Cannabis Freedom Index

Colonial rule

Laws made or enforced by a colonial power.

135 entries, 1793–1973 · 40 moved a score · back to the whole history

World average score and Colonial rule 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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19731 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇮 Gibraltar Other law ✓

    Gibraltar brings cannabis growing, possession and supply under a new drug law

    Gibraltar’s new drug law took effect on 1 June 1973, providing separate offences for unauthorised possession, possession with intent to supply, production and cannabis cultivation. Its later amendments extended the supply wording to recipients abroad and introduced a quantity-based presumption of intent to supply. The Act remained the main drug statute until the Crimes Act replaced it in November 2012.

19712 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇩🇯 Djibouti Enforcement ✓

    Djibouti court gives a cannabis seller six months and a residence ban

    Mohamed Aden Darar received six months in prison and a three-year residence ban for possessing and selling cannabis. A later administrative order barred him from the Djibouti district and the Obock and Tadjourah circles after his release in January 1972. The case followed the local publication of France's revised drug law in February 1971.

  2. 🇩🇯 Djibouti Other law ✓ Article

    Djibouti publishes French drug penalties and treatment rules

    The local official journal published French rules punishing illicit drug use with two months to one year, a fine alone, or both, and providing treatment routes away from prosecution. Ordinary trafficking carried two to ten years, while production, import and export carried ten to twenty. The law expressly applied its criminal rules to overseas territories, with local assemblies setting treatment arrangements in the French Territory of the Afars and Issas.

19703 entries1 score change

  1. 🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe Ban ✓ Article

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

    Portugal published an order extending its drug law to the overseas provinces, including São Tomé and Príncipe, with local publication directed to follow. Cannabis possession and cultivation for personal use, and supply without profit, carried up to two years in prison plus a fine; the ordinary trafficking range was two to eight years plus a fine. Authorised industrial, scientific and therapeutic activities were exempt, with overseas prescription rules adapted by the extension order.

    1007−93 points

  2. 🇲🇿 Mozambique Tightening ✓ Article

    Mozambique receives Portugal's prison terms for cannabis offences

    Portugal extended its new drug law to Mozambique, exposing people who possessed or obtained cannabis for themselves, or supplied it without profit, to up to two years in prison plus a fine. Other unauthorised dealings, including cultivation and sales, carried two to eight years plus a fine; convicted foreigners faced expulsion after their sentence. The law followed earlier colonial cannabis bans and was explicitly repealed by Mozambique's 1997 drug law.

  3. 🇦🇴 Angola Other law ✓

    Angola receives Portugal's prison terms for cannabis offences

    Portugal extended its new drug law to Angola, with up to two years in prison plus a fine for personal possession or supply without profit, and two to eight years plus a fine for other unauthorised dealings. Convicted foreigners faced expulsion after their sentences, while authorised medical, scientific and industrial activities were exempt. Angola's 1999 drug law later explicitly repealed this colonial legislation.

19691 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇴 Macau Easing ✓

    Macau’s colonial drug amendment cuts the prison term for use to six months

    Portugal published an amendment reducing Macau’s personal-use prison term from six months–one year to a fixed six months, accompanied by a fine. It retained separate penalties for supplying drugs to others. The later 1991 replacement introduced a fine as an alternative to prison for personal acquisition or possession.

19661 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea Other law ✓

    Spain publishes the decree applying its revised Penal Code in Equatorial Guinea

    Decree 480/1966, dated 17 February and published on 1 March, declared the revised 1963 Spanish Penal Code applicable in Equatorial Guinea. This documents the ancestry of the penal framework later amended by the 1993 drug decree; it does not independently establish the first cannabis prohibition.

19641 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇼 Curaçao Other law ✓

    Curaçao starts using a replacement drug-control law

    The Netherlands Antilles’ replacement Opium Ordinance came into force on 1 June 1964, providing the legal foundation later carried into Curaçao’s own drug law. It replaced an ordinance from July 1929; Curaçao’s later consolidated text prohibited cannabis cultivation, possession and use while retaining medical exceptions. The island replaced that inherited ordinance again in July 2024.

19621 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇴 Macau Other law ✓

    Macau’s colonial drug law jails users and requires medicine prescriptions

    Portugal published a consolidated drug law for Macau under which illicit use and personal possession carried six months to a year in prison plus a fine; cannabis, resin and preparations were expressly listed. Doctors and pharmacies had a controlled prescription route, while giving drugs away and selling them carried separate prison penalties. The decree brought earlier local controls together; later amendments reduced the personal-use prison term.

19601 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇮 Gibraltar Other law ✓

    Gibraltar removes the penalty ceiling for cannabis-control rules

    Gibraltar published an amendment removing the one-month imprisonment or £150 fine ceiling on penalties that the Governor in Council could set through cannabis-control rules. The power covered production, possession, sale and distribution of Indian hemp, raw opium and coca leaves. The 1951 possession rule had used that ceiling; the amendment widened the rule-making power.

19591 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇬 Congo Culture & science ✓

    Cannabis is noted growing across the French Congo

    A year before independence from France, cannabis was recorded growing throughout the Congo, particularly in the Pool region. The market appeared to be growing, and farmers were planting cannabis in their cassava plots.

19582 entries1 score change

  1. 🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe Ban ✓ Article

    São Tomé and Príncipe targets medical cannabis with a colonial ban

    Governor Manuel Marques de Abrantes Amaral issued an order targeting cannabis products used as medicine, following a recommendation by the UN Economic and Social Council. Its preamble called for ending medical use, and its operative wording prohibited import, consumption and sale for medical purposes; breaches brought fines of 1,000–5,000 escudos. Portugal later extended a much broader drug law to the colony in 1970.

  2. 🇲🇬 Madagascar Tightening ?

    Madagascar adds penalties for growing and possessing rongony

    The colonial administration made an assembly decision against cannabis cultivation and possession enforceable, adding those offences to the older ban on preparing, peddling, selling and consuming rongony. A later government memorandum records eleven days to one month in prison and a fine, with higher penalties for repeat offences. Two years later Madagascar replaced these rules with sentences reaching five years.

    5510−45 points

19561 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Other law ✓

    Southern Rhodesia's Dangerous Drugs Act takes effect

    Act 28 of 1955 came into force as the colony's consolidated drug law. It remains on Zimbabwe's statute book as the Dangerous Drugs Act and is the law under which cannabis is prohibited.

19553 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇲 Cameroon Other law ?

    French Cameroon extends drug penalties and compulsory treatment

    French-administered Cameroon promulgated the extension of France's pharmacy-code drug rules, including doubled penalties for illicit drug cultivation or manufacture and powers to order people charged with specified narcotics offences into detoxification. The French law also doubled penalties for supplying minors or helping them use drugs. The local order cited the earlier 1926 poisonous-substances rules, which already controlled hashish and punished group use.

