. These penalties continued the 2009 rules, including compulsory court supervision for consumption offences. Illicit production, import, manufacture or export carried ten to fifteen years and a fine up to one million francs, with doubled penalties for organised groups.
๐ง๐ฒ Bermuda Easing โ Article
Bermuda decriminalises possession of up to 7 g
Bermuda removed criminal liability for simple possession of seven grams of cannabis or less, while police retained power to seize it and prosecutors could still pursue evidence of intent to supply. Cultivation, supply, importation and unauthorised consumption remained offences. The change followed a proposed caution system for amounts under three grams; a later law created an application route to clear qualifying older convictions.
1219+7 points
๐ต๐พ Paraguay Medical โ
Paraguay legalises medical cannabis
On 5 December the Senate gave final approval to a law creating a national programme for the medical and scientific study of cannabis, and removing cannabis, its resin, extracts and tinctures from the list of dangerous drugs. Parents' and patients' associations had pressed for it; cannabis oil had been sold on controlled prescription since June. The law obliges the state to supply oil to patients on a national register. Growing at home was not included.
1718+1 point
๐ณ๐ด Norway Debate โ
Norway's parliament backs decriminalising drug use
A majority on the health committee announced it wanted to replace fines and prison for personal drug use with treatment. A working group reported at the end of 2019, and the resulting bill was voted down on 16 April 2021.
๐ง๐น Bhutan Easing โ
Bhutan softens its drug law for small amounts of cannabis
The National Assembly adopted an amendment to the 2015 narcotics act by 40 votes. A person holding up to twice the scheduled quantity of cannabis, who tests positive and has no trafficking record, is treated as a case of substance abuse and sent for treatment, not charged with trafficking. Minors get counselling first and compulsory treatment on later offences.
๐น๐ฟ Tanzania Other law โ Article
Tanzania splits cannabis trafficking penalties at fifty kilograms
Tanzania introduced thirty years in prison for cannabis trafficking involving fifty kilograms or less, while larger quantities remained in the life-imprisonment tier. The amendment added possession and production to a trafficking definition that already covered giving and storing drugs, and sent lower-quantity cases to subordinate courts. It also rewrote the treatment alternative for certain drug-use convictions, requiring consent, a medical report and the court's assessment.
๐ฌ๐ช Georgia Easing โ Article
Georgia's Constitutional Court ends criminal penalties for use
The court ruled that criminal punishment for consuming cannabis is unconstitutional, leaving only an administrative fine. Eight months later it struck down the fine as well.
1419+5 points
๐ต๐ช Peru Medical โ Article
Peru legalises medical cannabis
Law 30681 allowed the informed use, research, import and commercialisation of cannabis and its derivatives exclusively for medicinal and therapeutic purposes, through patient registration and licensed operators.
2021+1 point
๐ฑ๐บ Luxembourg Medical โ
Luxembourg announces a medical cannabis pilot
The health minister announced a two-year pilot programme for cannabis extracts and cannabinoids. Parliament approved medical cannabis unanimously the following June.
๐ง๐ฟ Belize Easing โ Article
Belize decriminalises 10 g
Adults may possess up to 10 g and use it on private premises without committing an offence. Growing any amount remains a crime, and a later law to create a regulated market was shelved.
1125+14 points
๐ธ๐น Sรฃo Tomรฉ and Prรญncipe Enforcement โ Article
Sรฃo Tomรฉ port police seize over a kilogram of cannabis on a Lagos ship
Police detained a Nigerian crew member and a Sรฃo Tomรฉan alleged accomplice after intercepting more than a kilogram of liamba, or cannabis, at Sรฃo Tomรฉโs port. Criminal investigation police director Suleimany Tenjua said the seizure involved a ship on the LagosโSรฃo Tomรฉ route; the two detainees were to be brought before the judicial authorities. State news agency STP-PRESS reported the operation the following day.
๐ธ๐ฉ Sudan Enforcement โ
Sudanese police destroy 500 cannabis farms in a month
A force of 366 men with 29 vehicles, a helicopter and drones spent the harvest month in El Radoom, destroyed about 500 farms and seized more than 30,000 packages of cannabis and 54,000 pieces of hashish. An armed group ambushed them and two officers were wounded. The interior minister announced agreements with South Sudan and the Central African Republic against cross-border trafficking, and said the district needed development, since traders exploited its people.
๐ต๐ฑ Poland Medical โ Article
Poland legalises medical cannabis from pharmacies
A bill from the Kukiz'15 club, driven by the rapper and MP Piotr Liroy-Marzec, passed the Sejm on 22 June 2017 by 440 votes to 2. Its first draft would have let patients grow their own; that was removed. The law lets cannabis herb, resin and extracts be registered as a pharmaceutical raw material from which pharmacies prepare medicines on a doctor's prescription, with the raw material imported. It took effect on 1 November 2017, but no product was registered for another year.
1112+1 point
๐น๐ฟ Tanzania Debate โ
Tanzania proposes thirty years for trafficking up to fifty kilos of cannabis
The government proposed a thirty-year trafficking tier for fifty kilograms or less of cannabis or khat, alongside life imprisonment above that amount. The bill also proposed adding possession to the existing trafficking definition and a medically assessed treatment route for certain people convicted of drug use. Parliament enacted the amendment later that year, with publication on 1 December.
๐น๐ฑ Timor-Leste Enforcement โ
Timor-Leste gives an Australian 3ยฝ years in a cannabis-plant case
A Dili court sentenced Australian resident Tony Crean to three and a half years in prison in a case involving cannabis plants, according to Lusa. The report says he was convicted for possession and trafficking but acquitted of consumption after a negative urine test. He had been held since January, and his defence said it would appeal.
๐ฌ๐น Guatemala Debate โ Article
Guatemalaโs health committee rejects a medical cannabis bill
Fourteen of the eighteen members of Congressโs Health Committee signed an adverse opinion on a bill for medicinal, therapeutic and scientific cannabis production and supply, Prensa Libre reported in October. Committee member Marvin Orellana argued that medicine-testing laboratories needed modernising before such a system could be considered. The setback followed the committee opposition to a broader adult and medical cannabis bill in 2016.
๐จ๐ญ Switzerland Easing โ Article
Swiss Federal Court: possessing up to 10 g is not punishable
The court held that simply having up to 10 g for one's own use carries no penalty at all, not even the CHF 100 fine, which applies only to someone caught using it.
2328+5 points
๐ง๐ช Belgium Other law โ
Belgium replaces its 1930 narcotics order
A royal decree on narcotic and psychotropic substances repealed the royal order of 31 December 1930 and the 1998 order on psychotropics. It states that growing cannabis plants is prohibited and cannot be authorised, and keeps possession and growing for personal use under the lighter penalties of the 1921 law.
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Hemp โ
Bulgaria denies that it has legalised growing cannabis
Public radio reported that farmers could now grow cannabis legally and that about 100 hectares were already sown, and headlines announced legalisation. The agriculture ministry answered that it had only drafted a regulation on hemp for industry, repeating rules in force since 2001: varieties must hold less than 0.2% THC, and plants above that are confiscated and destroyed.
๐ป๐บ Vanuatu Enforcement โ
Vanuatu gives eight villagers community work for cannabis offences
Eight first offenders from Bankir village on Malekula each received fifty hours of community work and six monthsโ probation for cannabis cultivation or possession. The case concerned conduct dating to 2009, with several defendants describing single small plants. The judge applied the 2013 personal-growing guidance and warned one defendant that his church belief did not permit him to continue growing cannabis.
๐ฐ๐พ Cayman Islands Culture & science โ
Cayman receives a medical-oil shipment from Canadian producer Cronos
Cronos Group announced that its producer Peace Naturals had completed the companyโs first shipment of medical cannabis oil to Cayman. The buyer was Caribbean Medical Distributors, working with Professional Pharmacy Services at CTMH Doctors Hospital in George Town. The shipment followed Caymanโs 2016 prescription reform, which authorised medical extracts and tinctures through licensed health professionals and importers.
๐จ๐ฒ Cameroon Enforcement โ Article
Cameroon reports drug-dog seizures and raids on cannabis crops
Cameroon's police reported that drug dogs had helped seize nearly 200 kg of cannabis and bring about ten people before the justice system since the start of 2017. A unit stationed at Kousseri patrolled the road linking Maroua, Mora and Kousseri after European Union experts trained handlers in 2016. Police commissioner Armand Abena also described crop-destruction raids in the Northwest, Southwest and West regions, while acknowledging that their impact was mixed.
๐จ๐ฒ Cameroon Debate โ Article
Cameroon drafts harsher cannabis penalties
A magistrate representing the justice ministry told the cannabis committee that, on the Prime Minister's instructions, a preliminary bill was being validated to harden the 1997 drug law. It would raise the fines, set minimum sentences below which a judge could not go even when granting mitigating circumstances, and bar suspended sentences for these offences. He described cannabis as one of the most produced and most consumed drugs in the country.
๐ฐ๐ฎ Kiribati Tightening โ
Kiribati adopts saliva-test rules for drug driving
Parliament adopted a traffic law under which a positive saliva test would establish drug influence, including for someone driving a bicycle. The law set a first drug-driving penalty of ten to twenty penalty units and six to twelve monthsโ licence disqualification. Its explanatory memorandum described the drug-driving provisions as new; commencement required a ministerial notice.
๐น๐ท Tรผrkiye Tightening โ
Turkey allows wiretaps in cannabis-growing cases
Emergency decree 694, confirmed by Law 7078 on 1 February 2018, added a paragraph to Article 23 of the narcotics law. For the offence of sowing hemp to obtain cannabis, the criminal procedure rules on intercepting and recording communications and on surveillance by technical means may be applied.
๐ต๐ญ Philippines Easing โ
The Supreme Court invalidates the drug-law plea-bargaining ban
In Estipona v Lobrigo, the Court held that Republic Act 9165's absolute ban on plea bargaining intruded on its constitutional rule-making power. A 2018 court framework then specified which lesser pleas judges may approve in drug cases.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Tightening โ Article
A man is jailed for growing cannabis to treat his wife
A court sentenced Fidelis Arie Sudewarto to eight months in prison and a Rp 1 billion fine for growing and giving cannabis to his wife, who had syringomyelia and died while he was detained. The case brought national attention to Indonesia's ban on medical use.
๐น๐ฉ Chad Other law โ
Chad's new code allows health confinement after a prison sentence
Chad's new Penal Code allowed courts to confine a person with drug dependence in a special health institution for up to two years after conviction for an offence punishable by at least two years in prison. Confinement began when the principal prison sentence ended or was suspended; a court could shorten it after medical advice that release no longer threatened public order. The code took effect on 1 August 2017, following the earlier pharmacy law's power to order drug users into treatment.
๐ฐ๐ท South Korea Enforcement โ
A K-pop star is sentenced for smoking cannabis
The singer T.O.P was sentenced to ten months in prison, suspended for two years. Sentences for entertainers caught with cannabis ranged from 25 days to ten months, and those caught were reported to stay off the stage for more than three years on average.
๐บ๐พ Uruguay Legalisation โ Article
Uruguay's pharmacies start selling cannabis
Three and a half years after the law passed, registered residents could buy state-licensed cannabis in pharmacies. Home growing and clubs had opened in 2014; this was the route the law had promised to most people. Banks threatened the pharmacies' accounts, and only a few took part.
4952+3 points
๐ฌ๐ช Georgia Easing โ
Georgia's Constitutional Court rules out prison for growing small amounts
In a case brought by three men who had grown cannabis (63.73 g, 150.72 g and 265.49 g), the First Chamber held that imprisonment for sowing and growing the two smaller amounts for personal use was disproportionate and breached article 17(2) of the Constitution. For 265.49 g it accepted prison as a kind of punishment because of the risk of distribution, but found the term of six to twelve years disproportionate.
๐ต๐ท Puerto Rico Medical โ Article
Puerto Rico gives its medical cannabis programme a statutory base
Patients using cannabis within the regulated programme gained statutory protection from Puerto Rico criminal and municipal sanctions. The law created a regulatory board, required medical recommendations and patient identification, prohibited smoking and public consumption, and kept sales within authorised dispensaries. It followed the 2015 executive order and dispensary openings in 2016, with transitional licences for businesses adjusting to the new rules.
๐ฎ๐ท Iran Culture & science โ Article
Iran's drug chief names cannabis flower the second most used drug
A report dated July 3 attributed to the head of the Drug Control Headquarters the claim that gol, 'flower', was Iran's second most commonly consumed drug after opium. Herbal cannabis had gained visibility alongside older hashish traditions. The statement did not change its legal status; the cited study does not supply the underlying prevalence data.
๐ท๐ธ Serbia Debate โ Article
Serbiaโs Green Party proposes medical cannabis
Green Party MP Goran ฤabradi submitted a bill to permit cannabis treatment for seriously ill people. He later argued that patients were buying oil in hiding and should be protected from arrest. Parliament refused his March 2018 request to put the bill on its agenda, after years of competing patient and ministry proposals.
๐ฒ๐ฝ Mexico Medical โ
Mexico legalises medical cannabis
A reform of the health law allowed medicines containing cannabis. The rules needed to put it into practice were not issued until 2021.
๐ฌ๐ท Greece Medical โ
Greece makes medical use lawful
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced that patients could use cannabis with a doctor's authorisation, after a government decision was published in the official gazette. A committee had been set up to study the question in July 2016.
๐น๐ณ Tunisia Easing โ Article
Tunisia gives judges discretion in drug cases
Parliament amended Law 52 so that judges can weigh mitigating circumstances for a first or second offence and order alternatives to prison such as treatment.
13+2 points
๐ณ๏ธ Northern Cyprus Debate โ
Protesters call for legal cannabis outside the Turkish Cypriot parliament
A small group gathered near the parliament in north Nicosia demanding that the sale, use and production of cannabis be legalised under state rules. The first 4/20 gathering in the north had been held in 2015.
๐ฟ๐ฆ South Africa Easing โ
A South African high court declares the ban on private use invalid
The Western Cape High Court ruled that banning adults from using and growing cannabis at home violated the right to privacy. The order was suspended while the government appealed; the Constitutional Court confirmed it the next year.
๐ง๐ด Bolivia Other law โ Article
Bolivia rewrites drug controls and requires medical-use authorisations
People and businesses handling medicinal controlled substances had to register and obtain prior health-ministry authorisation under a law that also reorganised drug investigations, treatment and asset forfeiture. Scientific and medical research required limited, exceptional permissions, and authorised medicines could be supplied through approved pharmacies on prescription. Cannabis and resin remained in the controlled list, while the 1988 lawโs personal-possession and trafficking penalties continued.
