Cannabis Freedom Index

Advertising and paraphernalia

Bans on promoting cannabis, and on pipes, grow shops and literature.

29 entries, 1886–2026 · 3 moved a score · back to the whole history

World average score and Advertising and paraphernalia 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

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20262 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇪 Montenegro Debate ✓

    Montenegro’s cabinet proposes early drug warnings and wider advertising bans

    The cabinet approved proposed drug-law amendments creating an early-warning system for new psychoactive substances and closer information sharing with the EU drugs agency. The draft also widened the drug-advertising ban and added an individual advertising offence to the existing €100–€2,000 fine band. The Official Gazette later recorded a drug-law amendment taking effect on 7 August 2026.

  2. 🇨🇦 Canada · Nova Scotia Tightening ✓

    Nova Scotia raises fines for buying and selling outside its legal cannabis market

    Provincial amendments and supporting regulations came into force. Buying outside the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation carries a C$600–5,000 fine; unlawful individual sales carry C$5,000–25,000 and business sales C$15,000–50,000. New offences target advertising illegal sales and landlords allowing sales on their property. The changes do not prohibit lawful adult possession or home cultivation.

20252 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇭🇺 Hungary Debate ✓

    Hungary's top court lets a cannabis rally go ahead

    Six days after parliament wrote a ban on the 'promotion' of drugs into the constitution, the police tried to prohibit a 20 April cannabis gathering in Budapest. The supreme court overturned the ban, reasoning that it predated the amendment. It may have been the last such demonstration to be permitted.

  2. 🇭🇺 Hungary Tightening ✓

    Hungary writes a drug ban into its constitution

    The fifteenth amendment to the constitution prohibits producing, using, distributing and promoting drugs. It came with a wider government crackdown and ended the legal basis for pro-cannabis demonstrations.

20231 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇯🇴 Jordan Hemp ✓ Article

    Jordan allows hemp seed foods with THC limits and label restrictions

    Food producers could use hulled, nonviable hemp seeds and specified seed products under rules limiting THC in food and restricting labels and advertising. The source crop had to contain no more than 0.1% THC in its leaves and flowering tops; the finished-food limits ranged from 0.2 mg/kg in beverages to 10 mg/kg in seed oil. Health Minister Firas Hawari’s instructions also required seed oil to be labelled unsuitable for cooking.

20201 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇵🇸 Palestine Tightening ✓

    Palestine sets ten years for promoting drugs online

    Law by Decree No. 29 of 2020 rewrote article 28 of the 2015 narcotics decree. Creating a website to traffic, promote or use narcotic drugs, encrypting dealers' sites or publishing instructions for making drugs now brings at least ten years in prison and a fine of 3,000 to 5,000 Jordanian dinars.

20191 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan Tightening ✓

    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.

20161 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇬 Uganda Tightening ✓ 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.

20101 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇪🇹 Ethiopia Other law ✓

    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.

20041 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇫🇷 France Tightening ✓

    France's Court of Cassation upholds a cannabis-promotion conviction

    In appeal 04-82.312, the Court of Cassation upheld a 1,000-euro fine imposed on an association president for incitement to use narcotics. The case involved cannabis-themed shirts, stickers, postcards and posters, including slogans encouraging cultivation or consumption. The Court found that the appeal judges had adequately established the material and intentional elements of the offence and rejected the challenge invoking freedom of expression. This applied an existing offence to the facts of the case; it did not enact a blanket ban on every depiction of a cannabis leaf.

20032 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Enforcement ✓

    Tommy Chong receives nine months for a paraphernalia conspiracy

    Following a guilty plea in a case involving Nice Dreams Enterprises, Tommy Chong receives a nine-month federal prison sentence. The offence concerns drug-paraphernalia sales, rather than personal cannabis possession or his comedy performances.

  2. 🇺🇸 United States Tightening ✓

    Federal agents announce Operation Pipe Dreams

    The Justice Department announces a national drug-paraphernalia crackdown, including internet retailers and distributors. Operation Pipe Dreams and related enforcement produce charges against 55 people nationwide. This context event records enforcement, not a new possession statute.