  2. 🇧🇭 Bahrain Other law ✓ Article

    Bahrain extends cannabis controls to people under British jurisdiction

    A British regulation applied Bahrain’s existing dangerous-drug rules to people subject to the Bahrain Orders, except the medical services of Britain’s armed forces. The rules named Indian hemp and its resin, prohibited unauthorised possession and supply, and allowed up to three years in prison, a fine up to 5,000 rupees, or both. It replaced a British drug regulation dating from 1931; new local and British rules followed in 1959.

  3. 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Enforcement ✓ Article

    Southern Rhodesia reports 285 cannabis prosecutions for 1952

    A UN survey recorded 285 cannabis prosecutions in Southern Rhodesia in 1952, including 282 Africans in the colonial racial classifications. It described police destroying plants in small gardens and near homesteads, where cannabis was usually grown for the grower’s own use. Courts generally imprisoned traffickers and gave smokers the option of a fine, under a law allowing up to ten years in prison, a £1,000 fine, or both.

19543 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓

    The Spanish zone of Morocco keeps kif licensed, with a five-kilogram limit

    In the year the French protectorate prohibited all cultivation, a dahir in the Spanish zone still authorised growing, production and distribution under licence of the monopoly. It set a possession threshold of five kilograms, above which administrative sanctions applied, and allowed cultivation in municipalities it did not name, with the permission of local authorities and the monopoly.

  2. 🇲🇦 Morocco Ban ✓

    The French protectorate bans all kif cultivation

    France ended the licensed growing it had allowed for the kif and tobacco monopoly and prohibited all cultivation in its zone. In the Spanish zone a dahir of the same year still authorised it.

  3. 🇧🇭 Bahrain Other law ✓

    Bahrain restricts Indian hemp under its dangerous-drug rules

    Bahrain’s regulations labelled 1374 (1954) prohibited possessing, obtaining or supplying dangerous drugs, with exceptions for named hospitals, licensed handlers and genuine medical prescriptions. Their schedule expressly named Indian hemp, its resin and resin-based preparations; offences carried up to three years in prison, a fine up to 5,000 rupees, or both. Britain extended these rules to people under its Bahrain jurisdiction in April 1955.

19523 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇸🇿 Eswatini Tightening ✓

    Swaziland's drug proclamation is amended

    The Swaziland Opium and Habit-forming Drugs Regulation (Amendment) Proclamation of 1952 amended the 1922 law. As amended, section 8 made any narcotics offence punishable by a fine of up to £500 or, in default, up to three years in prison with or without hard labour, or by prison without the option of a fine, or by both.

  2. 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Other law ✓

    Southern Rhodesia's 1952 Act limits who may hold cannabis

    Under the Pharmacy, Poisons and Dangerous Drugs Act, 1952 only authorised persons such as sellers of poisons, medical practitioners, dentists and veterinary surgeons could possess the cannabis plant and its products. A 1955 United Nations survey lists it as the colony's cannabis law.

  3. 🇳🇷 Nauru Other law ✓

    Nauru controls imports of Indian-hemp medicines

    Importing Indian-hemp extracts, tinctures and preparations required a licence for medicinal purposes, while making or exporting dangerous drugs was prohibited. Import licences lasted one year and required records of quantities and recipients. The ordinance replaced the 1922 import law covering opium, morphine, cocaine and heroin.

19512 entries1 score change

  1. 🇬🇮 Gibraltar Ban ✓ Article

    Gibraltar makes cannabis possession punishable by a fine or a month in jail

    Rules made on 18 October 1951 made possessing Indian hemp an offence punishable by up to a £150 fine or one month in prison. Possession included cannabis held by another person under the defendant’s control or on their behalf. The Governor in Council used powers granted earlier that year to regulate cannabis production, possession, sale and distribution.

  2. 🇱🇸 Lesotho Tightening ✓

    Basutoland's drug proclamation is amended

    Proclamation No. 58 of 1951 amended the Basutoland Opium and Habit-forming Drugs Regulation Proclamation of 1922. As amended, section 7 made any narcotics offence punishable by a fine of up to £500 or, in default, up to three years in prison with or without hard labour, or by prison without the option of a fine, or by both. Seized plants and drugs were forfeited on conviction.

    1311−2 points

19491 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Enforcement ✓

    The French zone of Morocco seizes 7.6 tonnes of contraband kif

    While kif was still sold legally by the Tobacco Monopoly, the monopoly's agents and the police pursued kif sold outside it, paying informers out of the fines. In 1949 they seized 7,651 kg of kif or whole plants and 4,139 plants from illicit plots; by 1952 the yearly figure was 18,803 kg. Most seizures were made near the Spanish zone, the main source of supply.

19481 entry1 score change

  1. 🇰🇮 Kiribati Ban ✓ Article

    The Gilbert Islands ban cannabis growing, possession and gifts

    The colonial drug ordinance that commenced on 20 October 1948 supplied Kiribati’s inherited cannabis controls. Its revised text prohibited growing Indian hemp for private use or otherwise, possessing it, selling it or giving it to another person, and importing or exporting cannabis seeds. It also regulated cannabis extracts and tinctures through a separate controlled-drug schedule.

    1009−91 points

19461 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇲 Myanmar Enforcement ?

    Burma records no government ganja sales and 216 drug prosecutions

    Burma's government made no ganja sales in 1946 and issued no cultivation licences to supply its trade. The 1939 rules permitting sales to Indians only remained in force. Excise staff brought 216 hemp-drug prosecutions that year, of which 208 succeeded, while illicit cultivation in the Pegu Yoma hills supplied Indian users.

19451 entry1 score change

  1. 🇱🇸 Lesotho Tightening ✓

    Basutoland's chiefs are ordered to destroy cannabis

    A Paramount Chief's order told all chiefs to destroy cannabis in their areas. Rule 27 of the Paramount Chief's rules, made under a 1938 proclamation, said no person shall grow, possess or use dagga, on pain of a fine of up to 25 pounds or six months in prison.

    1613−3 points

19411 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇯🇲 Jamaica Tightening ✓

    Colonial police raid Pinnacle and arrest residents

    Government forces raid the early Rastafari community and arrest followers of Leonard Howell. The raid is distinct from the same year’s national ganja-penalty amendment; no separate change to statutory penalties is recorded here.

19401 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇦🇴 Angola Other law ✓

    Portugal issues a drug decree for Angola

    Legislative Decree No. 1,193 of 28 August 1940 became the text under which drug offences were prosecuted in Angola; a United Nations survey of 1956 says prosecutions were brought under paragraph 1 of its Article 90. The survey lists the decree beside the cannabis order of 1913 and does not reproduce its wording.