๐ฟ๐ฒ Zambia Medical โ
Zambian ministers disagree over medical cannabis licences
The home affairs minister, Steven Kampyongo, said that growing cannabis for medical use was already legal for anyone holding a licence from the health minister. The health minister, Chitalu Chilufya, then said he had no intention of issuing any. Cabinet approved licensed growing for export and medicine in December 2019.
๐น๐ณ Tunisia Easing โ
Tunisia lets judges pardon first-time cannabis users
With a wider reform of Law 52 blocked in parliament, the National Security Council under President Beji Caid Essebsi let judges grant a pardon as soon as a first cannabis-use conviction is pronounced, so the person avoids prison. Trials under the law had risen from 732 in 2011 to 5,744 in 2016.
๐ฆ๐ท Argentina Medical โ
Argentina passes a medical cannabis law
Law 27.350 set up a national research programme and allowed cannabis oil to be imported for patients. It did not allow growing, which patients' families kept doing illegally until the 2020 registry.
๐ฉ๐ช Germany Medical โ Article
Germany legalises medical cannabis
Doctors may prescribe cannabis flower and extracts for serious illness, dispensed by pharmacies and reimbursed by health insurers after approval.
2021+1 point
๐ฒ๐ณ Mongolia Debate โ Article
Mongolia approves a national drug-control programme
The cabinet approves a programme combining control of illicit drug circulation, prevention, personnel training, and voluntary and compulsory treatment. The announcement reports 388 cases and 1,112 people investigated over ten years across controlled substances; these are not cannabis-specific counts or evidence of programme outcomes.
๐ฎ๐ฑ Israel Debate โ
Israel's cabinet approves decriminalisation
The cabinet backed replacing criminal charges for personal use with fines. The Knesset passed the law on 19 July 2018 and it took effect in April 2019.
๐ฒ๐ฑ Mali Hemp โ Article
Mali authorises a company's hemp-growing project for medical exports
Mali granted African Seeds permission to grow industrial hemp for seed exports intended for medical use, under conditions supervised by the authorities. Reported licence terms required approved seed and a variety with no more than 0.2% THC, and a 2018 amendment added oil to the authorised exports. The central drug office later confirmed the 2017 authorisation and said it had been withdrawn in February 2020 after the producers sought changes to its terms.
๐ฎ๐ณ India Easing โ
Gujarat takes bhang off its list of intoxicating drugs
Gujarat, a state with alcohol prohibition, removed bhang from the intoxicating drugs covered by its Prohibition Act. The minister of state for home said bhang is consumed only as an offering of Lord Shiva, and that the government had decided to exempt it in view of public sentiment.
๐ง๐ฒ Bermuda Debate โ
Bermudaโs prosecutors propose cautions for small cannabis amounts
The Director of Public Prosecutions published draft guidance to divert people caught with under three grams of cannabis away from court. It proposed first and second cautions, then assessment, counselling and a drug test before a third caution, with commencement tied to criminal-procedure legislation. Bermuda later removed criminal liability for simple possession of up to seven grams in December.
๐ฐ๐ช Kenya Debate โ Article
Kenya's Senate hears a cannabis legalisation petition
The Senate presented Gwada Ogot's petition seeking cannabis decriminalisation, a regulator and amnesty for prisoners. A further presentation is recorded on November 29. This date follows the examined February Hansard; Carrier places the broader initiative in 2015. Presentation and committee referral did not change the law.
๐ฌ๐ฎ Gibraltar Medical โ
Gibraltar creates a controlled medicines route for Sativex
A precisely defined cannabis-extract mouth spray moved from the most restricted drug schedule into the controlled-medicines schedule on 15 February 2017. The governmentโs explanatory memorandum identified Sativex and the medicines route through which it could be supplied. Wider rules for GHA-approved cannabis medicines followed in 2019.
๐น๐ฑ Timor-Leste Enforcement โ
Timor-Leste holds an Australian before trial over five cannabis plants
An Australian resident entered pretrial custody in Dili in a case involving five suspected cannabis plants, according to Lusa reporting. Prosecutors had challenged an earlier decision allowing him to remain outside prison with reporting requirements and a confiscated passport, and the appeal court backed detention. The case later led to a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, with the defence announcing an appeal.
๐ฒ๐ด Macau Tightening โ Article
Macau raises personal-use penalties and exposes larger stocks to prison
Macau raised the personal-use penalty on 27 January 2017 from up to three months in prison to three monthsโone year, with an alternative fine of sixtyโ240 day-rates. Stocks above five daily reference quantities, even entirely for personal use, fell under production, trafficking or the lesser one-to-five-year tier, depending on the case. Ordinary production and trafficking minima rose from three to five years; in 2022 the top court used the lesser tier for two people growing one plant.
119โ2 points
๐น๐ฑ Timor-Leste Other law โ Article
Timor-Leste sets separate penalties for personal cannabis use
Timor-Lesteโs drug law made illicit use, possession and growing solely for personal consumption punishable by up to one year in prison or a 120-day fine, rising to two years or a 240-day fine above five daily reference quantities. Courts may waive punishment for an occasional user in the lower band, and people seeking treatment have confidentiality protections. The law replaced reliance on inherited Indonesian legislation, kept trafficking penalties of five to fifteen years, and took effect the day after its 25 January publication.
๐ณ๏ธ Northern Cyprus Debate โ Article
Northern Cyprus lawyer warns that drug treatment lacks staff and tests
Lawyer Ramadan Sanฤฑvar warned that shortages of psychiatric and rehabilitation services, a laboratory fire and delayed paperwork were obstructing the new treatment route for drug users. He called for staffing and procedural changes so people could meet its obligations.
๐จ๐พ Cyprus Medical โ Article
Cyprus offers cannabis oil to patients with advanced cancer
Health Minister George Pamboridis announced access to cannabis oil for patients with advanced cancer whose other treatments had failed. Patients had to apply to the ministry; the later official explanation required an individual ministerial approval and a doctorโs prescription before collection from a designated chemist. The programme depended on imported products, while wider production rules followed in 2019.
56+1 point
๐ฐ๐ญ Cambodia Tightening โ Article
Cambodia launches an anti-drug campaign
Cambodia began a six-month anti-drug campaign in January 2017 and repeatedly extended it, with at least 55,770 arrests on suspicion of using or selling drugs by March 2020. People were sent through criminal courts or administrative detention centres; Amnesty International later documented arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and failures to provide proper care. The arrest total covers drugs generally, during a regional rise in methamphetamine supply, and is not a cannabis-only count.
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Tightening โ Article
Lithuania makes any possession a crime
Until 2017 a small amount for personal use was an administrative matter. Since then possession of any quantity is a criminal offence that leaves a criminal record.
1711โ6 points
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom Debate โ
Britain's MS Society calls for herbal cannabis to be legal for patients
The MS Society, which in the 1990s had refused to press for access to herbal cannabis, changed its position and called for it to be legalised for medicinal use by people with multiple sclerosis. The cannabis-based spray Sativex was licensed but not available on the health service except in Wales.
๐ช๐ธ Spain Legalisation โ
Catalonia regulates cannabis clubs
The Catalan parliament passed a law legalising the growing and distribution of cannabis within registered associations. Spain's Constitutional Court annulled it the next year, ruling that only the national parliament can legislate on drugs.
๐ผ๐ธ Samoa Debate โ
Samoa's Law Reform Commission backs medicinal cannabis
The commission's final report recommended a regulated regime for medicinal cannabis. The government did not act on it and turned down a cultivation proposal in 2019.
๐ณ๐ฌ Nigeria Debate โ
A bill seeks to stop Nigerian judges varying drug sentences
A National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (Amendment) Bill was introduced to amend the 1989 law. It aimed to close loopholes by wording the provisions so clearly that judges could not vary the sentences the Act lays down, among other changes.
๐ฒ๐ฝ Mexico Culture & science โ
MOTA Comix begins publishing in Mexico
Editorial PirataZ launches an independent Mexican cannabis comic publication. Its publisher describes the project as a space for alternative graphic expression and humour challenging prohibition and the criminalisation of consumers. The title uses established cannabis slang; it does not mark the origin of the word mota.
๐ฒ๐น Malta Debate โ
Malta's ReLeaf campaign asks for legal home growing
Before the general election the campaign group ReLeaf presented a manifesto asking to legalise possession of up to 28 g per person and six plants per household. The Labour Party's manifesto promised a national debate on recreational cannabis.
๐ฒ๐พ Malaysia Death penalty โ
Malaysia lets judges avoid the death sentence
An amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Act gave courts limited discretion in sentencing for trafficking, where death had been the only penalty.
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Debate โ
A Lithuanian MP proposes to decriminalise possession and sharing
After administrative penalties for possession were abolished and suspended sentences for serious crimes, which include distributing small amounts, were restricted, the Liberal MP A. Armonaitฤ tabled amendments to grade the penalties and to decriminalise possession and sharing among friends, with warnings and administrative fines in their place. The health minister supported the approach; R. Karbauskis, chairman of the Farmers and Greens Union, called for zero tolerance. A judge, A. Cininas, said the laws were destroying people's lives.
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Debate โ
Activists rally for legalisation outside the Lithuanian parliament
In 2016 and again early in 2017, several hundred activists demonstrated outside the Seimas in support of legalising cannabis, as possession of any amount became a matter for the criminal law.
๐ฑ๐ธ Lesotho Medical โ
Lesotho issues Africa's first medical cannabis licences
Lesotho, where cannabis has long been a major cash crop, became the first country in Africa to license its cultivation for medical use.
๐ฎ๐ถ Iraq Easing โ Article
Iraq lowers personal-use sentences and protects people seeking treatment
Iraq set one to three years in prison and a fine for importing, producing, possessing or growing drugs for personal use, replacing a law whose personal-use maximum had reached fifteen years. People presenting themselves voluntarily to a specialist hospital for treatment were protected from prosecution under specified conditions, while trafficking still faced severe penalties. A later Gazette correction linked the court-ordered treatment alternative explicitly to the personal-use offence.
02+2 points
๐ฎ๐ท Iran Death penalty โ
Iran raises the threshold for drug executions
Parliament amended the Anti-Narcotics Law in August 2017 so that trafficking in natural drugs such as cannabis and opium reaches the capital threshold at 50 kg, up from 5 kg; for heroin, cocaine and amphetamines it rose from 30 grams to 2 kilograms. The change applied retroactively. On 9 January 2018 the head of the judiciary ordered judges to halt executions and review the cases of some 5,000 people under sentence of death, most of whom would have their sentences commuted to 25 to 30 years. Death remained for gang leaders, those who use minors and those who carry arms.
๐ฎ๐ณ India Medical โ
India issues its first cannabis research licence
The union government licensed the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research to grow cannabis for research. The same year Gujarat legalised bhang by taking it off its list of intoxicating drugs.
๐ฌ๐ญ Ghana Debate โ
Ghana's government brings a bill to treat drug use as a health matter
A Narcotics Control Commission Bill, first proposed by the government in 2014, was put forward to replace the 1990 law. It called for decriminalising drug use, alternatives to prison, proportionate sentences and a harm reduction strategy, and encouraged reviewing the classification of substances such as cannabis. It became law in 2020.
๐จ๐ณ China Hemp โ
Heilongjiang opens industrial hemp growing
Heilongjiang became the second Chinese province, after Yunnan, to allow industrial hemp to be grown, processed and sold. Jilin planned a hemp chapter in its anti-drug regulations in 2018, but the version adopted in 2022 left it out.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Medical โ
A Brazilian patients' association is authorised to grow cannabis
Abrace Esperanรงa in Paraรญba became the first patients' association in Brazil allowed to plant, harvest and process cannabis to supply therapeutic oil to its members. Ribeiro writes that it went on to supply some forty thousand patients. In the same year a federal judge in Rio Grande do Norte allowed a woman with Parkinson's disease and her son to grow six plants.
201650 entries11 score changes
๐ง๐พ Belarus Hemp โ Article
Belarus lists hemp among plants barred from introduction and establishment
Cannabis sativa appeared on a revised environmental list prohibiting the introduction and establishment of specified plants from 31 December 2016. The Environment Ministry also removed the ruleโs earlier reference to wild-growing plants. Drug-producing cultivation was already prohibited under the narcotics law and punished separately in the criminal code.
๐ต๐ท Puerto Rico Medical โ
Puerto Ricoโs first medical dispensaries begin serving patients
The first two medical-cannabis dispensaries opened after the 2015 executive order, reclassification and subsequent licensing work. Governor Alejandro Garcรญa Padilla visited one of the businesses and reported 1,953 registered patients and 23 licensed companies across the industry. A later court judgment independently records The Family Dispensary beginning sales to authorised patients on that date, before a dispute over its local use permit.
1114+3 points
๐ถ๐ฆ Qatar Death penalty โ
A Qatari court gives death and two life terms for 120 kg found at sea
Five men were caught diving to recover three sealed barrels holding about 120 kilograms of hashish and opium near Qatari waters. The main trafficker was sentenced to death and a fine of 500,000 riyals, two others to life imprisonment, a fourth to seven years, and a fifth to one year and 10,000 riyals for using drugs. The newspaper called the verdict rare.
๐ฏ๐ต Japan Tightening โ
Tottori Prefecture bans hemp growing after arrests at a licensed firm
After the president and two employees of a permitted hemp processing company in Chizu were arrested on suspicion of possessing cannabis, the Tottori prefectural assembly unanimously passed an ordinance banning hemp production in the prefecture, to be enforced within a year. It stops any company from receiving a hemp production licence there. Governor Shinji Hirai called a complete ban the ultimate way to prevent cannabis being grown under cover of the industrial hemp programme.
๐ฎ๐ช Ireland Medical โ
Ireland issues its first licence for medical cannabis
The licence was for cannabis oil for a two-year-old boy with Dravet syndrome. The same month a bill by Gino Kenny on cannabis for medicinal use passed its second stage in the Dรกil without a vote; a health committee rejected it the following year.
๐ฌ๐ช Georgia Easing โ
Georgia's court rules out prison for small amounts
The Constitutional Court declared imprisonment unconstitutional for buying and keeping small amounts of cannabis and for producing it for personal use.