20011 entry1 score change

  1. 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone Other law ✓ Article

    Sierra Leone sets at least 15 years in prison for cannabis offences

    People convicted of cannabis offences under Sierra Leone's pharmacy law faced at least 15 years in prison. The law prohibited smoking cannabis, visiting places used for smoking it, allowing it on one's premises and possessing smoking equipment; cultivation required the Pharmacy Board's written consent. It replaced the 1988 pharmacy law while expressly leaving the colonial Dangerous Drugs Act in force, creating overlapping controls on the plant.

    32−1 point

19991 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇪🇹 Ethiopia Tightening ✓ Article

    Ethiopia sets up to fifteen years for allowing drug use on premises

    Owners or occupiers who allowed illicit narcotic drug use on their premises faced seven to fifteen years in prison and a fine of 30,000–50,000 birr under Ethiopia's new drug law. It also punished promoting drug abuse and supplying drugs against a prescription known to be forged, altered, cancelled or expired. The earlier penal code had allowed the ordinary drug-supply penalty for knowingly providing a place to use drugs.

19941 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇦 Canada Easing ✓

    A Canadian court ends the ban on marijuana literature

    A court challenge sponsored by the activist Marc Emery persuaded an Ontario judge to overturn Canada's prohibition on marijuana and drug-related literature, so that High Times magazine and growing books could again be sold. Emery had moved to Vancouver that March and founded Hemp BC, a shop selling cannabis paraphernalia.

19931 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇬 Uganda Other law ✓ Article

    Uganda places cannabis controls under its new drug authority

    Uganda's new national drug law prohibited cannabis smoking, hosting smoking and holding pipes for it, while cultivation required the health minister's written consent after consultation with the drug authority. Cannabis and resin were Class A drugs, for which a first offence without a separate penalty could bring up to five years in prison, a fine of up to two million shillings, or both. The statute created the National Drug Authority to regulate drug supply and carry out a policy that included treaty compliance and action against drug abuse; its main narcotics offences were replaced in 2016.

19892 entries1 score change

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Tightening ✓

    American agents raid garden shops in 46 states

    Operation Green Merchant, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration from 1988 to 1992, went after shops selling equipment for growing indoors. It started from advertisements in the magazines High Times and Sinsemilla Tips and traced deliveries through parcel records; a Dutch seed bank was among the targets. The raids of this day brought more than 100 arrests. In all there were 1,698 arrests, and 3,794 indoor gardens were seized.

  2. 🇸🇩 Sudan Death penalty ✓ Article

    Sudan allows death sentences for hashish trafficking after the coup

    Sudan's military rulers amended the existing hashish and opium law to allow death or ten to twenty years in prison for trafficking and the other listed supply offences. Smoking, ordinary possession and possessing smoking equipment carried three to seven years. The amendment followed the June coup, and special courts began imposing drug-related death sentences within months.

    53−2 points

19851 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇱 Chile Other law ✓

    Chile replaces its drug law with Law 18.403

    Law 18.403 replaced the 1973 drug law. It punished unauthorised cultivation of cannabis where circumstances suggested trafficking, while its trafficking provision distinguished substances intended exclusively for personal use or medical treatment. People found consuming or carrying drugs for personal use could nevertheless be sent for medical examination and, where habitual use was found, inpatient or supervised treatment. The law also punished public promotion of drug use; the personal-use distinction was not an unrestricted right to possess or grow cannabis.

19811 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓

    Nancy Reagan makes the parents' anti-marijuana campaign her cause

    A year after her husband took office, the first lady hosted forty members of the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth at the White House and announced that preventing adolescent drug abuse would be her primary cause. Fearing oversight and fines, many convenience stores and record shops had by then stopped selling cannabis paraphernalia. By 1983 there were more than three thousand parent groups nationwide, and after 1984 the movement and the first lady turned their attention abroad.

19801 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Culture & science ✓ Article

    A water-pipe patent later prompts a comparison with African designs

    United States Patent 4,216,785, Water pipe or bong, was issued to William V. Erickson, Paul K. Jarvie and Fred L. Miller. Chris S. Duvall later compared its air-control tube with nineteenth-century Angolan calabash pipes. The grant concerned a particular design, not the invention of water-pipe smoking or the legal status of cannabis.