19391 entry1 score change

  1. 🇲🇲 Myanmar Legalisation ?

    Burma permits licensed ganja sales to Indians only

    Burma's ganja rules permitted licensed sales to Indians only. A later official report recorded that the rules remained in force in 1946, although the government made no sales that year and issued no cultivation licences to supply its ganja trade.

    1149+38 points

19371 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇾 Guyana Other law ✓

    British Guiana passes its Dangerous Drugs Ordinance

    The Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, 1937 (No. 10 of 1937) was the colony's narcotics law. A 1948 order under it added preparations made from extract or tincture of Indian hemp to the controlled drugs.

19362 entries1 score change

  1. 🇲🇼 Malawi Ban ✓ Article

    Nyasaland outlaws growing cannabis

    The Noxious Weeds Act made cultivating cannabis illegal. Together with the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1956 it remained Malawi's cannabis law until 2020.

    10011−89 points

  2. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Other law ✓

    Ceylon's consolidated drug ordinance comes into operation

    The reproduced 1956 statutory edition records 1 January 1936 for the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance; the NDDCB chronology confirms operation in 1936 after the 1935 amendment. This documents the later operational milestone without backdating every provision of the subsequently amended statutory edition to that day.

19354 entries1 score change

  1. 🇹🇿 Tanzania Other law ✓

    Tanganyika passes its Dangerous Drugs Ordinance

    A later government notice under the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, 1935 added preparations made from extract or tincture of Indian hemp to the controlled drugs. The notice does not reproduce the ordinance, and earlier restrictions may exist.

  2. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Tightening ✓

    Ceylon amends its uncommenced Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance

    Ordinance No. 43 amended the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance enacted as No. 17 of 1929. The NDDCB historical handbook says the earlier measure had not been proclaimed because of anticipated implementation difficulties, and that the amended framework took effect in 1936. Cannabis controls already existed under earlier ordinances, so 1935 was not the beginning of cannabis prohibition in Ceylon.

  3. 🇿🇲 Zambia Other law ✓

    Northern Rhodesia amends its Dangerous Drugs Ordinance

    Two ordinances of 1935 amended the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance of 1926, which had already been amended in 1929. A United Nations survey of 1955 lists them among the texts then in force, together with government notices of 1937, 1938, 1941, 1947 and 1950; it does not say what each changed.

  4. 🇬🇭 Ghana Ban ✓ Article

    The Gold Coast replaces its Dangerous Drugs Ordinance

    The colonial annual report identifies Dangerous Drugs Ordinance No. 29 of 1935 as implementing the 1931 international convention, replacing existing drug laws and applying across the Gold Coast. Later scholarship associates the 1935 measure with cannabis-possession prohibition. The original ordinance has not been inspected here, so this is not presented as proof of the territory's first cannabis restriction or of an exact commencement day.

    1009−91 points

19332 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article

    Army cannabis report recommends no further Canal Zone legislation

    Published in The Military Surgeon in 1933, the Siler committee report described observations of 34 soldiers and recommended no further legislation against sale or use in the Canal Zone. It also recommended retaining military restrictions on cannabis. Its recommendations concerned US-administered territory and military reservations, not cannabis freedom throughout the Republic of Panama.

  2. 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone Culture & science ✓ Article

    Sierra Leone identifies diamba as cannabis in its official drug report

    Sierra Leone's official drug report identified the locally named diamba as cannabis and described it as the only dangerous drug known to be used illegally in the colony. The recognition followed a colonial law using the name Indian hemp, although local cultivation and smoking had been described in 1851. Historian Chris Duvall uses the episode to show how official drug-control vocabulary could obscure an established local practice.

19322 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇩🇯 Djibouti Other law ✓ Article

    Djibouti's colonial rules put cannabis behind permits and prescriptions

    Cannabis, resin, resin preparations, extract and tincture were listed among drugs whose possession and trade required authorisation in the French Somali Coast. People without a permit could obtain them only on a therapeutic prescription, while imports and exports needed permission for each shipment. The local governor promulgated the revised rules on 16 June, replacing the controlled-drug chapter of the 1923 regulations.

  2. 🇩🇿 Algeria Other law ✓

    France names cannabis and its extracts in Algeria’s drug controls

    The colonial decree applied France’s updated narcotics controls to Algeria and required special authorisation for industrial and commercial drug operations. It replaced the disputed word “hashish” with cannabis, resin, preparations, extracts and tinctures. The League Secretariat questioned whether the French text expressly covered cultivation, despite the colonial administration’s claims that enforcement had reduced growing and use.

19313 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇵🇰 Pakistan Tightening ✓ Article

    Pakistan keeps licensed ganja and requires a licence for hemp extract

    From 1 February 1931 no one could bring hemp into British India or send it out, or make an extract or tincture of it, without a licence. Making that extract without a licence could mean up to two years in prison, a fine, or both. The Act rewrote the Punjab excise law so that bhang, siddhi, ganja and charas stayed intoxicating drugs under it. In Baluchistan it left the 1915 rule that a hemp plant could be grown only under licence, and kept bhang, ganja and charas in the definition of an intoxicating drug.

  2. 🇲🇲 Myanmar Tightening ✓ Article

    Burma requires a licence to make hemp extract or to import it

    From 1 February 1931 no one could make an extract or tincture of hemp, or bring it in or send it out, without a licence. Making the extract without a licence, or importing or exporting hemp without one, could mean up to two years in prison, a fine, or both. Hemp covered the leaves and flowering tops, including bhang, siddhi and ganja, and charas, the resin. The Burma code prints this as the Indian Act of 1930, in force on that date.

  3. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh Tightening ✓ Article

    Bengal ganja stays under excise as hemp extract needs a licence

    From 1 February 1931 no one could bring hemp into British India or send it out, or make an extract or tincture of it, without a licence. Making that extract without a licence could mean up to two years in prison, a fine, or both. The Act was passed to carry out the Geneva convention's measures on drugs made from opium, Indian hemp and coca, and it applied across British India. It rewrote the Bengal excise law so that bhang, siddhi, ganja and charas remained intoxicating drugs under that law, while extract and tincture were classed as manufactured drugs.

19291 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Other law ✓

    Ceylon enacts a drug consolidation ordinance but delays its proclamation

    The NDDCB historical chronology dates passage of Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance No. 17 to 1929, following a bill tabled in 1927. It says the measure was not proclaimed because implementation difficulties were anticipated. The record distinguishes enactment from the later amendment and operation of the consolidated framework.