๐จ๐ฆ Canada Debate โ
Canada's task force sets out a plan for legalisation
A task force appointed by the Trudeau government after the 2015 election published a 106-page report on how to legalise and regulate cannabis. Bill C-45 was introduced four months later, on 13 April 2017.
๐ณ๐ด Norway Medical โ
Norway has approved one patient for medical cannabis
In principle a small group of seriously ill patients, for whom other medicines had failed, could be given cannabis. In practice, as of this date, a single person in Norway had been approved.
๐ฐ๐พ Cayman Islands Medical โ Article
Cayman lets doctors prescribe cannabis extracts and tinctures
Cayman made the use of cannabis extracts and tinctures lawful when prescribed by a locally licensed medical doctor for a patient under that doctorโs care, with the doctor setting the dose. The published proposal created a route through authorised doctors, pharmacists and importers, and the official legislation history records the amendmentโs commencement on 18 November 2016. By August 2017, Canadian producer Cronos reported a completed medical-oil shipment to a distributor working with a George Town hospital pharmacy.
1011+1 point
๐ธ๐ฉ Sudan Debate โ
Sudan's vice-president asks Darfur's cannabis farmers to grow rice
At a public gathering in El Radoom, in South Darfur, Hasabo Mohamed Abdelrahman told farmers the climate suited rice. Police figures rank the district, an area the size of Portugal, first in Africa for cannabis, known locally as bango and often made into hashish. A recent campaign had destroyed 6,500 acres of farms and seized 50 tonnes. That July the drug office in Khartoum had called Sudan the continent's largest producer.
๐ง๐ฒ Bermuda Other law โ
Bermudaโs court confirms patients can seek medical import licences
In Michael Brangmanโs case, Bermudaโs Supreme Court confirmed that the minister had power to consider applications to import and possess cannabis for medical purposes, according to contemporary reporting. The minister could still refuse an application. The hearing followed the 2014 law naming prescription cannabinoid medicines and clarified an existing licensing power.
๐บ๐ธ United States Legalisation โ Article
Four more US states legalise, including California
Voters in California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Maine approved legal cannabis on the same day, putting about a fifth of Americans in states with legal possession and sales. Most of the states that are legal today followed over the next decade.
2434+10 points
๐ธ๐จ Seychelles Enforcement โ Article
Seychelles suspends a cannabis sentence that once carried a 16-year minimum
Paul Ah Kong received a two-year prison sentence suspended for two years and a 15,000-rupee fine after admitting trafficking 115 grams of cannabis. The judge applied the benefit of the new drug law, which had removed the old 16-year minimum for the offence. He also considered Ah Kongโs guilty plea, first conviction and eight-month-old child; failure to pay the fine carried six months in prison.
๐ฌ๐ณ Guinea Other law โ Article
Guinea sets a separate penalty for small personal possession and growing
Small personal buying, possession and growing carried one to three years, a fine equal to three times the value seized, or both under the new Penal Code. The 1998 code had punished personal possession and use with six months to two years, a fine, or both, while ordinary cultivation carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both. The replacement code took effect on promulgation and also allowed compulsory treatment, with two to five years for refusal.
79+2 points
๐น๐ฑ Timor-Leste Debate โ
Timor-Leste lawmakers approve a drug bill with a treatment route
Timor-Lesteโs Parliament approved a drug bill that retained punishment for consumption while emphasising treatment and support. The government linked it to public safety and promised regulations and a coordinating body for drug policy. The final law records the vote on 18 October; it was promulgated and published in January 2017, with commencement on the day after publication.
๐จ๐ณ China Culture & science โ
A shroud of thirteen cannabis plants is described from a grave in Turpan
Researchers reported a man of about 35 buried at the Jiayi cemetery in the Turpan basin, 2,800 to 2,400 years ago, with thirteen nearly whole cannabis plants laid diagonally across his body. The plants seem to have been grown locally and cut in late summer; the authors suggested ritual or medicinal use.
๐ป๐ฎ US Virgin Islands Other law โ Article
US Virgin Islands court rejects a vague cannabis-smell stop
The Superior Court suppressed evidence from Victor Cannergeiterโs vehicle because prosecutors had not shown a sufficiently specific reason for the stop. Although the court said a trained officer could still stop a vehicle after detecting cannabis smell despite the 2014 possession reform, it found the officerโs general statement and unproven experience inadequate in this case. The evidence included cannabis and a firearm discovered after the stop.
๐ฆ๐ท Argentina Medical โ
Argentine provinces legalise medical cannabis first
Chubut legalised medical cannabis on 23 September 2016 and Santa Fe followed on 30 November, months before the national law.
๐ง๐ญ Bahrain Tightening โ
Bahrain adds synthetic cannabinoids to its controlled-drug list
Bahrain added synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinone to its controlled narcotics list through a cabinet decision taking effect the day after publication. The decision also added tramadol, ketamine and a drug precursor to other tables. Natural cannabis was already controlled under the 2007 lawโs plant rules.
๐ฏ๐ด Jordan Tightening โ Article
Jordan restores prosecution for first-time drug use
First-time drug users again faced prosecution when Jordan replaced its 2013 treatment guarantee with a new drug law. Personal use carried one to three years in prison and a JOD1,000โ3,000 fine, although a court could substitute inpatient or outpatient treatment. A first offence left no criminal precedent or security record, and seeking treatment before being caught still prevented prosecution. The head of the governmentโs legislation bureau said the earlier policy had failed, while rights lawyer Hala Ahed criticised the rapid return to punishment.
86โ2 points
๐ฏ๐ด Jordan Death penalty โ Article
Jordan retains death for international drug-gang trafficking
The new drug law retained mandatory death for aggravated trafficking involving international drug gangs or specified links to other international crimes. Ordinary personal use had a separate prison-and-fine offence with possible treatment. The earlier drug law already contained the international-gang death clause, which the 2016 replacement carried forward.
๐จ๐ด Colombia Medical โ
Colombia legalises medical cannabis
Law 1787 created a licensing system for growing, processing and exporting cannabis for medical and scientific use.
3839+1 point
๐ต๐ญ Philippines Tightening โ
The Philippines launches a nationwide war on drugs
Police began Project Double Barrel and Oplan Tokhang, targeting alleged users as well as dealers. Thousands of drug suspects were killed over the following years; a UN investigation found widespread rights violations, weak due-process safeguards and near impunity.
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Tightening โ
Bulgaria narrows cannabis licences to research and hemp to fibre and seed
An amendment to the drug control act took effect. Health ministry licences for Schedule I substances, cannabis among them, were limited to medical research where the law had said medical purposes, and the hemp licence was confined to fibre and seed, which made other hemp products unlawful. Hemp growers had asked for clear rules on processing; a definition drafted by a parliamentary working group was dropped after a letter from the customs service was read out. The Academy of Sciences had supported the growers.
๐ธ๐จ Seychelles Easing โ
Seychelles invites drug prisoners to seek shorter remaining sentences
Prisoners sentenced under the old drug law could apply to a new tribunal to review the time they still had to serve. The judiciaryโs public notice set an August deadline for people already convicted when the replacement law began, and a three-month application period for people convicted later on old charges. The tribunal could change a sentence while leaving the conviction intact, considering rehabilitation, the new sentencing range and the risk of reoffending.
๐ฐ๐ฎ Kiribati Enforcement โ Article
Kiribati fines a sailor whose prescribed marijuana was a prohibited import
Portuguese sailor Joao Afonso was fined A$1,600 on a marijuana charge after the court accepted that it was part of his prescribed treatment but held it was a prohibited import in Kiribati. The sentence records 0.03 grams on his yacht. Chief Justice John Muria took his health and cooperation into account, imposed a fine with three months in prison for default, and declined to confiscate the yacht.
๐ธ๐จ Seychelles Other law โ Article
Seychelles gives judges more discretion over cannabis sentences
Seychelles replaced its 1990 drug law, allowing courts to sentence cannabis offenders without the old mandatory minimum and letting prisoners apply for a review of their remaining terms. Home Affairs Minister Charles Bastienne promoted the replacement as a response to rising drug imprisonment and dependence, combining enforcement with treatment and rehabilitation. Later that year, a judge gave a first offender a suspended sentence for 115 grams of cannabis instead of the former 16-year minimum.
๐ณ๏ธ Northern Cyprus Easing โ Article
Northern Cyprus offers drug users supervised treatment instead of a sentence
Eligible people convicted of drug possession or use could accept one to three years of supervision, treatment or rehabilitation before sentence. Successful completion meant no sentence and no conviction entered on the record; breach could restart sentencing. The law also covered qualifying personal imports, with cannabis and resin listed at twelve grams in its schedule, and let eligible prisoners and people with pending cases apply. Growers and people convicted of supply were excluded.
38+5 points
๐น๐ฟ Tanzania Other law โ Article
Tanzania defines small personal-use quantities as up to fifty grams of cannabis
Regulations defined a small quantity as no more than 50 g of cannabis or 5 g of cannabis resin or oil. These amounts supplied the definitions left to regulations by the 2015 drug law, whose small-personal-use tier allowed a fine, prison or both and required the holder to prove personal consumption. The quantity boundary therefore determined eligibility for a separate penalty tier rather than making possession lawful.
๐ฌ๐น Guatemala Debate โ Article
Guatemalaโs lawmakers propose adult cannabis use and five home plants
A bill would let adults use cannabis privately and grow up to five plants at home for personal or family consumption. It proposed licensed commercial supply and a 10% sales tax divided between hospitals and police education programmes. Presented by รlvaro Velรกsquez, Sandra Morรกn and colleagues, it sought exceptions to the drug offences; a congressional committee opposed it later that year.
๐จ๐พ Cyprus Hemp โ Article
Cyprus licenses hemp farming and trade at up to 0.2% THC
Farmers and suppliers gained a licence-based route for industrial hemp containing no more than 0.2% THC. The law required registered premises, controlled seed and crop records, while a companion amendment separated qualifying hemp from the narcotics restrictions. In 2024 parliament replaced the agricultural definition with a reference to the EUโs 0.3% limit.
๐จ๐ณ China Other law โ
China's top court fixes the cannabis quantities that make a crime
The Supreme People's Court adopted an interpretation, in force from 11 April 2016, fixing the quantities that the Criminal Law leaves undefined. For cannabis, 30 kilograms of leaf, 2 kilograms of resin or 1 kilogram of oil is a 'relatively large amount', where illegal possession becomes a crime, and 150 kilograms, 10 kilograms and 5 kilograms a 'large amount', the tier that for trafficking carries fifteen years, life or death. Growing becomes a crime at 5,000 plants. Below these lines possession, use and small plots are dealt with by the police as administrative offences.
๐จ๐ฟ Czechia Medical โ Article
The first Czech-grown medical cannabis reaches distribution
The State Institute for Drug Control took delivery of the first batch grown in Czechia under its public contract and released it into the pharmacy distribution network. The batch was Cannabis sativa with 19% THC and less than 1% CBD.
๐บ๐ธ United States Other law โ
The US Supreme Court refuses two states' suit against Colorado's legal cannabis
Nebraska and Oklahoma asked the Supreme Court, which hears disputes between states directly, to strike down Colorado's recreational marijuana law, saying cannabis bought legally in Colorado was flowing into their states and straining their police and courts. The Court denied them leave to file the complaint without giving reasons. Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Alito, dissented.
๐ฆ๐บ Australia Medical โ
Australia legalises medical cannabis
Parliament amended the Narcotic Drugs Act to allow cannabis to be grown and supplied for medical use. Access was slow at first but is now easy through telehealth clinics.
1922+3 points
๐บ๐ฌ Uganda Tightening โ Article
Uganda raises possession penalties and imposes life for cannabis trafficking
Uganda's new drug law made unauthorised cannabis possession punishable by ten to twenty-five years in prison, a substantial fine, or both, and trafficking by life imprisonment plus a fine. Its definition of trafficking included giving drugs away, while growing required the health minister's written consent and smoking carried one to five years, a fine, or both. The law replaced the 1993 statute's main narcotics rules and took effect in February 2016 after assent in 2015; the Constitutional Court annulled it in 2023 because parliament had lacked a quorum.
๐ท๐ธ Serbia Debate โ
Serbiaโs health committee backs three cannabinoid medicines
A Health Ministry committee supported dronabinol, nabilone and Sativex while opposing legal cannabis oil, Novosti reported in January. Ministry officials said medicine registration and arrangements for authorised prescribers were still being pursued. Patientsโ campaigners had asked for a wider medical route in 2015, and Goran ฤabradi introduced a cannabis bill the following year.
๐น๐ฒ Turkmenistan Other law โ
Turkmenistan puts controlled-drug allocations under cabinet rules
An amendment adopted on 12 January 2016 defined lawful distribution as enterprises and institutions receiving controlled drugs and precursors in allocated amounts under cabinet-approved procedures. President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow signed the change to the 2004 drug law, with commencement tied to official publication. A replacement law taking effect in 2018 kept enterprise permits and state quotas at the centre of controlled cultivation.
๐ฆ๐น Austria Easing โ Article
Austria sends users to the health authority, not court
Possession remains a crime, but for small amounts for personal use police now report the case to the health authority, and proceedings are dropped if the person cooperates.
2022+2 points
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom Culture & science โ Article
The UK becomes the largest producer of legal cannabis while denying its medical value
Figures from the International Narcotics Control Board, reported in March 2018, showed the United Kingdom producing 95 tonnes of legal cannabis in 2016, up from 42 tonnes in 2015, making it the world's largest producer and exporter. Much of it went into Sativex, a cannabis extract spray made by GW Pharmaceuticals. The government's position at the time was that cannabis had no therapeutic value; it allowed prescriptions later in 2018.
๐ฆ๐ช United Arab Emirates Easing โ
The UAE halves its minimum sentence
Federal Law 8 of 2016 cut the minimum sentence for drug use from four years to two. The 2021 decree-law, in force from 2 January 2022, reduced it again to three months for first offenders.
๐น๐ท Tรผrkiye Medical โ
Turkey allows cannabinoid medicines
Regulations permitted cannabinoid medicines such as Sativex on prescription, and allowed hemp growing in nineteen provinces.
๐ธ๐ฒ San Marino Medical โ
San Marino allows cannabis-based medicines
Following a citizens' initiative, patients can obtain medicines such as Sativex for approved conditions including multiple sclerosis and neuropathic pain, at no cost to residents.
1112+1 point
๐ฒ๐ฐ North Macedonia Medical โ
North Macedonia legalises medical cannabis
An amendment allowed cannabis products to be prescribed and licensed companies to grow for medical use and export.