19761 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article

    American parents organise against marijuana

    A grassroots movement of parent activists began in 1976, in reaction to decriminalisation in a dozen states and rising use among teenagers: by 1978, 37.1 per cent of high-school seniors reported smoking in the past month. By 1980 the activists had formed a national federation and, by the chapter's account, had persuaded state governments to overturn most of their decriminalisation laws and to regulate the trade in paraphernalia heavily. Nancy Reagan took up their cause.

19671 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom Debate ✓

    A full-page advertisement in The Times calls for cannabis law reform

    The Society of Mental Awareness (SOMA), founded that year by Stephen Abrams, placed an advertisement in The Times to influence the terms of reference of the Wootton Committee, which the government had set up to examine the case for reform. The committee's report referred to it in its introduction; the government rejected the report.

19361 entry1 score change

  1. 🇮🇱 Israel Tightening ✓

    British Palestine tightens its drug ordinance against hashish smoking

    The Dangerous Drugs Ordinance of 1936, the latest version of the 1925 law, raised penalties for traffickers, made carrying drugs through Palestine in transit an offence, and for the first time punished keeping premises for preparing or smoking hashish and possessing pipes or other utensils for smoking it. Israel kept it after independence and re-enacted it in 1973.

    1211−1 point

19171 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇩 DR Congo Tightening ✓ Article

    Belgian Congo makes cannabis consumption an explicit offence

    Belgian Congo extended its cannabis prohibition expressly to smoking and consumption in any other form, and required confiscation of equipment intended or used for it. The amendment built on the 1903 restrictions on growing, selling, transporting and holding cannabis for smoking. The law's penalties ran from fifteen days to a year in prison, a fine of 100 to 1,000 francs, or both.

19161 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓ Article

    South Africa drafts a national ban on cannabis use, possession and growing

    A government draft proposed banning cannabis use, possession, trafficking and unlicensed cultivation, with fines of up to £100 and prison terms of up to three months. It also targeted smoking equipment and listed cannabis separately from Leonotis plants that were also called dagga. The draft was prepared in response to the 1912 Hague drug convention but was never presented to parliament; nationwide prohibition followed in 1922.

19151 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · Utah Ban ✓

    Utah bans marijuana, down to the pipes

    Utah's prohibition extended even to owning pipes for smoking the drug. Bonnie and Whitebread found no record of local concern and suggested that Mormons who had lived in Mexico and returned around 1912 may have brought knowledge of marijuana back with them. They date California's first marijuana prohibition to the same year, when the drug was added to an existing antinarcotics law.

19071 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇩🇪 Germany Tightening ✓ Article

    Germany restricts Bromidia dispensing and bans public advertising

    Rules adopted by the Federal Council on 27 June 1907 take effect on 1 October, with substantially corresponding state regulations reported in the contemporary pharmaceutical journal. Anlage B expressly lists Battle & Co.’s Bromidia, a proprietary medicine advertised with cannabis among its ingredients. Section 3 requires a dated, signed written medical order and a fresh order for every repeat dispensing; section 4 prohibits public announcements and promotion. These are named-product controls, not a general cannabis ban. The precise cannabis content of Bromidia remained disputed.

18861 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇩🇪 Germany Enforcement ✓ Article

    Darmstadt police republishes a warning about cannabis cigarettes

    A Darmstadt police notice dated 14 December 1886, published two days later, reproduced a Karlsruhe health-council warning about Grimault’s Cannabis-Indica cigarettes. It reported that locally purchased samples consisted mostly of belladonna leaves and contained very little Indian hemp, criticized the advertising as misleading, and warned of possible harm in respiratory disorders. The notice announces no cannabis sales, import or possession prohibition. The date identifies the Darmstadt notice, not the original undated Karlsruhe warning.

Most entries

  1. 🇺🇸 United States170
  2. 🇮🇳 India53
  3. 🇧🇷 Brazil51
  4. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom45
  5. 🇨🇦 Canada44
  6. 🇮🇹 Italy39
  7. 🇲🇽 Mexico39
  8. 🇩🇪 Germany34

Fewest entries

  1. 🇰🇵 North Korea3
  2. 🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau4
  3. 🇹🇻 Tuvalu4
  4. 🇾🇪 Yemen4
  5. 🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea5
  6. 🇪🇷 Eritrea5
  7. 🇲🇻 Maldives5
  8. 🇵🇼 Palau5
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