192617 entries6 score changes

  1. October10
  2. June10
  3. April11
  4. January80
  5. Month unknown65

    1. 🇨🇲 Cameroon Other law ✓ Article

      French Cameroon restricts hashish supplies and punishes group use

      French Cameroon placed hashish and its preparations under pharmacy controls, restricting authorised handling mainly to pharmacists and allowing supplies on prescription. Violations, group use and helping others use the drug carried three months to two years in prison, a fine, or both; possession without a legitimate reason attracted the same penalties. France introduced the rules alongside a pharmacy decree to adapt its existing controls to the mandate territory.

    1. 🇹🇿 Tanzania Ban ?

      Tanganyika bans growing, holding and using cannabis

      Tanganyika prohibited growing cannabis, possessing it or substances obtained from it, and consuming or using them. Offenders faced up to twelve months in prison or a fine of up to 2,000 shillings, and courts could order the plants or substances destroyed. The ordinance also allowed searches under a magistrate's or administrative officer's warrant and warrantless arrest of someone found committing an offence; the 1995 drug law later repealed it.

    1. 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone Ban ✓ Article

      Sierra Leone bans cannabis growing and possession under colonial drug law

      Growing and possessing cannabis and dealing in its resin became offences under Sierra Leone's colonial drug controls; medicinal extracts and tinctures followed licensing and pharmacy rules. The 1926 law implemented the Geneva drug convention across the Colony and Protectorate, and its surviving revised text includes amendments made in 1928 and 1932. Diamba had been described locally in 1851, decades before officials identified it as cannabis in their 1933 drug report.

      1003−97 points

    1. 🇸🇳 Senegal Other law ✓

      France regulates poisonous substances in French West Africa

      A decree issued regulations on the trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances in French West Africa, which included what is now Senegal, under France's 1916 law on such substances. The 1952 amendment that cites it does not reproduce its text, so its treatment of cannabis is not confirmed.

    2. 🇳🇪 Niger Other law ✓

      France regulates poisonous substances in French West Africa

      A decree issued regulations on the trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances in French West Africa, which included what is now Niger, under France's 1916 law on such substances. The 1952 amendment that cites it does not reproduce its text, so its treatment of cannabis is not confirmed.

    3. 🇲🇷 Mauritania Other law ✓

      France regulates poisonous substances in French West Africa

      A decree issued regulations on the trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances in French West Africa, which included what is now Mauritania, under France's 1916 law on such substances. The 1952 amendment that cites it does not reproduce its text, so its treatment of cannabis is not confirmed.

    4. 🇲🇱 Mali Other law ✓

      France regulates poisonous substances in French West Africa

      A decree issued regulations on the trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances in French West Africa, which included what is now Mali, under France's 1916 law on such substances. The 1952 amendment that cites it does not reproduce its text, so its treatment of cannabis is not confirmed.

    5. 🇬🇳 Guinea Other law ✓

      France regulates poisonous substances in French West Africa

      A decree issued regulations on the trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances in French West Africa, which included what is now Guinea, under France's 1916 law on such substances. The 1952 amendment that cites it does not reproduce its text, so its treatment of cannabis is not confirmed.

    6. 🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire Other law ✓

      France regulates poisonous substances in French West Africa

      A decree issued regulations on the trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances in French West Africa, which included what is now Côte d'Ivoire, under France's 1916 law on such substances. The 1952 amendment that cites it does not reproduce its text, so its treatment of cannabis is not confirmed.

    7. 🇧🇯 Benin Other law ✓

      France regulates poisonous substances in French West Africa

      A decree issued regulations on the trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances in French West Africa, which included what is now Benin, under France's 1916 law on such substances. The 1952 amendment that cites it does not reproduce its text, so its treatment of cannabis is not confirmed.

    8. 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso Other law ✓

      France regulates poisonous substances in French West Africa

      A decree issued regulations on the trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances in French West Africa, which included what is now Burkina Faso, under France's 1916 law on such substances. The 1952 amendment that cites it does not reproduce its text, so its treatment of cannabis is not confirmed.

    1. 🇵🇦 Panama Debate ✓

      A Canal Zone committee finds marijuana does little harm

      After a judge jailed an American seaman for a year in November 1926 for smoking cannabis cigarettes, an official committee studied the drug with 17 subjects. It found only minor effects and recommended against special legislation in the Canal Zone.

    2. 🇿🇲 Zambia Ban ✓ Article

      Northern Rhodesia passes its Dangerous Drugs Ordinance

      The ordinance did not use the word cannabis; it named dagga, wild dagga, red dagga and klip dagga. A 1938 supplement added extracts and tinctures of Indian hemp to the list of habit-forming drugs.

      1003−97 points

    3. 🇬🇦 Gabon Ban ✓

      France bans cannabis in French Equatorial Africa

      The Conversation lists French Equatorial Africa in 1926 among the places where French authorities adopted a ban or repressive regulation of cannabis. The federation included what is now Gabon. The article does not describe the measure itself.

      1009−91 points

    4. 🇨🇬 Congo Ban ✓

      France bans cannabis in French Equatorial Africa

      The Conversation lists French Equatorial Africa in 1926 among the places where French authorities adopted a ban or repressive regulation of cannabis. The federation included what is now Congo. The article does not describe the measure itself.

      1009−91 points

    5. 🇹🇩 Chad Ban ✓

      France bans cannabis in French Equatorial Africa

      The Conversation lists French Equatorial Africa in 1926 among the places where French authorities adopted a ban or repressive regulation of cannabis. The federation included what is now Chad. The article does not describe the measure itself.

      1009−91 points

    6. 🇨🇫 Central African Republic Ban ✓

      France bans cannabis in French Equatorial Africa

      The Conversation lists French Equatorial Africa in 1926 among the places where French authorities adopted a ban or repressive regulation of cannabis. The federation included what is now the Central African Republic. The article does not describe the measure itself.

      1009−91 points

19252 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇸🇾 Syria International ✓

    The League of Nations presses France over hashish in Syria

    The mandate that put Syria and Lebanon under French rule in 1922 bound France, in its article 12, to apply the drug conventions there, and the first control measures date from the 1920s. After the Geneva convention of 1925 the League took up the campaign against cannabis and placed French enforcement under international supervision, as the two territories became major producers. The French, weak in the countryside and dependent on landowners, are described as having enforced the rules theatrically, to satisfy Geneva without alienating their allies.

  2. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓

    India's Central Provinces ban the sale of charas

    The Central Provinces forbade the sale of charas in 1925. Smuggling rose so much after 1930 that on 1 January 1935 the province licensed sales again, opening shops at Nagpur and Jubbulpore with a possession limit of half a tola.

19242 entries2 score changes

  1. 🇸🇩 Sudan Other law ✓ Article

    Sudan replaces its hashish law and keeps medical exceptions

    Published on 25 August, Sudan’s replacement hashish law repealed the 1907 ordinance and prohibited unauthorised growing, sale, possession, transport and smoking. Contraventions could bring up to one year in prison, a fine, or both. It retained exceptions for recognised cannabis medicines handled by licensed professionals and used under the public-health rules, and allowed written permits for small scientific quantities.

