São Tomé and Príncipe comes under Portugal’s wider drug ban

Portugal published an order on 26 October 1970 extending its drug law to São Tomé and Príncipe and the other overseas provinces, with Macau excepted. Cannabis possession and growing for personal use could bring up to two years in prison plus a fine. The extension also adapted the rules for authorised medical prescriptions.^[1][2]

Lisbon extended the law overseas

Overseas Minister Joaquim Moreira da Silva Cunha signed the extension and directed publication in the provinces’ official bulletins. Its scope covered the drug law’s offences while changing references to the pharmacy rules used overseas.^[1]

The metropolitan decree’s preamble argued that drug consumption threatened physical and moral health and was connected with delinquency. It described Portugal’s earlier legislation as outdated and presented the new criminal rules as a response to foreign experience and international recommendations.^[2]

Personal possession could mean prison

The decree listed cannabis flowering or fruiting tops and cannabis resin. Its main offence covered activities ranging from importing and growing to holding, transporting and selling controlled drugs. The ordinary penalty was two to eight years in prison plus a fine of 10,000–100,000 escudos.^[2]

When the conduct was for personal use, or another person’s use without profit, the maximum was two years plus a fine of 5,000–50,000 escudos, subject to the law’s condition concerning sexual crimes. Cannabis users and people sharing it without payment thus faced a prison sentence under an express criminal rule.^[2]

Medical prescriptions followed separate rules

The law exempted authorised industrial, scientific and therapeutic activities. The overseas extension defined therapeutic use through a medical prescription under the applicable pharmacy decree. A prescription could ordinarily be dispensed once; a doctor could authorise repeats by handwriting the number of dispensings in full.^[1][2]

This sat alongside the territory’s earlier 1958 cannabis order, which had targeted cannabis medicines.^[3] The 1970 extension expressly supplied prescription rules for the broader controlled-drug regime.^[1]

The colonial law survived into independence

A later judicial training manual described the Portuguese decree as the drug law in force before São Tomé and Príncipe’s 2012 reforms. Parliament then approved a separate drug law and a new Penal Code in overlapping legislative processes.^[4]

The code took effect in November 2012. It reduced the ceiling for a small personal quantity to three months in prison or a fine and allowed courts to excuse an occasional consumer. Those provisions underpin the personal-use account in today’s country profile.^[5]