1112+1 point
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Enforcement โ
Lithuanian prosecutors move against a cannabis gathering at parliament
The Prosecutor General's Office acted over a 20 April event that activists planned outside the Seimas, on the grounds that it might violate the public interest.
๐ฏ๐ฒ Jamaica Enforcement โ
Jamaica's courts see far fewer cannabis cases after decriminalisation
According to Harm Reduction International, court cases for possessing or smoking cannabis fell by more than 90 per cent after the reform of April 2015, and criminal cases referred to the courts in 2016 were 25 per cent fewer than in 2014. In 2016 the government nearly doubled its budget for the national HIV response, from 2.83 to 5.17 million US dollars.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Hemp โ Article
Italy's hemp law opens the door to 'cannabis light'
Law 242 of 2016, in force from 2017, let farmers sow certified hemp seed with less than 0.2% THC without authorisation and tolerated crops testing up to 0.6%. Shops began selling the flowers. In September 2018 the interior minister, Matteo Salvini, ordered zero tolerance towards them, and in May 2019 the Court of Cassation ruled the sale of buds, oils and resins illegal unless they have no narcotic effect.
๐ฌ๐น Guatemala Debate โ Article
Guatemalaโs congressional committee opposes adult cannabis regulation
Congressโs legislation and constitutional committee opposed a bill that would permit private adult cannabis use, five home plants and licensed sales, Prensa Libre reported in November 2016. The committee cited constitutional health duties and treaty obligations; sponsor รlvaro Velรกsquez criticised its legal approach and said he would keep seeking support. The billโs proposed permissions remained part of the political debate.
๐ฌ๐ฑ Greenland Debate โ
Greenland proposes a joint plan to curb hash supply and dependence
Greenlandโs health department proposed a national hash action plan combining action against supply with prevention and treatment. A later independent review says the full plan remained a proposal, while some activities proceeded through the public-health programme. In 2026 the government again emphasised prevention and customs controls.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Medical โ Article
Brazilian families win the right to grow cannabis for their children
Margarete Brito and Marcos Langenbach, whose daughter Sofia has a severe genetic epilepsy, obtained what Ribeiro calls the first habeas corpus in Brazil to grow marijuana, using high-CBD seedlings donated by growers. The same year the family of Clรกrian Carvalho, a girl with Dravet syndrome, won a similar order with the help of the Rede Reforma lawyers' collective. Both families went on to found patients' associations, Apepi and Cultive.
201536 entries12 score changes
๐จ๐ฑ Chile Medical โ
Chile allows cannabis medicines
A decree moved cannabis out of the list of banned substances so that medicines made from it can be produced and sold in pharmacies on prescription.
2526+1 point
๐ฒ๐ณ Mongolia Other law โ Article
Mongolia adopts a new Criminal Code
Mongolia adopts a replacement Criminal Code, subsequently scheduled to enter into force on 1 July 2017. Its drug provisions distinguish conduct without a selling purpose, sale-related conduct, providing premises and cultivation. The consolidated text also includes later amendments, notably the 2020 changes to Article 20.7.
๐น๐ฌ Togo Tightening โ Article
Togo raises personal-use prison terms from months to years
Togo raised the prison range for a small amount of cannabis held, bought or grown for personal consumption to one to three years, with a fine of 500,000โ3 million CFA francs or either penalty alone. The earlier law had specified one to six months for cannabis derivatives other than oil. The wider criminal-code rewrite also allowed judges to waive qualifying sentences and substitute treatment for a person with drug dependence.
๐ฒ๐ฝ Mexico Easing โ
Mexico's Supreme Court lets four people grow and use cannabis
In a case brought by four members of a civic group, the court held that banning adult personal use violates the right to free development of personality. The ruling applied only to them, but it started the run of cases that ended the ban.
๐ฌ๐ช Georgia Easing โ Article
Georgia's Constitutional Court rules out prison for 70 g
In a case brought by a man facing seven years for 69 g, the court held that imprisonment for possessing up to 70 g of dried cannabis for personal use is unconstitutionally harsh.
914+5 points
๐ฐ๐ฎ Kiribati Enforcement โ
Kiribati jails a sailor and confiscates his yacht in a cannabis case
Lyderic Morlier received nine months in prison and total fines of A$4,400 after admitting drug cultivation, prohibited import and immigration offences. The prison terms ran together, with credit for time already spent in custody. The court also confiscated his yacht, two engines, vessel-monitoring equipment and radios under the drug law.
๐ต๐ฑ Poland Medical โ
A Warsaw children's hospital dismisses the doctor treating epilepsy with cannabis
Neurologist Marek Bachaลski had been treating children with drug-resistant epilepsy with cannabis preparations at the Children's Memorial Health Institute. In July 2015 the hospital suspended the therapy, saying it had not been approved by its bioethics committee, and on 7 August it notified prosecutors; the health ministry called the treatment illegal. He was dismissed in late October. Parents had protested outside the hospital on 7 October demanding his return, and the case became the centre of the campaign for a medical cannabis law.
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Medical โ Article
Croatia legalises medical cannabis
A regulation in force from 15 October let doctors prescribe medicines containing THC for multiple sclerosis, cancer, epilepsy and AIDS: a specialist recommends, the family doctor writes the prescription, for at most 30 days and 0.75 g of THC. The health minister, Siniลกa Varga, promised products within weeks. A patients' association called it a hollow regulation made for the elections, and a wholesaler expected a month's therapy to cost up to 800 euros.
1920+1 point
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Medical โ
Bulgaria's drugs council declares there is no need for medical cannabis
In February the National Council on Narcotic Drugs had commissioned two expert reports, on the medical potential of cannabis and on how other European Union countries regulate it. After a change of members it declared at its October meeting that Bulgaria had no need for medical marijuana, and according to a reform group tried to keep the reports from being published.
๐น๐ฟ Tanzania Tightening โ Article
Tanzania sets at least thirty years for growing cannabis
Mainland Tanzania made unlawful cultivation and other prohibited-plant offences punishable by at least thirty years in prison and set life imprisonment for trafficking. Its separate small-personal-use tier allowed a fine of at least 500,000 shillings, a three-year prison term, or both for drugs outside a specially listed group, with personal purpose to be proved by the holder. The law replaced the 1995 Act and left the minister to define small quantities in regulations.
138โ5 points
๐ฎ๐ท Iran Debate โ
Iran's Expediency Council discusses growing cannabis under a state monopoly
An Iranian news agency reported a proposal to regulate the cultivation of the poppy and of cannabis through state monopolies; the council, which makes Iran's drug laws, had discussed it without approving it. The same month an international conference on addiction in Tehran held a panel on regulating and legalising cannabis, and Saeed Sefatian, who leads the council's working group on reducing demand, set out steps towards it in a lecture. Cannabis use had been rising since the 2000s, with plants grown on city balconies.
๐ฑ๐ป Latvia Debate โ
Latvia's parliament declines to decriminalise
A citizens' petition for decriminalisation gathered the 10,000 signatures needed to reach parliament. When a committee heard it in July 2015, experts, ministry officials and deputies were unanimously against, and parliament turned it down. The day after the committee's vote a second initiative, for medical marijuana, was started; two years later it had some 600 signatures, and the author of the first, Vladislavs Lukaperovs, had given up the cause.
๐ท๐บ Russia Enforcement โ Article
Russia blocks Wikipedia over an article about hashish
A court in Chyorny Yar, a village of about 8,000 people in the Astrakhan region, had ruled that summer that the Russian Wikipedia entry on charas, a form of cannabis resin, contained banned information. Because a site on the register is blocked as a whole, the media regulator's order cut off the entire Russian-language encyclopedia overnight. The entry was edited, the drug control service found it lawful, and the block was lifted the next day.
๐จ๐ด Colombia Easing โ Article
Colombia's Supreme Court protects growing up to 20 plants
The court ruled that growing up to 20 plants for personal use is not a crime, matching the long-protected personal dose of 20 g. No licence or registration is needed.
3038+8 points
๐จ๐ฑ Chile Debate โ
Chile's lower house votes for home growing
Deputies approved by 68 votes to 39 a bill to let each household grow up to six plants. It never completed its passage through Congress.
๐ช๐ธ Spain Tightening โ Article
Spain raises fines for public possession
A new public safety law, widely known as the gag law, set the fine for having or using drugs in public at โฌ601 to โฌ30,000, and removed the option of avoiding it by entering treatment.
3331โ2 points
๐ป๐ฌ British Virgin Islands Other law โ
BVI court fines a visitor $5,000 for possessing 15.2 grams of cannabis
A Road Town magistrate fined a visitor $5,000 for possessing 15.2 g of cannabis brought from the US Virgin Islands, with six months in prison if he failed to pay immediately. He admitted the offence after customs officers found two packets in his luggage at the West End ferry dock. The magistrate considered his cooperation, guilty plea and lack of previous convictions.
๐ง๐ช Belgium Medical โ
Belgium permits prescription Sativex
A royal decree created the narrow legal route for THC medicines. Sativex may be prescribed by an experienced specialist for multiple-sclerosis spasticity and dispensed by a pharmacy.
2425+1 point
๐จ๐ฑ Chile Easing โ
Chile's Supreme Court accepts growing for personal use
The court acquitted a woman convicted for the plants on her terrace, ruling that growing for one's own use harms nobody else and is not the offence the drug law is aimed at. Courts have treated it as a defence since.
2225+3 points
๐ต๐ท Puerto Rico Medical โ
Puerto Ricoโs governor orders a route to medical cannabis
Governor Alejandro Garcรญa Padilla directed the health secretary to follow the drug lawโs procedures, reclassify cannabis components as appropriate and authorise their medical use. The order argued that patientsโ health required distinguishing medical from nonmedical use and required a progress report within three months. Regulations and licensing followed before dispensaries began serving patients in December 2016.
๐ต๐ช Peru Debate โ
Peru joins the Global Marijuana March as the government rules out legalisation
Peruvians marched on 2 May as part of the Global Marijuana March, and groups such as Legaliza Perรบ campaigned for regulation. In November, after Mexico's Supreme Court ruled for recreational use, the head of the drug agency DEVIDA, Alberto Otรกlora, said Peru would neither legalise nor promote marijuana use.
๐ฒ๐น Malta Easing โ Article
Malta stops prosecuting small possession
The Drug Dependence Act turned possession of up to 3.5 g into a fine of โฌ50 to โฌ100 decided by a commissioner, not a criminal court. Growing a single plant no longer carried a mandatory prison term.
921+12 points
๐ฏ๐ฒ Jamaica Easing โ Article
Jamaica decriminalises ganja
Possessing up to 2 oz became a ticket with a small fixed penalty: no arrest and no criminal record. Each household may grow five plants, Rastafari may use ganja as a sacrament, and a licensed medical industry was set up.
1131+20 points
๐ฏ๐ฒ Jamaica Other law โ
Jamaica plants its first legal cannabis
Two months after parliament voted to reduce possession of up to two ounces to a petty offence, the first legal plant was put in the ground at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies. The reform also allowed growing up to five plants and use by Rastafari for religious purposes.
๐บ๐ธ United States ยท District of Columbia Legalisation โ Article
Washington, DC legalises possessing and giving away cannabis, but not selling it
Initiative 71, approved by voters in November 2014, took effect when the 30-day congressional review ended. Adults could possess and grow cannabis, and "transfer without payment (but not sell)" up to an ounce to another adult. A rider in the federal budget barred the District from legalising sales, so shops began selling T-shirts, stickers or art with cannabis as a free gift.
๐ฆ๐ซ Afghanistan International โ
Afghanistan joins the 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention
Afghanistan acceded to the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 19 February 2015. 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.
๐ท๐ธ Serbia Debate โ
Serbiaโs patients ask the health ministry to permit cannabis treatment
Lekalizacija Srbije submitted a request to bring cannabis into medical treatment, with documentation concerning several hundred patients and examples of regulation abroad. Milan Saviฤ, the associationโs vice-president and director of Belgradeโs Sveti Sava hospital, delivered it to the Health Ministry. The campaign sought a change in the law; a ministry committee later supported three cannabinoid medicines while rejecting cannabis oil.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Medical โ Article
Brazil moves cannabidiol from prohibition to special control
Anvisaโs RDC 3 of 26 January added cannabidiol to List C1 of substances under special control. The change distinguished CBD from the prohibited cannabis plant and opened a narrower regulatory route for the compound. It did not establish adult-use legalisation or permission to grow cannabis.
๐ง๐พ Belarus Tightening โ Article
Belarus toughens drug-supply penalties and lowers the prosecution age
Belarusโs drug crackdown took effect on 1 January 2015, allowing prosecution for drug supply from age fourteen. The tougher regime included twelve to twenty-five years where unlawful supply caused a personโs death through drug consumption. A later state-linked study traced the crackdown to a surge in synthetic-drug poisonings; families subsequently campaigned against long sentences.
83โ5 points
๐บ๐ฟ Uzbekistan Enforcement โ
Uzbekistan records 1,301 illegal cultivation cases in a year
Uzbekistan's report to the United Nations on 2015 counted 6,648 drug crimes, 1,301 of them illegal cultivation, and seizures of 1,025 kilograms of marijuana and 250 kilograms of hashish, both up on 2014. The yearly Operation Black Poppy accounted for 437 kilograms of the marijuana. A programme of measures for 2011 to 2015 was followed by one for 2016 to 2020.
๐ช๐ธ Spain Tightening โ
Spain's Supreme Court convicts cannabis club organisers
In three rulings, on the Ebers, Three Monkeys and Pannagh associations, the Supreme Court convicted club organisers, holding that what the clubs did was not genuine private or shared consumption. The rulings left the clubs tolerated but without legal protection.
๐ต๐ธ Palestine Tightening โ
Palestine issues its own drug law
Decree-Law 18 of 2015 bans importing, growing, holding, buying or selling plants that yield drugs, and their seeds, at any stage of growth. The minister may license growing for medical and scientific purposes.
๐ด๐ฒ Oman Death penalty โ Article
Oman widens the death penalty for drug dealing
Royal Decree 34/2015 amended ten articles of the narcotics law. Dealers now face death or life imprisonment with no minimum quantity, as does anyone linked to international trafficking gangs.
42โ2 points
๐ฒ๐ผ Malawi Debate โ
A Malawian MP campaigns for legal hemp
The independent member Boniface Kadzamira led a campaign in parliament to legalise industrial hemp and other uses of cannabis. Five years later parliament passed the law, and he became chairman of the board of the new regulator.