    1005−95 points

  2. 🇸🇸 South Sudan Other law ✓

    Sudan’s replacement hashish law covers the south and keeps medical use

    Published on 25 August, Sudan’s replacement hashish law repealed the 1907 ordinance and prohibited unauthorised growing, sale, possession, transport and smoking. Contraventions could bring up to one year in prison, a fine, or both. It retained exceptions for recognised cannabis medicines handled by licensed professionals and used under the public-health rules, and allowed written permits for small scientific quantities.

    1002−98 points

19224 entries3 score changes

  1. 🇸🇿 Eswatini Ban ✓ Article

    Swaziland's Opium and Habit-forming Drugs Act takes effect

    The colonial law banned importing, cultivating, producing or possessing habit-forming drugs without a permit. A 1955 United Nations survey confirms that it applied to the cannabis plant, cannabis and its resin. Courts in Eswatini still prosecute dagga possession and cultivation under this 1922 Act.

    10011−89 points

  2. 🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓

    French Morocco bans hashish imports but leaves kif alone

    The government of the French protectorate banned imports of hashish and controlled access to pharmaceutical cannabis. Kif, the chopped cannabis sold by the monopoly, was not mentioned, and it was not fully banned until 1954.

  3. 🇧🇼 Botswana Ban ✓ Article

    Bechuanaland restricts habit-forming drugs

    The Habit-Forming Drug Proclamation restricted the import, export, production and use of habit-forming drugs in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, in the year South Africa prohibited dagga. A 1955 United Nations survey confirms that it applied to the cannabis plant, with possession and use limited to medical purposes.

    10011−89 points

  4. 🇱🇸 Lesotho Ban ✓ Article

    Basutoland brings cannabis under its habit-forming drugs law

    The Basutoland Opium and Habit-forming Drugs Regulation Proclamation, 1922 applied to the cannabis plant, cannabis and its resin. By the 1950s a narcotics offence under it carried a fine of up to 500 pounds or up to three years in prison.

    10016−84 points

19211 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Culture & science ✓

    Taxes on cannabis bring British India over 18 million rupees

    Government reports tracked the revenue from hemp drugs: about 5.6 million rupees across British India in 1900, 7.8 million in 1905 and 18.3 million in 1921. In Bengal they still made up about a fifth of all excise income in 1921, in Bihar and Orissa over a quarter, and in Delhi a third, even though consumption per head in Bengal had fallen since 1905.

19173 entries1 score change

  1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓

    Spain regulates kif in its Moroccan zone

    A regulation against tobacco and kif smuggling in the Spanish zone required growers to sell their kif to the Régie marocaine des kifs et tabacs, the Tangier company that had held the monopoly on cannabis and tobacco since the 1906 Algeciras Conference. It was widely circumvented.

  2. 🇨🇩 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.

  3. 🇩🇿 Algeria Ban ✓ Article

    France extends its narcotics controls to colonial Algeria

    A decree of 9 February 1917 extended the French narcotics rules to Algeria, according to the French government’s account to the League of Nations. Those rules controlled import, export, trade, possession and use; a further decree in January 1932 applied the updated French system and expressly named cannabis, resin, preparations, extracts and tinctures. Colonial councils had discussed restricting kif before the national controls.

    1005−95 points

19169 entries8 score changes

  1. December88
  2. Month unknown10

    1. 🇸🇳 Senegal Ban ✓ Article

      France extends its poisonous substances law to French West Africa

      A decree extended France's Act of 12 July 1916 on the importation, trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances to French West Africa, which included what is now Senegal. The regulations made under that Act in France list Indian hemp, its resin and their preparations among the narcotics of Schedule B. The filings read do not reproduce the colonial text itself.

      1009−91 points

    2. 🇳🇪 Niger Ban ✓ Article

      France extends its poisonous substances law to French West Africa

      A decree extended France's Act of 12 July 1916 on the importation, trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances to French West Africa, which included what is now Niger. The regulations made under that Act in France list Indian hemp, its resin and their preparations among the narcotics of Schedule B. The filings read do not reproduce the colonial text itself.

      1009−91 points

    3. 🇲🇷 Mauritania Ban ✓ Article

      France extends its poisonous substances law to French West Africa

      A decree extended France's Act of 12 July 1916 on the importation, trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances to French West Africa, which included what is now Mauritania. The regulations made under that Act in France list Indian hemp, its resin and their preparations among the narcotics of Schedule B. The filings read do not reproduce the colonial text itself.

      1003−97 points

    4. 🇲🇱 Mali Ban ✓ Article

      France extends its poisonous substances law to French West Africa

      A decree extended France's Act of 12 July 1916 on the importation, trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances to French West Africa, which included what is now Mali. The regulations made under that Act in France list Indian hemp, its resin and their preparations among the narcotics of Schedule B. The filings read do not reproduce the colonial text itself.

      10014−86 points

    5. 🇬🇳 Guinea Ban ✓ Article

      France extends its poisonous substances law to French West Africa

      A decree extended France's Act of 12 July 1916 on the importation, trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances to French West Africa, which included what is now Guinea. The regulations made under that Act in France list Indian hemp, its resin and their preparations among the narcotics of Schedule B. The filings read do not reproduce the colonial text itself.

      1007−93 points

    6. 🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire Ban ✓ Article

      France extends its poisonous substances law to French West Africa

      A decree extended France's Act of 12 July 1916 on the importation, trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances to French West Africa, which included what is now Côte d'Ivoire. The regulations made under that Act in France list Indian hemp, its resin and their preparations among the narcotics of Schedule B. The filings read do not reproduce the colonial text itself.

      1009−91 points

    7. 🇧🇯 Benin Ban ✓ Article

      France extends its poisonous substances law to French West Africa

      A decree extended France's Act of 12 July 1916 on the importation, trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances to French West Africa, which included what is now Benin. The regulations made under that Act in France list Indian hemp, its resin and their preparations among the narcotics of Schedule B. The filings read do not reproduce the colonial text itself.

      1009−91 points

    8. 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso Ban ✓ Article

      France extends its poisonous substances law to French West Africa

      A decree extended France's Act of 12 July 1916 on the importation, trade in, possession and use of poisonous substances to French West Africa, which included what is now Burkina Faso. The regulations made under that Act in France list Indian hemp, its resin and their preparations among the narcotics of Schedule B. The filings read do not reproduce the colonial text itself.

      1003−97 points

    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 entry1 score change

  1. 🇲🇬 Madagascar Ban ✓ Article

    Madagascar's colonial government bans rongony smoking and sales

    France prohibited preparing, peddling, selling and consuming smoking cannabis, known as rongony, throughout Madagascar and its dependencies. Offences carried six days to twelve months in prison, a fine of 100 to 3,000 francs, or both, and seized cannabis had to be confiscated and destroyed. A local promulgation order followed in December; the 1960 government later cited this decree when raising the penalties.

    10055−45 points

19143 entries2 score changes

  1. 🇵🇰 Pakistan Tightening ✓

    Punjab puts bhang, charas and ganja under excise licence

    The Punjab Excise Act consolidated the law on importing, transporting, making, selling and possessing intoxicating liquor and drugs, cannabis among them, so that they could be bought only from licensed vendors. Baluchistan followed with its own excise regulation in 1915. Pakistan kept this licensed trade after independence until General Zia's prohibition order closed the shops in 1979.

    10035−65 points

  2. 🇪🇬 Egypt Enforcement ✓

    A British subject's Cairo hashish café ends in a Maltese prison

    Alex Tanti, a British subject who ran a café in Cairo where hashish was smoked, had twice blocked Egyptian attempts to close it, declaring that the place was his and that as a British subject he opposed the order. The Egyptian authorities finally reported him to the British, and the Consular Court sentenced him to a year's hard labour for living off prostitution and three months for the drugs offence. He was sent to serve the sentence in the prison on Malta.

  3. 🇰🇪 Kenya Ban ✓ Article

    The East Africa Protectorate bans cannabis

    The Opium Ordinance of the British protectorate that became Kenya took effect and prohibited cannabis, which had been widely used there.

    1001−99 points

19132 entries1 score change

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article

    Bombay limits how much ganja and bhang a person may hold

    The Hemp Drugs Commission had recommended one limit for all of British India: five tolas of ganja or charas and a quarter of a seer of bhang. Bombay was the slowest to act, almost twenty years after the commission was set up. Its old customs law of 1878 had to be rewritten first, and that was done to stop cocaine hawkers, not out of concern about cannabis. A person could then carry five tolas of ganja, three of charas and twenty of bhang.

  2. 🇬🇾 Guyana Ban ✓

    British Guiana passes the Indian Hemp Ordinance

    The ordinance moved from licensing to prohibition, banning the growing and possession of cannabis. The historian James Mills, citing a 1924 Home Office file, describes it differently: imported cannabis had to be stored in a colonial bonded warehouse and released only to traders who had paid for a licence, the model Trinidad copied in 1915.

    499−40 points

19121 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓

    Paarl farmers ask South Africa to restrict dagga sales and cultivation

    The Paarl Farmers' Association petitioned the justice minister for stronger dagga controls, alleging harm to labourers' work and threats to white farm women. It supplied a newspaper account of a fifteen-year-old sent to buy dagga from a chemist, showing how the medicinal sales channel could supply other users. The association sought cultivation and sales restrictions through noxious-weed legislation; officials later pursued national drug control.

19111 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓ Article

    A second Transvaal survey again finds no dagga crisis

    A second Transvaal inquiry found that most responding officers did not support a total dagga prohibition, despite racist newspaper claims that smoking made people violent and threatened white women. The inquiry extended beyond mines to town magistrates and recorded differing views about consumption, youth and local regulation. Some officials defended workers' customs and feared that another prohibition would add to the burdens of colonial rule.

19101 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Tightening ✓ Article

    Ceylon assents to restrictions on possessing and supplying bhang and ganja

    The Opium Ordinance No. 5 of 1910 received assent. Sections 24–26 prohibited possession, transfer, gifts and sale of bhang or ganja, with a conditional exception for persons licensed to sell poisons. Section 1 required commencement by proclamation and allowed different dates for different provisions. This event records assent, not a verified commencement date.

19091 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓

    A Zululand magistrate seeks a dagga ban for children and women

    The Hlabisa magistrate asked colonial officials to prohibit dagga smoking by boys before puberty and by all women. The proposal formed part of a wider inquiry in which chiefs and officials disagreed about youth smoking, customary authority and whether restrictions could be enforced. Other magistrates preferred chiefly intervention or selective restrictions, while some officials defended adult men's established practices.

19081 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓ Article

    Transvaal mine managers see no need to ban dagga

    Mine inspectors, managers and pass officers generally advised against prohibiting dagga after a labour-bureau survey of cannabis use among African miners. Respondents described moderate use and worried that more restrictions would deter workers from coming to the gold mines. Some also reported miners using it for relief from dust-related breathing problems; these were contemporary beliefs and observations, not clinical findings.

19072 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇸🇩 Sudan Tightening ✓

    Sudan puts cannabis growing and supply under a separate hashish law

    Anglo-Egyptian Sudan prohibited unauthorised cannabis farming, processing, sales, possession, imports, exports and transport under a separate hashish ordinance. It covered herbal cannabis and resin, as well as unauthorised pharmaceutical use. Earlier contraband controls had already restricted cannabis imports and local manufacture.

  2. 🇸🇸 South Sudan Tightening ✓

    Sudan brings growing and possession under a separate hashish law

    The Anglo-Egyptian administration prohibited unauthorised cannabis growing, processing, sales, possession, imports, exports and transport under its hashish ordinance. The restrictions covered herbal cannabis and resin and unauthorised pharmaceutical use. The replacement ordinance published in 1924 expressly repealed the 1907 law.

19064 entries0 score changes

  1. August10
  2. June10
  3. April20

    1. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Debate ✓

      Ceylon proposes allowing licensed medicinal cannabis sales

      Ceylon published a proposal to let licensed dealers in poisons import, possess and sell cannabis under the rules governing their trade. Acting Attorney-General J. H. Templer explained that the 1905 ban had omitted permission for chemists to handle cannabis even though its medicinal usefulness was acknowledged. The draft would keep the prohibition on growing it.

    1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓

      Cape dagga farmers petition against chemists controlling their market

      A petition from 170 Middelburg farmers and supporters asked the Cape Legislative Council to reverse the cannabis poison listing. Growers complained that chemists, now the permitted sellers, could dictate purchase prices and resell the crop at large profits. Their representative challenged the medical evidence behind the restriction; a repeal was promised in 1907 while officials considered stronger controls over both sales and possession.

    1. 🇸🇩 Sudan Tightening ✓

      Sudan extends contraband penalties to local cannabis manufacture

      Sudan extended its contraband law to making or manufacturing listed goods inside the country, including cannabis. Unauthorised manufacture came within the same forfeiture and penalty rules as unlawful importation: up to seven years in prison, a fine of up to 500 Egyptian pounds, or both. Medical practitioners, licensed poison sellers and people specially permitted by the governor-general remained within the law's exceptions.