๐ฎ๐ณ India Hemp โ
An Indian state legalises hemp farming
Uttarakhand became the first state to allow cannabis to be grown for industrial purposes. Two years later the central government issued its first licence for research cultivation.
๐ช๐ท Eritrea Other law โ Article
Eritrea publishes a new code separating personal drug use from trafficking
Eritreaโs published 2015 Penal Code set out separate offences for personal possession and cultivation, with six to twelve months in prison or a fine in the personal-use provisions. Justice Minister Fawzia Hashim presented the code as the product of consultation with Eritrean and international legal specialists. Entry into force depended on gazette publication, and the government said in November 2024 that the earlier transitional code was still the working law.
201451 entries5 score changes
๐ง๐ฒ Bermuda Medical โ Article
Bermuda allows three cannabinoid medicines on prescription
Bermuda amended its medicines and drug laws to permit prescription use of Marinol, Cesamet and Sativex, and created clearer powers to change controlled-drug schedules on medical advice. Supporters presented it as a phased approach to reform, while opposition senator Diallo Rabain criticised the exclusion of a wider range of cannabis products. The later 2016 court case concerned the ministerโs power to consider personal medical import licences.
1112+1 point
๐ซ๐ด Faroe Islands Tightening โ Article
The Faroe Islands toughen sentencing for drug sales at youth events
Courts in the Faroe Islands must treat drug sales, or free transfers intended for later sale, at clubs, concerts, festivals and other youth events as a significant aggravating factor. The update also requires sentences and fines to reflect the harmfulness of the drug and allows controls over groups of substances. Faroese police and customs had sought an update because newer drugs were falling outside the islandsโ rules. The order took effect on 20 December 2014.
๐ป๐ฎ US Virgin Islands Easing โ Article
US Virgin Islands replace jail with a fine for an ounce of cannabis
The legislature overrode Governor John de Jonghโs veto and made possession of an ounce or less a civil offence carrying a $100 fine. Cannabis remained unlawful, and failure to pay within 180 days could lead to a separate misdemeanour punishable by up to three months in jail. A later court case considered how the reform affected police stops based on cannabis smell.
1116+5 points
๐ต๐พ Paraguay Debate โ
A Paraguayan bill proposes home growing
A legislator introduced a bill to decriminalise possession and use and allow up to 30 plants. In early 2015 Senator Blas Llano became the highest-ranking official to back legalisation. The bill did not become law.
๐จ๐ฒ Cameroon Other law โ
Cameroon creates an inter-ministerial committee against cannabis growing
The government created an Inter-ministerial Committee for the Fight against the Cultivation of Cannabis, attached to the Prime Minister's Office. The committee adopted an action plan for 2017.
๐ป๐ฎ US Virgin Islands Debate โ
US Virgin Islands voters back legislation for medical cannabis
Voters supported asking the legislature to consider licensing and regulating medical cannabis patients, caregivers, growers and distribution centres, with 56.5% in favour. The later medical-cannabis bill cited the referendum as a reason to protect patients and regulate supply. Governor Albert Bryan Jr. signed that programme into law in January 2019.
๐ต๐ฑ Poland Other law โ
Poland's Constitutional Tribunal upholds the ban on possession and growing
A man convicted of growing cannabis and possessing marijuana argued that the penalties violated his right to decide about his own life. The Tribunal held that articles 62(1) and 63(1) of the drug act are consistent with the constitution, as a justified limit on privacy for the sake of health and public order. It added that the legislator could choose otherwise, on the basis of research. The judge rapporteur said there was essentially no justification for banning possession and use on medical grounds, for instance in terminal illness, and the Tribunal decided to signal the matter to the legislator.
๐ฌ๐บ Guam Medical โ Article
Guam voters approve cannabis for patients with serious illnesses
Guam voters approved medical cannabis with 56.48% voting yes. The law protected qualifying patients and caregivers with medical certification and registration, and directed health officials to create rules for local production and distribution. Patients later gained a home-cultivation permit route in 2018 while dispensaries remained unavailable.
๐บ๐พ Uruguay Other law โ
Uruguay starts registering cannabis clubs
The regulator announced it would register membership clubs of 15 to 45 members growing up to 99 plants. A club must first be a civil association, keep all activity on its own premises and stand at least 150 metres from schools and rehabilitation centres.
๐ฑ๐ท Liberia Other law โ Article
Liberia makes personal possession a felony and offers users treatment
People holding Schedule I drugs for themselves faced a second-degree felony under the new law, replacing the public-health lawโs misdemeanor for unauthorised possession. Growing for personal use became a lower-grade felony than growing for trafficking. Use was a separate offence, and courts could order treatment, education or rehabilitation instead of conviction or punishment. The law took effect on publication on 21 October 2014.
๐ซ๐ท France Easing โ
France lets police settle cannabis use with a payment
Under the penal reform of the justice minister Christiane Taubira, voted in 2014, a 'transaction pรฉnale' for minor offences punishable by less than a year in prison, the use of cannabis among them, came into application on 15 October 2014. The interior minister Manuel Valls had said in April 2013 that he intended to make possession of a small quantity a fine- only matter, without giving an amount or a date.
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Medical โ
A Croatian with multiple sclerosis is charged over his cannabis garden
Police reported Huanito Luksetiฤ, from a village near Rijeka, for growing eleven cannabis plants and possessing 15 kilograms of marijuana. He said he had made oil from it to ease his illness because he could not afford to buy it. In November 2017 the Rijeka court sentenced him to two years in prison, finding the amount too large for personal use, and in January 2019 the Osijek County Court upheld the sentence. His lawyer called it a death sentence in effect.
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Debate โ
Only the Greens campaign for legal cannabis in Bulgaria's election
The Greens were the one party to support legalisation openly. The Central Election Commission fined them for a campaign video, and they won 0.6% of the vote. No party proposed medical cannabis; the nationalist Patriotic Front wanted a complete ban on possessing drugs.
๐ฒ๐ช Montenegro Debate โ Article
Montenegroโs Liberal Party proposes cannabis for patients in severe pain
Liberal Party MP Andrija Popoviฤ proposed allowing medical cannabis for pain associated with serious illnesses, Beta reported on 13 October. His party said the proposal was before parliament, and he cited medical use in western European countries. Campaigners returned to the issue in 2022, when a cannabis-reform petition drew more than 6,500 signatures.
๐ฌ๐ฒ Gambia Easing โ Article
Gambia gives first-time cannabis offenders a lower penalty scale
First-time cannabis possession gained a separate penalty scale: 0.1โ150 grams carried a 50,000โ100,000-dalasi fine, one to two years in prison, or both. The prison ranges rose to two to five years for 151โ500 grams and three to ten years from 501 grams, each with a fine alternative. Interior Minister Ousman Sonko argued that lighter penalties would reduce the imprisonment of young people unable to pay large fines and ease pressure on prisons.
79+2 points
๐บ๐พ Uruguay Other law โ
Uruguay opens its register of home growers
The regulator IRCCA began registering households growing up to six flowering plants, the first part of the 2013 law to operate. A year later 2,743 growers were registered.
๐จ๐ด Colombia Medical โ
A Colombian senator presents a medical cannabis bill
Juan Manuel Galรกn introduced draft law 27 of 2014 to regulate cannabis for therapeutic use. The Senate approved it in first debate that November. A health ministry decree of 12 November 2015 then regulated seeds, plants, production and trade for medical and scientific purposes, ahead of the law of 2016.
๐ท๐ผ Rwanda Enforcement โ
Rwanda reports 1,910 people jailed for smoking cannabis in 2011
Rwanda told the UN Human Rights Committee that 1,910 people had been incarcerated in 2011 for smoking cannabis. The government also reported 2,402 arrests connected with banned substances across 2011โ2012 and described prevention campaigns aimed at young people. Its report, received by the UN on 11 July 2014, cited a 2012 police report for the figures.
๐ฎ๐ช Ireland Medical โ
Ireland allows a cannabis-based medicine to be prescribed
The regulations under the Misuse of Drugs Act were amended so that nabiximols, sold as Sativex, could be prescribed. Cannabis itself had been listed since 1998 in Schedule 1, the class with no recognised medical use.
๐ฒ๐ช Montenegro Hemp โ Article
Montenegro sets permit rules for hemp farmers and their whole harvest
New permit rules covered food and industrial hemp containing no more than 0.2% THC in dry plant material. Farmers had to identify their land, variety, certified seed and planned sowing and harvest, supply a whole-crop purchase-contract number, and report hemp-growing land by 1 May each year. Agriculture Minister Petar Ivanoviฤ signed the rules under the earlier drug law, which required the whole harvest to reach the contracted buyer within four months.
๐ธ๐พ Syria Enforcement โ
Syria's courts report a jump in drug cases
A judicial source told a government newspaper that 620 drug cases had come before the courts in four months, 115 of them in Damascus, against fewer than 500 in the whole of 2013. He recalled that trafficking carries ten years to death under the 1993 law, that whoever plants cannabis is treated as a trader, and that the law regards addicts as the victims of dealers.
๐น๐ท Tรผrkiye Tightening โ
Turkey sets four to twelve years for growing cannabis, one to three for own use
Law 6545 rewrote the cultivation offence in Article 23 of the narcotics law. Sowing hemp in order to obtain cannabis is punished with four to twelve years in prison and a judicial fine of five hundred to ten thousand days. A new sentence treats separately the person who grows only the cannabis they need for their own use: one to three years in prison. Sowing is defined as the whole process from putting seed in the ground to the harvest.
๐ International Debate โ
The West Africa Commission on Drugs calls for decriminalising personal possession
The commission's report, Not Just in Transit, called on West African states to decriminalise possession for personal use, arguing that criminalising drug use worsens health and social problems, burdens the justice system and feeds corruption. At the time most laws in the region treated possession or use as a crime, with up to 25 years in Nigeria, 20 in Togo and at least five in Ghana.
๐ฆ๐ฑ Albania Tightening โ Article
Albanian police take the cannabis village of Lazarat
Lazarat had become known as Albania's cannabis capital. In June 2014 more than 800 police officers moved on the village; armed residents fired rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds at them, and smoke rose as plants were burned. The interior minister said the operation would go on until every square centimetre was under state control. The government says it ended production there. A year later a counter-terrorism officer was shot dead in the village.
๐น๐ฑ Timor-Leste International โ
Timor-Leste joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Timor-Leste acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 3 June 2014. 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.
๐บ๐พ Uruguay Other law โ
Uruguay publishes the rules for its cannabis law
The regulations set a weekly limit of 10 g in pharmacies and made the three routes exclusive: a person may register for the pharmacy, a club or home growing, but not more than one. Surplus harvests are to be handed to the regulator.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Other law โ
Italy's Court of Cassation allows resentencing after the drug-law ruling
After the Constitutional Court struck down the 2006 drug law, the Court of Cassation ruled at the end of May that people imprisoned under the annulled provisions had the right to be resentenced. Grazia Zuffa of Forum Droghe wrote that this could affect about 10,000 prisoners held for cannabis offences.
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Hemp โ
Croatia promises hemp farmers an end to burning their stalks
Under the drug abuse act hemp growers could keep only the seed, for oil, and had to destroy the rest of the plant, although its THC was below the European limit of 0.2%. After a Croatian member of the European Parliament obtained a reply from the Commission, the health ministry said it was preparing an amendment to allow hemp for building, textiles, paper and other industries. The change came into force in April 2019.
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Medical โ
A Bulgarian court fines a multiple sclerosis patient for two plants
Marin Kalchev, who has multiple sclerosis, was caught growing two cannabis plants. A town court acquitted him; the Lovech District Court overturned the acquittal and fined him 1,000 leva for possessing 59.1 grams. His lawyer said he would go to the European Court of Human Rights. The case led the national drugs council to hold its first public meeting on medical cannabis that October.
๐จ๐ฟ Czechia Tightening โ Article
The Czech Supreme Court lowers the threshold to 10 g
After the Constitutional Court struck down the government's table of amounts, the Supreme Court issued its own guidance for judges. For cannabis the line between an administrative offence and a crime dropped from 15 g to 10 g of dried flower. Five plants stayed the limit for growing.
๐ฎ๐ณ India Easing โ
India amends its narcotics law
The amendment removed the mandatory death sentence for repeat large-quantity trafficking, allowing thirty years in prison instead, and eased access to morphine and other opioids for pain relief. It raised the maximum for small-quantity offences from six months to one year.
๐ช๐จ Ecuador Easing โ
Ecuador replaces the penalties of Law 108
Parliament approved the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code, which took the place of the criminal part of the 1990 drug law. In July the drug council set tables dividing trafficking into minimum, medium, high and large scale, and after cases were reviewed 1,065 people were released from jail in November.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Easing โ Article
Italy's Constitutional Court strikes down the 2006 drug law
The court annulled the law that had put cannabis in the same class as heroin and cocaine. The earlier, milder rules came back, and thousands of sentences had to be reviewed.
1823+5 points
๐ท๐ด Romania Easing โ Article
Romania lowers the cannabis prison minimum and opens a treatment route
From 1 February 2014, personal possession, buying and growing of cannabis carried three months to two years in prison or a fine; the previous minimum was six months. People charged with personal-use offences could be assessed for an assistance programme and, with their agreement, enter it; following the programme could let a court waive or postpone punishment. The changes accompanied the new Penal Code.
911+2 points
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Debate โ
Bulgarian groups fight a draft code that would jail every user
The justice ministry had published a new penal code at the end of December, and the government approved it before the deadline for public comment had passed. It kept one to six years for possessing any quantity and dropped the fine for minor cases, so that even the smallest amount would mean prison; it said nothing of treatment, although the national drugs council had recommended it. Five organisations held a press conference against it, recalling that zero tolerance a decade earlier had clogged the courts.
๐ฐ๐ฟ Kazakhstan Debate โ
A Kazakh lawmaker proposes leasing the cannabis fields to drug companies
Dariga Nazarbayeva, a member of parliament and the president's eldest daughter, told the chamber that the country should review its attitude to cannabis and lease some of its 140,000 hectares of wild plants to international pharmaceutical companies. Nothing came of it; industrial hemp was allowed only in 2025.