    2. 🇸🇸 South Sudan Tightening ✓

      Sudan extends its cannabis contraband controls to local manufacture

      The revision extended Sudan’s contraband penalties to making or manufacturing listed goods within the country, including cannabis. It retained the medical and specially permitted exceptions, with unlawful manufacture subject to forfeiture and up to seven years in prison, a fine of up to 500 Egyptian pounds, or both.

19052 entries1 score change

  1. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Tightening ✓ Article

    Ceylon bans growing and possessing cannabis plants

    Ceylon's colonial government enacted a ban on growing, possessing, importing or supplying cannabis plants and all their parts, punishable by up to 100 rupees, six months in prison, or both. A grower had won an appeal the previous year because the existing bhang and ganja prohibition did not cover growing plants. The new law also presumed occupiers responsible for cannabis on their land; officials proposed a medicinal exception in 1906 after finding that chemists had been left without permission to possess or sell it.

    498−41 points

  2. 🇿🇦 South Africa Tightening ✓ Article

    The Cape Colony lists dagga as a poison

    The Cape Colony classified cannabis as a poison, reserving sales to chemists while leaving smoking and possession unrestricted. Doctors and some politicians pressed for controls, but opponents in the Legislative Council disputed claims about insanity and harm to workers. Dagga farmers then protested the chemists' control over their market, and 170 growers and supporters petitioned for repeal in June 1906.

19042 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article

    Bengal finally stores its whole ganja crop in government warehouses

    The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission had urged public warehouses in 1894, but only in 1904 was the entire crop of Bengal's ganja-growing tract stored in them straight from the fields. A magistrate's report that year on ganja smuggling, by G. Rainy, proposed enlisting the railway police and every village watchman, who would visit the homes of convicted smugglers twice a night during the harvest.

  2. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Easing ✓

    Ceylon's top court rules growing plants fall outside the ganja ban

    A grower won his appeal against a 30-rupee fine for possessing ganja after an official found him weeding leased land planted with cannabis and other crops. Acting Chief Justice Moncreiff held that the law covered prepared bhang and ganja but did not include growing cannabis plants. The colonial government enacted an explicit prohibition on the plants the following year.

19032 entries1 score change

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Ban ✓ Article

    The Orange River Colony bans giving and receiving dagga

    Giving cannabis to another person, selling or exchanging it, and obtaining it from someone else became offences in the Orange River Colony. The ordinance followed the prosecution and fining of Africans under a military proclamation left over from the South African War. Neighbouring Transvaal officials also sought restrictions, but later inquiries among mine managers and local officers found substantial opposition to a ban.

  2. 🇨🇩 DR Congo Ban ✓ Article

    The Congo Free State bans growing and holding cannabis for smoking

    The Congo Free State prohibited growing, selling, transporting and holding cannabis for smoking, with penalties of 100 to 1,000 francs, fifteen days to a year of imprisonment, or either penalty alone. Growers could declare their crops within fifteen days for compensation after destruction, while village chiefs faced liability for fines unless they reported offences. The prohibition disrupted local supply networks; an amendment explicitly covering consumption and smoking equipment followed in 1917.

    1009−91 points

19021 entry1 score change

  1. 🇺🇬 Uganda Ban ✓

    The Uganda Protectorate bans cannabis

    The British colonial administration prohibited producing cannabis in any form, naming bhang, ganja and charas.

    1009−91 points

19013 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓

    Bombay restricts hemp growing to two tracts

    The Bombay Abkari Act Amendment (Act V of 1901) confined the cultivation of hemp to two tracts, in Satara and Ahmednagar districts. Their produce, and any drugs brought in from other provinces, had to be stored in government-controlled bonded warehouses. The chapter describes the rules as imposed from above, on the Bombay government's reading of the Hemp Drugs Commission.

  2. 🇸🇩 Sudan Tightening ✓ Article

    Sudan restricts cannabis imports under its contraband law

    Anglo-Egyptian Sudan restricted cannabis imports to qualified medical practitioners, licensed poison sellers and people specially permitted by the governor-general. Unlawful imports could bring up to seven years in prison, a fine of up to 500 Egyptian pounds, or both, and confiscation of the goods and their transport. The law was extended to local manufacture in 1906, before a separate hashish ordinance followed in 1907.

  3. 🇸🇸 South Sudan Tightening ✓

    Sudan’s contraband law restricts cannabis imports into the south

    Sudan, then including the territory of South Sudan, restricted Indian-hemp imports to qualified medical practitioners, licensed poison sellers and people specially permitted by the governor-general. Unlawful importation could bring forfeiture, transport confiscation and up to seven years in prison, a fine of up to 500 Egyptian pounds, or both. The revised edition marks the later extension to local manufacture in 1906.

18991 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Tightening ✓ Article

    Ceylon’s consolidated opium law retains the bhang and ganja prohibition

    Ordinance No. 5 of 1899, assented to on 20 October and gazetted on 27 October, replaced earlier ordinances while retaining offences for possessing or selling bhang, ganja or substances containing them. Section 16 allowed up to 50 rupees and three months’ imprisonment on first conviction, rising to 100 rupees and six months on later convictions; search, seizure and destruction powers continued. The date records assent, not a separately verified commencement notice.

18971 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Tightening ✓ Article

    Ceylon prohibits bhang and ganja imports, possession and sale

    Ordinance No. 9 of 1897, assented to on 15 November and published on 26 November, added bhang, ganja and substances containing them to the prohibited-import schedule. It also penalized possession and sale, authorized searches and seizures, and removed bhang from earlier licensing provisions. First convictions carried up to 50 rupees, three months’ imprisonment, or both; subsequent convictions up to 100 rupees, six months, or both. The date records assent; a separate commencement date was not established.

18931 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Tightening ✓ Article

    Ceylon limits opium and bhang retail licences in designated towns

    Ordinance No. 2 of 1893 allowed the Governor to extend a municipal licensing system beyond Colombo by proclamation. Designated municipal councils could grant at most five retail licences per year and local boards at most three; annual numbers had to be advertised. Published proclamations confirm commencement on 7 November and application to named towns from 17 November. The ordinance did not automatically cover every town on assent.

18891 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓

    Madras extends its excise law to hemp drugs

    The Madras Abkari Act of 1886 was extended in 1889 to intoxicating drugs prepared from the hemp plant, after the governor-general ordered the province to begin taxing ganja. At first the authorities only auctioned licences for sellers; cultivation was not confined to specific tracts until 1898. By 1900 the province had 433 licensed shops selling cannabis drugs, nearly 60 per cent more than two years earlier, and revenue that had been nil before 1889 reached 172,766 rupees.