๐ฌ๐น Guatemala Debate โ
Guatemala inaugurates a commission on drug policy reform
President Otto Pรฉrez Molina's government, which had announced a National Commission for Drug Policy Reform in October 2013, inaugurated it in January 2014. In April the president said the government was studying the legalisation of cannabis and of poppy growing. In 2013 the country's prisons held 16,336 people, at more than two and a half times their capacity, half of them awaiting trial.
๐ฐ๐ฌ Kyrgyzstan Debate โ Article
Kyrgyzstanโs addiction doctor proposes a legal cannabis pilot
Addiction specialist Jenishbek Nazaraliev proposed legalising cannabis for medical and recreational use, beginning with a pilot around Lake Issyk-Kul. He argued that regulation could reduce corruption, improve control of growers and sellers and bring tax revenue. The state drug-control service opposed the idea, arguing that legalisation would leave international trafficking networks in place.
๐บ๐ธ United States ยท Colorado Other law โ
The first licensed cannabis shops open in Colorado
Thirteen months after the vote, Colorado's first stores for adults opened. Sales exceeded 996 million dollars in 2015 and brought in 135 million in taxes. By April 2017, 176 of the state's 272 municipalities had chosen to prohibit retail cannabis.
๐บ๐ธ United States Medical โ
Congress bars federal interference with state medical cannabis
The RohrabacherโFarr amendment stopped the Justice Department from spending money to block state medical cannabis laws. The same year Alaska, Oregon and Washington DC voted to legalise.
๐บ๐ธ United States ยท Alabama Enforcement โ
An Alabama veteran gets life without parole for a marijuana garden
Police looking for stolen property in 2011 found a few dozen marijuana plants at the house Lee Carroll Brooker, a disabled veteran with chronic pain, shared with his son in Alabama. Weighed with stalks and leaves, the plants came to about 2.8 pounds, over the 2.2-pound trafficking threshold. Because of prior felonies, including armed robberies decades earlier, the Habitual Felony Offender Act left the judge no choice but life without parole. Chief Justice Roy Moore upheld it while calling the sentence "excessive and unjustified", and the US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.
๐ณ๏ธ Transnistria Other law โ Article
Transnistria puts small drug offences in its new administrative code
Transnistriaโs replacement administrative code provided fines or up to thirty daysโ administrative arrest for drug possession falling below the criminal offence. Use without a prescription carried a separate fine or up to fifteen daysโ arrest, while cultivation below the criminal threshold could bring a warning or fine. The code replaced the 2002 administrative rules and required courts to distinguish these cases from criminal drug offences.
๐ต๐ญ Philippines Debate โ
The first Philippine medical cannabis bill
House Bill 4477, the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Act, was introduced and died with the 16th Congress. It was refiled in 2016.
๐ณ๐ฌ Nigeria Enforcement โ
Nigeria's drug agency reports 205 tonnes of cannabis seized in a year
The annual report of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency for 2014 recorded 3,271 suspected drug traffickers arrested, 3,062 men and 209 women, and 205,373 kilograms of cannabis seized. In 2011 the agency had begun night patrols on the main roads of Osun State to intercept the trucks used to carry cannabis.
๐ฒ๐น Malta Culture & science โ
Cannabis plants appear on Malta's roundabouts
Saplings were found growing in roundabouts in Gozo and ลปebbuฤก, read as a protest against a government that had promised decriminalisation before the election and not yet delivered it. The reform came in April 2015.
๐ฏ๐ฒ Jamaica Debate โ
A death in custody over a joint pushes Jamaica towards reform
The push to change Jamaica's cannabis laws gained momentum in 2014 after a young man died in custody following his arrest for possessing a joint. That year 15,000 people were arrested for cannabis possession, a quarter of all court cases concerned cannabis, and arrests and prosecutions were estimated to cost 64 million US dollars a year. The Ganja Law Reform Coalition, growers' associations, Rastafari and Maroon communities backed reform, which followed in 2015.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Medical โ Article
Italy gives its army the job of growing medical cannabis
The state's medical cannabis is grown by the army's chemical and pharmaceutical plant on the edge of Florence, which also makes antidotes and orphan drugs; the operation was launched in 2014 and is overseen by the Defence Industries Agency. Its two registered varieties are called FM1 and FM2, for Farmaceutico Militare. Output was 50 kg in 2020 and 300 kg in 2022, against a national need of about 1,500 kg a year; the rest is imported from the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark and Germany.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Other law โ
Indonesian agencies sign a joint regulation on rehabilitating drug users
The head of the Supreme Court, the ministers of justice, health and social affairs, the attorney general and the heads of the police and the National Narcotics Board signed a joint regulation on sending drug users, including suspects and convicts, to rehabilitation. Like the Supreme Court circular before it, which treats a person with no more than 5 g of cannabis as a user, it works inside the framework of punishment; the Transnational Institute describes both as de-penalisation, with a judge's decision resting on an assessment team whose advice police investigators often ignore.
๐ธ๐ป El Salvador Debate โ
Salvadorans march for decriminalisation
More than 700 people protested in San Salvador in favour of decriminalising consumption and personal cultivation. A survey that year found only 8% of Salvadorans supported legalisation.
๐จ๐ฑ Chile Medical โ
Chile plants its first authorised cannabis
Growers with government permission began planting cannabis at a site in Santiago to produce oil for cancer patients.
201341 entries10 score changes
๐บ๐พ Uruguay Legalisation โ Article
Uruguay becomes the first country to legalise
President Mujica signed Law 19.172, passed by the Senate on 10 December by 16 votes to 13, which put the whole chain under state control. Registered residents choose one of three routes: growing six plants at home, joining a club, or buying up to 40 g a month in pharmacies. Possession for personal use had not been a crime since 1974.
3249+17 points
๐บ๐พ Uruguay International โ
The UN drug control board says Uruguay broke the treaty
The day after the Senate vote, the International Narcotics Control Board said the law contravened the 1961 Single Convention. Its president, Raymond Yans, said it would encourage early experimentation. President Mujica answered that he should stop lying, and Uruguay argued that its human rights obligations take precedence over drug control.
๐ฒ๐น Malta Enforcement โ
Malta's appeal court upholds the Holmes sentence
A week after protesters marched for his release, the Court of Criminal Appeal confirmed Daniel Holmes's prison term of about ten years. The judges found the punishment within the law, since the maximum was life imprisonment, and saw the 32 plants and equipment found in Gozo as a production line rather than personal use. He was released in September 2018 after about eight years in custody.
๐ธ๐ช Sweden Culture & science โ Article
Fibre analysis identifies hemp in fine Scandinavian medieval textiles
Skoglund, Nockert and Holst identify hemp in four of ten Scandinavian textile samples previously described as flax, including two รverhogdal pieces, the Marby hanging and Norwayโs Lomen coverlet. Three contain hemp mixed with flax. The study supports the use of hemp in fine textiles as well as coarse cordage; 2013 is the research publication date, while the objects are dated to the Viking and medieval periods.
๐ท๐ด Romania Debate โ Article
Romanian agencies deny reports of a new medical cannabis legalisation
After reports that Romania had legalised medical cannabis, a contemporary account quoted the national drug agency saying there had been no legislative change and no cannabis medicine had been approved for the Romanian market. The medicines agency said Sativex could seek authorisation, but its manufacturer had not approached it. Existing law already restricted medical use to prescribed pharmaceutical preparations.
๐จ๐ญ Switzerland Easing โ Article
Switzerland introduces a CHF 100 fine
Under an amendment passed in 2012, adults caught using cannabis with up to 10 g on them pay a fixed CHF 100 fine instead of entering ordinary criminal proceedings. The amendment also defined 10 g as a minor quantity; courts later clarified that possession alone within the limit is not punishable.
1623+7 points
๐บ๐ธ United States Easing โ Article
The Cole memo sets priorities for federal cannabis enforcement
The Justice Department directed federal prosecutors to focus on eight cannabis enforcement priorities and expected states to operate effective regulatory systems. It deferred challenges to the Colorado and Washington laws, while preserving federal prosecution authority. The memorandum created no legal defence or enforceable right and did not amend federal law.
๐ต๐ช Peru Tightening โ
Peru bars early release for drug offences
Law 30076 excluded people convicted of drug offences, except small-scale dealing, from sentence reductions, semi-liberty and conditional release. In October 2014 the prisons held 71,596 people in space for 31,734, about a quarter of them for drug offences, and six in ten women prisoners were held for drugs. Two-thirds of anti-drug police operations targeted users, most often for cannabis.
๐จ๐ท Costa Rica Easing โ
Costa Rica writes proportionality and gender into drug sentencing
Law 9161 amended Article 77 of the drug law so that sentences take proportionality and the situation of women into account; in March 2012 some 120 women were in prison for bringing drugs into jails. The same month President Laura Chinchilla pardoned seven women imprisoned for trafficking.
๐บ๐ธ United States Medical โ
A television documentary makes a child's epilepsy the face of medical cannabis
CNN broadcast Weed, presented by Sanjay Gupta, which featured Charlotte Figi, a five-year- old with Dravet syndrome whose parents and doctors said her seizures fell sharply after she was given medical marijuana from a strain high in CBD that does not produce a high. The strain, bred by the Stanley brothers, was named Charlotte's Web after her, and she was described as the girl changing medical marijuana laws across America.
๐ท๐ธ Serbia Hemp โ Article
Serbia sets annual hemp permits and a THC limit below 0.3%
Hemp growers had to use registered varieties containing less than 0.3% THC and apply for a permit before sowing, by 30 April each year. Agriculture Minister Goran Kneลพeviฤโs rules required seed and land documents, checks for drug convictions and a permit valid for one production year. They put the 2010 lawโs licensed fibre-and-seed crop rules into practice.
๐บ๐พ Uruguay Debate โ
Uruguay's lower house passes the cannabis bill with no vote to spare
The Chamber of Deputies approved the regulation bill with 50 votes, the minimum it needed. Every deputy of the governing Broad Front voted for it and every other deputy against. The Senate followed on 10 December by 16 votes to 13.
๐ป๐บ Vanuatu Easing โ Article
Vanuatuโs appeal court separates personal growing from commercial crops
Vanuatuโs appeal court divided cannabis cultivation into three sentencing categories: small personal grows generally called for fines or other community measures, small commercial grows for a prison starting point of two to four years, and large commercial operations for four years or more. The judges cited increasing commercial cultivation and said plant numbers, sizes and growing methods all mattered. Wetulโs own immediate two-year-four-month term was replaced with seven months suspended for two years, alongside supervision and community work.
๐จ๐ฟ Czechia Other law โ Article
The Czech Constitutional Court strikes down the threshold table
The court ruled that what counts as a crime must be defined by law or by the courts, not by a government regulation, and annulled the 2010 table of amounts. The 2010 penalties themselves stayed in place.
๐บ๐ธ United States ยท Vermont Easing โ Article
Vermont replaces criminal penalties for small adult possession with civil fines
Act 76 made possession by people aged 21 or older of up to one ounce of marijuana or five grams of hashish a civil violation, with maximum fines of $200, $300 and $500 for successive offences and no criminal-history record. Cultivation remained criminal; the act did not legalise recreational supply.
๐ญ๐บ Hungary Tightening โ
Hungary's new criminal code makes consumption a crime again
Consumption itself became punishable with up to two years in prison, and diversion into treatment was limited to once every two years.
1210โ2 points
๐ฎ๐น Italy Medical โ
Italy's Constitutional Court limits what regions can do on cannabinoid medicines
The court struck down the parts of Liguria's law on cannabinoid medicines that dealt with prescribing and production agreements, because those are matters for national medicines rules. It upheld Veneto's plan for pilot production projects, since they still needed national authorisation. Regions could organise access to these medicines, but only within national law.
๐ช๐จ Ecuador Easing โ Article
Ecuador sets personal-use thresholds
The drug-control council published a table of amounts presumed to be for personal use, 10 g for cannabis, to give effect to the 2008 constitution's rule that users must not be criminalised.
1722+5 points
๐ธ๐พ Syria Tightening โ
Kurdish forces raid cannabis growers in northern Syria
With the war in its third year, the Kurdish enclaves along the Turkish border, poor and without work, had become centres of cannabis farming; people in Kobane had begun planting in 2012. The security forces of the Democratic Union Party carried out many operations against the crop. On 23 June a raid at Tal Ghazal, near Kobane, left three civilians dead, and on 27 June the Asayish seized 200 kilograms of hashish in a village in Afrin. Rival Kurdish parties said drug charges were being used against their activists.
๐ซ๐ท France Medical โ Article
France allows cannabis-based medicines to be authorised
Decree 2013-473, signed on 5 June and published on 7 June, took effect the next day. It exempted specified operations involving cannabis-containing pharmaceutical specialties with a French or EU marketing authorisation. It opened an authorisation route rather than legalising all therapeutic cannabis or proving products were available.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Culture & science โ
The Indica Sativa Trade fair opens in Fermo
The first Indica Sativa Trade fair ran in Fermo, in the Marche, on 7โ9 June. Parrella describes stands and talks on hemp food, textiles and building materials, growing equipment and medical use, including Fabrizio Dentini's Canapa Medica. It put the hemp business and the reform debate in front of the public.
๐ฏ๐ด Jordan Easing โ Article
Jordan sends first-time drug users to treatment without prosecution
People caught using drugs for the first time were to be sent for treatment within twenty-four hours, without prosecution or a judicial precedent. Interior Minister Awad Khleifat argued that treatment would protect people drawn into drug use; the Senate approved the change despite its legal committeeโs opposition. The rule took effect in May 2013 and was replaced by a court-directed treatment option in 2016.
48+4 points
๐ธ๐ป El Salvador Debate โ
Salvadoran legislators from several parties call for a debate on legalisation
A cross-party group of members of parliament announced that it would open a debate on legalising drugs. The archbishop had asked for a discussion of decriminalisation the year before. President Funes opposed legalisation as morally wrong, and El Salvador had not backed the Guatemalan president's proposal. Some 3,000 people were detained on drug charges in 2012, in prisons at two and a half times their capacity.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Medical โ
Italy approves Sativex for multiple sclerosis spasticity
The medicines agency AIFA authorised the mouth spray Sativex for adults with moderate to severe muscle stiffness from multiple sclerosis that other drugs had not controlled, if they improved during a trial period. Only hospital centres or neurologists could prescribe it, with a new prescription each time. The approval took effect on 1 May 2013.
๐ฑ๐ฆ Laos Tightening โ Article
Laos adds hashish and THC penalties reaching life imprisonment
Laos added separate penalties for THC, hashish and their derivatives: two to four years in prison for more than 0.3 grams and up to 50 grams, rising to life above 500 grams, with fines. The amendment took effect 90 days after its January promulgation, in April 2013. It revised the earlier cannabis rules, which had specified dried-cannabis trading penalties and treatment for people addicted to smoking it.
๐บ๐ธ United States Debate โ
Pew reports majority support for cannabis legalisation
Pewโs March 2013 survey of 1,501 adults found 52% supported legalising marijuana and 45% opposed. Its published report distinguished policy opinions from self-reported use and other questions. A public-opinion result did not change federal law.
๐จ๐ฟ Czechia Medical โ Article
Czechia legalises medical cannabis
Cannabis became available on prescription from pharmacies. Supply was scarce and expensive for years; insurance cover came later.
2829+1 point
๐ฎ๐น Italy Medical โ
Italy legalises medical cannabis
A health ministry decree allowed doctors to prescribe cannabis, dispensed by pharmacies. Since 2016 part of the supply has been grown by the army's pharmaceutical plant in Florence.
1718+1 point
๐ฎ๐น Italy Debate โ
Patients with multiple sclerosis found a cannabis club in Puglia
Lucia Spiri and Andrea Trisciuoglio, both living with multiple sclerosis, founded LaPianTiamo in Racale, Puglia, as a cannabis social club for patients. They wanted to grow cannabis together and get a steadier supply than the slow import procedure gave them. Growing together was not allowed by law, so the club was also a campaign to change it.
๐ง๐ด Bolivia International โ
Bolivia joins the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
Bolivia acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 11 January 2013. 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.
๐ธ๐ฌ Singapore Death penalty โ
Singapore narrows the mandatory death penalty
Courts gained discretion to impose life imprisonment instead of death on a qualifying drug courier who substantially assists the authorities or whose mental responsibility was substantially impaired. The substantial-assistance route also requires at least 15 strokes of the cane; the impaired-responsibility route does not.
๐ฝ๐ฐ Kosovo Other law โ Article
Kosovo sets a lower penalty for first-time users with under three grams
First-time offenders possessing less than three grams of cannabis for personal use faced a fine or up to one year in prison under Kosovoโs replacement criminal code. Ordinary unauthorised possession carried both a fine and one to three years, while growing cannabis to produce drugs carried one to ten years. The special small-possession tier survived in the 2019 code.
๐ญ๐ท Croatia Easing โ
Croatia makes personal possession a misdemeanour
A new criminal code took possession of a small amount for personal use out of criminal law. It is punished with a fine, though a large one. Growing even a few plants is still a crime.
1119+8 points
๐ธ๐ฎ Slovenia Medical โ
Slovenia reclassifies cannabinoids for medical use
Cannabinoids were moved to the group of drugs that may be used in medicine, which allowed doctors to prescribe cannabinoid medicines.
2122+1 point
๐ต๐ฐ Pakistan Culture & science โ
A survey counts 6.4 million cannabis users in Pakistan
A report estimated that 6.4 million people in Pakistan use cannabis. An official account of the 1980s had described its use as long established, rising among middle-class youth in the late 1960s and falling out of fashion in that class in the 1980s.
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania Hemp โ
Lithuania lifts its ban on growing hemp
Lithuania had been the only EU country to prohibit industrial hemp. Products with a little THC were allowed from 2021.
๐ฌ๐ท Greece Easing โ
Greece makes personal use a minor offence
Law 4139 cut the penalty for having or growing a quantity that indicates personal use to at most five months in prison, normally suspended, and kept the conviction off the ordinary criminal record.
1113+2 points
๐ง๐ณ Brunei Tightening โ
Brunei moves cannabis to Class A
An amended Misuse of Drugs Act put cannabis in the most serious class, alongside the introduction of a sharia penal code.
201235 entries5 score changes
๐ฌ๐ฎ Gibraltar Other law โ Article
Gibraltar drops a supply presumption and raises the possession prison limit
Gibraltarโs replacement criminal code omitted the old presumption that 20 grams of cannabis or resin was held for supply, while keeping possession and supply as separate crimes. The lower-court prison maximum for Class B possession rose from six months to twelve months, with a fine available; the maximum on indictment remained five years. The code also required courts to treat adult drug supply near schools at relevant times, or using couriers under eighteen, as more serious.
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland Medical โ
Finland authorises Sativex
Finland granted marketing authorisation to Sativex, a cannabis-extract mouth spray containing THC and CBD. Neurologists may prescribe it for adults with moderate to severe spasticity caused by multiple sclerosis when other treatment has not worked.
๐ธ๐ป El Salvador Easing โ
El Salvador's top court exempts own-use possession
The Constitutional Chamber held that possession for one's own use is outside criminal punishment, and that Article 34's under-2 g and 2 g-or-more bands must be read that way. Weight is one factor, not a rule by itself. Prison remains when the drugs were meant for trafficking, cultivation, processing or promoting use, and holding less than 2 g is still a crime when that purpose is proved.
๐ญ๐ณ Honduras Debate โ
A Honduran commission drafts a replacement for the 1989 drug law
The draft handed to President Porfirio Lobo included a provision for shooting down aircraft carrying drugs. Under the 1989 law a first offence of possession for use brings up to thirty days in a rehabilitation centre and a fine of 500 to 1,000 lempiras, a second thirty to ninety days, and a third internment until the person is judged reintegrated; no state centre exists, so the rule is not applied. The law sets no quantity: the judge decides what is personal use.
๐บ๐ธ United States Legalisation โ Article
Colorado and Washington become the first US states to legalise
Voters in both states approved possession by adults and a licensed market, the first anywhere in the world. Shops opened in 2014, and the federal government chose not to block them.
1624+8 points
๐ธ๐น Sรฃo Tomรฉ and Prรญncipe Other law โ Article
Sรฃo Tomรฉ and Prรญncipe cuts user penalties and raises trafficking terms
A new Penal Code took effect on 6 November 2012, allowing up to three months in prison or a fine for consuming cannabis and for acquiring, holding or growing a personal quantity within a three-day threshold. An occasional consumer within that limit could be excused from punishment, but ordinary trafficking now carried two to twelve years, compared with the former two-to-eight-year range. A separate drug law signed in the same year created overlapping rules.
79+2 points
๐ฎ๐น Italy Hemp โ Article
Italy's top court rules that selling cannabis seeds is not a crime
The united sections of the Court of Cassation held that merely offering seeds for sale is an unpunishable preparatory act, because what the buyer will do with them cannot be known. Selling them with detailed growing instructions is not the drug-law offence of inducement either, but may be prosecuted as incitement under the criminal code.
๐ธ๐น Sรฃo Tomรฉ and Prรญncipe Other law โ
Sรฃo Tomรฉ and Prรญncipe signs a drug law alongside its new Penal Code
A separate law covering drug trafficking, consumption and possession was promulgated on 2 October 2012, almost a year after parliament approved it. In the meantime, parliament had passed a new Penal Code covering many of the same offences with partly different rules. A later judicial training manual argued that criminal penalties should follow the code, while the separate law continued to govern matters such as special procedures.
๐ณ๏ธ Transnistria Easing โ Article
Transnistria limits the growing crime and adds alternatives to prison
Cannabis cultivation became a crime only at a legally defined large scale, replacing a rule that could criminalise growing again within a year of an administrative penalty. For large personal possession, courts gained fines, compulsory work and corrective labour as alternatives to the existing three-year prison maximum. Ordinary drug supply also fell from seven to fifteen years to four to eight. The amendment was signed on 8 October but expressly took effect from 1 October 2012.
813+5 points
๐ท๐บ Russia Other law โ
Russia sets three tiers of quantity for drug crimes
Government Resolution 1002 fixed "significant", "large" and "especially large" amounts for the drug articles of the criminal code. For marijuana they are more than 6 g, 100 g and 100 kg; for hashish more than 2 g, 25 g and 10 kg. The cannabis plant is counted like marijuana.
๐ฑ๐ง Lebanon Enforcement โ
Bekaa clans fight the army to save their cannabis fields
Three Shia clans of the Bekaa, the Jaafar, Shammas and Sharif, fought gun battles with soldiers and police to stop the annual destruction of their fields, and residents of Yammouneh blocked the road with burning tyres. The interior minister visited the village and promised compensation.
๐ณ๏ธ Abkhazia Tightening โ
Abkhazia sets one to three years for personal drug possession
The drug-possession offence introduced by Abkhaziaโs August 2012 amendment prescribed one to three years in prison for acquiring, holding or transporting drugs without intent to supply. Larger quantities carried higher prison terms and fines; exemption required voluntary surrender and active help against drug offences. The Supreme Court later confirmed that the ordinary offence applied regardless of quantity below the larger tiers.
85โ3 points
๐ง๐พ Belarus Other law โ
Belarus keeps drug-plant growing prohibited in its new narcotics law
Belarusโs new narcotics law, signed in July 2012, prohibited sowing or growing plants and fungi containing controlled drugs, subject to exceptions in legislation. Cannabis growers remained subject to the criminal codeโs separate cultivation offence. An environmental rule later listed Cannabis sativa among plants barred from introduction and establishment.
๐ณ๐ท Nauru International โ
Nauru joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
Nauru acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 12 July 2012. 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.
๐บ๐พ Uruguay Debate โ
Mujica's government proposes state-run cannabis sales
In a fifteen-point security plan called the Strategy for Life and Coexistence, the government proposed legalising and controlling the sale of cannabis, with the state producing it. The bill sent to parliament in August had a single article, a poll found 66% opposed, and the president put it on hold for a period of debate.
๐ฆ๐ท Argentina Debate โ
Argentina's Congress hears eight bills to decriminalise possession
The Chamber of Deputies held two days of hearings on drug law reform. Eight bills were before Congress: most would have decriminalised possession for personal use, some also growing for personal use, and one would have allowed THC for therapy and science. A study had found about a third of federal prisoners held for drug offences.
๐ท๐ผ Rwanda Other law โ Article
Rwanda sets prison plus a fine for illicit drug use
Rwandaโs replacement criminal code specified one to three years in prison and a fine of 50,000 to 500,000 francs for illicit drug use from 14 June 2012. The 1977 code had allowed a fine alone, with a wider prison range of three months to five years. Making, transforming, importing or selling drugs unlawfully carried three to five years and a fine, with doubled penalties for international acts.
๐ซ๐ฏ Fiji Easing โ Article
Fijiโs appeal court favours sentences outside prison for up to 100 g
The Court of Appeal directed judges towards fines, community service, counselling or a discharge with a warning for possession of up to 100 g of cannabis, reserving suspended or short prison terms for the worst cases. Its four weight bands rose to seven to fourteen years for 4 kg or more under a law whose maximum was life imprisonment. Applying the same weight-based approach to growing later produced conflicting sentences, prompting new cultivation guidelines in 2023.
๐ฎ๐น Italy Medical โ
Tuscany organises cannabinoid medicines in its health service
Tuscany passed a regional law so that its health service could provide cannabinoid medicines, supplied through hospital pharmacies. Imports still followed national rules and were allowed only when other medicines had failed or were inadequate. A year later the Constitutional Court struck down parts of a similar Ligurian law for going beyond what a region may decide.
๐ธ๐ฐ Slovakia Debate โ
Slovakia's incoming prime minister proposes legal possession
Robert Fico proposed allowing possession of up to three doses of cannabis for personal use. Nothing came of it, and a 2018 proposal to make small amounts a misdemeanour was blocked by a coalition partner.
๐ช๐ธ Spain Debate โ Article
A Spanish village votes on growing cannabis to pay its debt
Rasquera, a Catalan village of 960 people, held a referendum on leasing land to ABCDA, a Barcelona cannabis association with 5,000 members, which would grow for its members and pay the village 1.3 million euros, about what it owed. The plan was said to bring about 40 jobs, and it needed 75 per cent approval to go ahead. It won 56.3 per cent, so it missed that threshold. The national drug office said growing on that scale would break the law and pledged to block it. In May 2013 a court in Tarragona revoked the agreements, holding that a town's financial trouble does not make such contracts a matter of public interest.
๐ท๐ผ Rwanda Other law โ
Rwanda sets authorisation rules for medical and research drugs
Rwanda required authorisation for producing, distributing and using controlled drugs for medical or research purposes, with record keeping and controls on cross-border trade. The law took effect on 9 April 2012 and directed the health minister to set security and authorisation rules. That power later supported the cannabis licensing order issued in 2021.
๐น๐ป Tuvalu Other law โ
Tuvalu reports youth cannabis use and calls for updated drug laws
Tuvaluโs report to the UN child-rights committee cited a 2006 Funafuti survey in which 5% of respondents aged 15โ24 reported having used marijuana. It also reported marijuana imports from Fiji and concerns about border controls, while describing youth programmes addressing alcohol and drugs. Updating drug laws and coordinating prevention work were among its stated priorities.
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria Tightening โ
A Bulgarian court gives eight months for half a gram
A young man was sentenced to eight months in prison and a fine of 10,000 leva for possessing 0.54 grams of cannabis, worth 3.54 leva. The sentence came from the new specialised court set up for organised crime. An activist, Radoslav Stoyanov, took a joint out of his pocket during a session of parliament and waved it at deputies and ministers, asking them to speak up against the sentence.
๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands Tightening โ Article
The Netherlands restricts coffeeshops to residents
Private-club and residence criteria were enforced in Limburg, North Brabant and Zeeland from May 2012. Access depended on residence in the Netherlands, rather than nationality. In November the government dropped the club requirement while retaining the residence criterion, with local discretion over enforcement.
๐ฑ๐ป Latvia Debate โ
Latvians begin collecting signatures for decriminalisation
An initiative on the citizens' platform ManaBalss.lv asked that adults be allowed to grow two or three plants, keep 20 to 30 grams at home and carry up to 5 grams in public. On 24 March 2015 it passed the 10,000 signatures needed to go to parliament, which rejected it that September.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Enforcement โ
Nearly 38,000 people are imprisoned in Indonesia for using cannabis in four years
Between 2009 and 2012, 37,923 people were imprisoned for using cannabis, according to figures cited by the Transnational Institute, even though the 2009 narcotics law and a Supreme Court circular were meant to send users to rehabilitation.
๐ฌ๐น Guatemala Debate โ
Guatemala's president calls for decriminalisation
President Otto Pรฉrez Molina announced his support for decriminalising drugs. A poll at the time found 41% of Guatemalans in favour; no law followed.
๐ฌ๐ญ Ghana Tightening โ
Ghana sets fifteen years to life for drug trafficking
The Criminal Offences (Amendment) Act, Act 849, classed drug trafficking as a narcotic crime carrying between fifteen years and life imprisonment. It did not distinguish the type, category or quantity of the drug.
๐จ๐ด Colombia Easing โ
Colombia confirms that 20 grams is not a crime
The government formally decriminalised possession of up to 20 grams.
๐ง๐ฟ Belize Debate โ
Belize says it is considering decriminalisation
The government announced that it was considering decriminalising possession of small amounts of cannabis.
๐ฆ๐น Austria Medical โ
Austria opens a narrow prescription-cannabinoid route
Sativex became available in Austria for multiple-sclerosis spasticity. Patients can also receive a small range of other cannabinoid medicines, including pharmacy-compounded dronabinol, while cannabis flower remains unavailable on prescription.
1920+1 point
๐ฆ๐ฑ Albania Tightening โ
Albania seizes 21 tonnes of cannabis in a year
The 21.2 tonnes seized were nearly twice the amount of 2011. In 2013 the state police tried to stop production in the village of Lazarat and met armed resistance from residents. Italian financial police have estimated the country's output at about 900 tonnes, worth some 4.5 billion euros.
201121 entries3 score changes
๐ฒ๐ป Maldives Easing โ
The Maldives' Drugs Act creates a drug court
Act 17/2011 moved away from a purely punitive approach to small-scale offences. It separates use, peddling and trafficking, and lets users enter treatment and rehabilitation through a specialist Drug Court, which began work in June 2012.
๐ธ๐ช Sweden Medical โ
Sweden approves a cannabis-based medicine
Sativex was approved for spasticity in multiple sclerosis. Other cannabis medicines require an individual licence; Epidyolex was subsequently authorised across the EU.
1011+1 point
๐ต๐ฑ Poland Easing โ Article
Poland lets prosecutors drop small cases
An amendment passed on 1 April 2011 added article 62a: a prosecutor may discontinue a case, even before opening an investigation, when the amount is small, it was for the person's own use and punishment would serve no purpose. The same act raised the maximum for possessing a large quantity to ten years. The new article is discretionary and was used sparingly: in 2012 it ended 2,307 cases, and prosecutors applied it in 11.6% of those they handled.
911+2 points
๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands Culture & science โ Article
Ruigoord hosts the Highlife Cup
The Highlife cannabis competition took place at the artists' village of Ruigoord, with awards and exhibitors around its former church. The organiser's contemporary report identified this as the third edition held there. Highlife was a separate competition from the High Times Cannabis Cup, documenting another connection between cannabis gatherings and the European freetown movement.
๐ International Debate โ Article
The Global Commission urges experiments with legal cannabis regulation
The Global Commission on Drug Policy proposed ending criminalisation of people who use drugs without harming others and encouraged experiments with legal regulation, especially cannabis. Its June report called for health services and action against violent criminal organisations. The commission was an independent policy body; its report did not amend drug treaties or national laws.
๐ฒ๐ช Montenegro Other law โ
Montenegro publishes a drug law covering possession and hemp
Montenegro published its drug law after President Filip Vujanoviฤ promulgated it on 3 June. The law brought prevention, treatment and controlled production and trade into one statute; by its 2013 consolidation, personal possession carried a โฌ100โโฌ2,000 misdemeanour fine and food or industrial hemp required a permit and a buyer for the whole harvest. Detailed hemp-permit rules followed in 2014.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Culture & science โ Article
Quebrando o Tabu brings the drug-policy debate to Brazilian cinemas
The documentary directed by Fernando Grostein Andrade opened in Brazilian cinemas. Featuring former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, it argued for reconsidering punitive drug policies. Historian Jean Marcel Carvalho Franรงa places it within a changing public presentation of cannabis users and reform advocates. Its release was a cultural intervention, not a change in drug law.
๐ฐ๐ฟ Kazakhstan Easing โ Article
Kazakhstan makes small-scale possession an administrative offence
Law 393-IV of 18 January 2011 on the further humanisation of criminal legislation decriminalised Part 1 of Article 259 of the Criminal Code: illegal purchase, transport or storage of narcotics or psychotropic substances without intent to sell, in large quantities as the EMCDDA describes it. The act became an administrative offence.
914+5 points
๐ฒ๐ฝ Mexico Enforcement โ
Smugglers fire cannabis over the US border with a catapult
National Guard troops watching a remote camera near Naco, Arizona, saw people beside the border fence on the Mexican side launching packages over it with an elastic-powered catapult brought in on a trailer. Alerted by the US Border Patrol, Mexican authorities broke up the operation and seized the catapult, an SUV and 45 pounds of marijuana; the smugglers escaped. A Border Patrol spokesman said he had never seen anything like it.
๐ณ๏ธ Transnistria Tightening โ
Transnistria raises the maximum for ordinary drug supply to fifteen years
The ordinary drug-supply offence, including cannabis, gained a fifteen-year prison maximum, up from twelve years; its seven-year minimum remained. The amendment also expressly covered drug analogues, substances treated like the drugs they imitate. Signed on 29 July 2011, it took effect fourteen days after official publication; the following year parliament replaced this range with four to eight years.
๐ณ๐ต Nepal Hemp โ Article
An ItalyโNepal project links Himalayan hemp craft with fair-trade textiles
Parrellaโs 2014 account dates the operational start of Italia-Nepal canapa solidale to 2011, after preparatory years. It describes support for Himalayan communities to maintain hemp-working knowledge and supply textiles through alternative trading channels. The account does not establish a cannabis-law reform or verified export volumes.
๐ฑ๐ง Lebanon Culture & science โ
Lebanon's cannabis farms expand as the Syrian war draws the army away
From 2011 the fields grew again while the government's attention was on security during the war in Syria. In 2014 a news agency reported farms flourishing as the army looked the other way.
๐ฌ๐น Guatemala Enforcement โ
Guatemala seizes 14 million cannabis plants in a year
Authorities reported seizing 14 million cannabis plants in 2011, after 10.8 million in 2008, 4.3 million in 2009 and 8.7 million destroyed in 2010. A national survey of 2005 had put cannabis use in the general population at 0.13 per cent.
๐จ๐ด Colombia Tightening โ
Colombia's Citizen Security Law drops the personal-dose exception
The law removed from the criminal code the exception that had kept possession of a personal dose from being punished. The Constitutional Court answered the following year, in ruling C-491, that carrying a personal dose remains decriminalised.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Debate โ
Brazil's Supreme Court protects marches for legalisation
The Federal Supreme Court unanimously recognised the right to march for the legalisation of marijuana, so that demonstrators and speakers could no longer be treated as advocating drug use. Ribeiro writes that after the ruling the experiences of patients and their families could be heard openly, and the stories of children with epilepsy treated with cannabis began to reach newspapers and television.
๐ฆ๐บ Australia ยท Western Australia Tightening โ
Western Australia repeals its infringement scheme
The Barnett government scrapped the Cannabis Infringement Notice scheme seven years after it began.
201023 entries1 score change
๐บ๐ธ United States ยท Texas Enforcement โ
Willie Nelson is arrested after a Texas checkpoint stop
A Border Patrol stop of Nelsonโs tour bus near Sierra Blanca leads to a cannabis-possession arrest. His subsequent Teapot Party proposal calls for legalisation, regulation and taxation; it is advocacy rather than an enacted reform.
๐บ๐ธ United States ยท California Debate โ
California's Proposition 19 narrowly fails
The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act would have let adults over 21 hold an ounce and grow limited amounts, with cities and counties regulating sales. It lost by 53.5 per cent to 46.5. A post-election poll found half of voters thought cannabis should be legal but disliked the details.
๐บ๐พ Uruguay Debate โ
A conservative deputy files Uruguay's first home-growing bill
Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou of the National Party presented the first bill in Uruguay's history to legalise growing cannabis at home for personal use. It set no limit on plants or on the amount counted as personal. By early 2012 a cross-party bill for eight plants and 25 g looked set to pass.
๐ฒ๐ญ Marshall Islands International โ
The Marshall Islands joins the 1988 UN convention against drug trafficking
The Marshall Islands acceded to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 on 5 November 2010. 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 Medical โ
VA clarifies care access for veterans in state marijuana programmes
VHA Directive 2010-035 said participants in state medical-marijuana programmes must not be denied VHA services. It retained bans on VA recommendations, supply, reimbursement and possession on VA property. It did not create cannabis dispensing in VA clinics.
๐น๐ป Tuvalu Tightening โ
Tuvalu doubles a general drug-offence fine to $4,000
Tuvalu doubled the general drug-offence fine in the High Court penalty clause from $2,000 to $4,000 as part of wider changes to fines and monetary amounts. The later consolidated drug law pairs that fine with ten yearsโ imprisonment where no other penalty is specified. Cannabis-specific minimum prison terms followed in 2025.
๐จ๐ฌ Congo Other law โ Article
Congo sets penalties for involving children in drug use and trade
Inciting a child to use narcotics, drugs or alcohol, or using a child to produce or traffic those substances, carried one to five years and a fine of 1โ10 million CFA francs under the child-protection law. President Denis Sassou-N'Guesso signed the law after adoption by both parliamentary chambers. The government's report that year described weak drug-control institutions and called for better protection of children.
๐ฆ๐ซ Afghanistan Easing โ Article
Afghanistan lowers prison terms for hashish trafficking
Afghanistan's replacement drug law gave hashish its own trafficking penalty scale: more than one and up to five kilograms carried over six months to one year in prison, compared with one to three years and a fine under the earlier law. Larger quantities added prison time up to a ten-year ceiling for the ordinary offence. A person using or holding up to fifty grams for personal consumption was exempt from prosecution and referred to treatment if a medical examiner certified drug dependence.
๐ธ๐ฆ Saudi Arabia Other law โ
Saudi Arabia issues detailed anti-narcotics regulations
Implementing regulations set procedures for licensed narcotic medicines, border controls, investigations and addiction treatment under the 2005 law. Cannabis remained a prohibited plant rather than an approved medicine.
๐ท๐บ Russia Easing โ
Russia makes growing up to 19 plants an administrative offence
Federal Law 87-FZ put the growing of a small number of cannabis plants under the administrative code: up to 19 bushes bring a fine or short detention, and the criminal code begins at twenty. From June 2004 the criminal threshold had been 15 plants of cultivated hemp or 50 of the wild kind.
๐ฆ๐ซ Afghanistan Culture & science โ
UN survey identifies Afghanistan as the world's largest hashish producer
The first joint UN and Afghan cannabis survey estimated that the 2009 crop produced 1,500โ3,500 tonnes of cannabis resin, making Afghanistan the world's largest hashish producer. It estimated 10,000โ24,000 hectares under cannabis, with high resin yields helping explain the scale of production. Farmers most often cited high prices and low cultivation costs as reasons for growing the crop.
๐ฎ๐ฉ Indonesia Easing โ
Indonesia's Supreme Court issues rehabilitation guidance
A Supreme Court circular told judges when drug users could be placed in medical and social rehabilitation. Its indicators included no evidence of dealing and no more than 5 g of cannabis at arrest, but the guidance did not decriminalise possession or guarantee diversion.
๐ง๐ท Brazil Other law โ
Brazil sets the rules for the religious use of ayahuasca
Resolution 1 of 2010 of the National Drug Policy Council adopted the findings of a working group of officials, researchers and religious groups. Ayahuasca may be prepared and drunk in religious rituals, but not sold, advertised, used as therapy, offered to tourists or taken together with illicit drugs. Cannabis, which one Santo Daime branch had used as a sacrament, stayed illegal.
๐ฆ๐ช United Arab Emirates Enforcement โ
A Briton gets four years in Dubai for a speck of cannabis on his shoe
Keith Brown, a youth worker from the English Midlands, was stopped in transit at Dubai airport in September 2009. Customs found 0.003 grams of cannabis, invisible to the eye, in the tread of his shoe. He was sentenced to four years, then the minimum for possession. Another traveller was reported jailed over three poppy seeds from a bread roll.
๐ช๐น Ethiopia Other law โ
Ethiopia brings controlled-drug permits under a wider health law
Ethiopia replaced its 1999 drug law with a wider health law requiring special permits for importing, manufacturing, distributing, storing or possessing narcotic drugs. It kept special prescription and secure-storage rules, and retained seven to fifteen years in prison plus a fine for advertising that encouraged drug abuse. These controls were later rewritten in the 2019 food-and-medicine law.
๐จ๐ซ Central African Republic Other law โ
Central African Republic keeps its separate drug law in the Penal Code
Drug offences continued to be dealt with under the separate 2001 law when the president signed the replacement Penal Code. The code expressly referred drug cases to that law, which distinguished small personal possession and growing from ordinary trafficking.
๐จ๐ฟ Czechia Easing โ Article
Czechia sets decriminalised amounts
A new criminal code and a government decree defined what counts as a small amount: up to 15 g or five plants became an administrative offence with a fine, not a crime.
2028+8 points
๐จ๐ณ China Hemp โ
Yunnan becomes China's first province to license industrial hemp
A provincial regulation took effect that allows industrial hemp, defined as cannabis plants and extracts with less than 0.3% THC, to be grown and processed.
๐น๐ฏ Tajikistan Debate โ Article
Tajikistanโs drug-policy reviewers urge treatment and stronger patient privacy
A review involving health officials, the Drug Control Agency and civil society urged changes to policing, treatment and patient confidentiality. It criticised reliance on arrest and conviction targets, discrimination against people who use drugs and weaknesses in privacy protections. The reviewers recommended shifting enforcement toward dealers and larger supply networks while supporting harm reduction and voluntary treatment.
๐ณ๐ฎ Nicaragua Other law โ
Nicaragua passes its organised crime law
Law 735 covers the prevention, investigation and prosecution of organised crime, drug offences included, and sets up a unit to manage seized property. The Penal Code alongside it treats under 5 g of marijuana as a minor offence with a fine and community work, 5 to 20 g as a crime with six months to three years, and more than 20 g with three to eight years.
๐จ๐ท Costa Rica Easing โ
Costa Rican prosecutors are told to reject simple possession cases
Circular 02-2010 of the Public Prosecutor directed prosecutors to turn away police cases of simple possession with no criminal purpose. A second circular in 2011 dealt with how to handle such police reports and destroy the confiscated drugs.
Read on from here in the whole history โ