18872 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓

    Natal's Indian immigration commission hears doctors condemn dagga

    Doctors in the sugar districts told the Indian Immigrant (Wragg) Commission of 1885–1887 that cannabis endangered life, health, sanity and social order among indentured workers, and that it incapacitated them for work. The commission gave the subject a section of its report, but no control beyond the 1870 law was introduced; workers judged to be suffering from overuse were treated in hospital.

  2. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓ Article

    Natal’s immigration commission recommends cannabis prohibition

    The Indian Immigrants Commission of 1885–1887 asked the Governor in Council to use section 70 of the 1870 law to prohibit cannabis use and possession among Indian immigrants. Paterson reports that no implementing rule appears to have followed; Waetjen likewise finds no additional legal controls. This was a recommendation rather than a verified tightening of an operative ban.

18841 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓ Article

    A Natal medical officer’s cannabis prohibition proposal stalls

    The Medical Officer of Pietermaritzburg Circle requested cannabis prohibition in 1884. According to the 1887 commission report as reproduced by Paterson, the Executive Council divided over the proposal and issued no rule. The episode records an unsuccessful initiative, not a new cannabis offence.

18812 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓

    The Central Provinces restrict where ganja may be grown

    A system of restricted cultivation comparable to Bengal's Ganja Mahal was introduced in the Central Provinces, the only province to follow Bengal before the Hemp Drugs Commission. Officials there had argued that rising liquor taxes were pushing drinkers towards ganja, which was largely untaxed, and that restriction was practicable because hemp was not grown there for fibre.

  2. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓

    British India passes its first act restricting hemp drugs

    Until then cannabis was grown for household use or gathered wild without restriction. Act XXII of 1881 restricted the use of the drugs; twelve years later the government appointed the Hemp Drugs Commission to examine the whole question.

18782 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Tightening ✓ Article

    Ceylon’s bhang licensing law preserves a medicinal exception

    Ordinance No. 4 of 1878 penalized unlicensed possession or sale of opium and bhang, including preparations containing them, while section 13 excepted genuine medicinal possession and retail sale by medical practitioners or druggists. These provisions are reproduced in the 1891 Jansz v. Usubu Lebbe report. The original ordinance was not inspected, and the record does not assume immediate island-wide operation.

  2. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓

    Bombay's excise law defines ganja and bhang as intoxicating drugs

    The Bombay Abkari Act (Act V of 1878) brought cannabis into the province's excise law, defining intoxicating drugs as ganja, bhang and every preparation of them. Until then revenue had come from auctioning the right to retail. From 1 January 1881 makers of ganja and other hemp drugs needed a licence from the local collector, and wholesalers needed permits to import, export or move the drugs between districts. Cultivation was not restricted.

18762 entries1 score change

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article

    Bengal puts ganja growers, stores and exports under licence

    Act II of 1876 required a licence to grow hemp in Bengal's ganja tract, another to store the drug and a permit to take it out, so that the duty charged on wholesalers could be checked against what was produced. A deputy collector sent to survey the tract that year, Hem Chunder Kerr, had the fields measured and found 3,111 bighas under hemp where the growers had declared 2,113.

  2. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh Tightening ✓

    Bengal puts its ganja growers and stores under licence

    Bengal brought growers, stores and exports of ganja under licence, tightening the control that had begun with licences for sellers in 1793. Growing was concentrated around Naogaon, in today's northern Bangladesh, where the crop later passed through government warehouses to licensed shops. That licensed trade lasted until independent Bangladesh banned growing in 1987 and sales in 1989.

    9632−64 points

18741 entry1 score change

  1. 🇲🇲 Myanmar Ban ✓ Article

    British India prohibits hemp drugs in Burma

    After its inquiry of 1872 concluded that habitual use of hemp drugs tends to produce insanity, the Government of India prohibited their cultivation and use in Burma, while it went on licensing and taxing them in India. Importing them by sea was prohibited in 1874, and possession was illegal by the end of the decade. Indian workers, soldiers and police in Burma went on wanting ganja, and by the 1890s officials in Rangoon admitted that the prohibition was ineffective there. The exact year of the first order is not given in the sources read.

    10011−89 points

18701 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Tightening ✓ Article

    Natal authorizes cannabis restrictions targeting Indian immigrants

    Section 70 of Natal’s Law No. 2 of 1870 supplied powers for cannabis restrictions directed at Indian immigrants. Paterson’s reading of the 1887 commission report distinguishes those powers from implementing rules: the commission still asked the Governor in Council to exercise them. This verifies an enabling measure, not the commencement of a general cannabis ban; the original statute and implementing notices remain uninspected.

18671 entry1 score change

  1. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Ban ✓ Article

    Ceylon restricts cannabis sales to licensed dealers

    Ceylon required dealers selling cannabis, called bhang, to hold a licence under a law covering both opium and cannabis. A Legislative Council committee supported licensing to restrict use and help police supervise places where the drugs were consumed. Licensed cannabis sales continued under later local rules before the colony prohibited possession and sale in 1897.

    10049−51 points

18611 entry1 score change

  1. 🇬🇾 Guyana Ban ✓ Article

    British Guiana regulates the sale of bhang

    Ordinance No. 22 licensed the sale of ganja and bhang. The chapter describes the measure as anticipatory: officials introduced it before cannabis was treated as a significant local problem.

    10049−51 points

18541 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article

    Bengal confines ganja growing to a single supervised tract

    Rules issued by the government of Bengal at the end of 1853 ended the loose system of revenue farming. From 1854 cannabis could be grown for drugs only in a 6,000-acre area near Naogaon in Rajshahi district, the Ganja Mahal, under a special deputy collector. Growers needed a licence, the harvest was weighed and stamped by excise officers, and the crop went through a government warehouse where duty was paid before licensed dealers could take it.

18261 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇾 Malaysia Other law ✓

    Britain taxes bhang in Malacca

    After acquiring Dutch Malacca, the British authorities began taxing the production of bhang.

17981 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Debate ✓ Article

    Bengal’s Board recommends taxation rather than total prohibition

    In letter No. 22 of 29 May 1798, the Bengal Board advised the Governor-General in Council against altogether prohibiting the sale of the intoxicants it examined, including ganja, bhang and charas. It proposed restraining use and improving revenue through suitable taxation. The 1894 commission reproduces this recommendation. The reviewed passage does not establish a British parliamentary tax act or the immediate enactment of a particular tariff.

17932 entries1 score change

  1. 🇮🇳 India Other law ✓

    The East India Company starts licensing the ganja trade in Bengal

    From 1793 a retailer of ganja had to buy a licence from the local colonial officer before going to the growers. Having paid, he could buy as much as he wanted and sell it where he liked. Until the 1850s the Company was content with that income and did not concern itself with how much was grown or used.

  2. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh Tightening ✓

    Ganja sellers in Bengal need a licence from the East India Company

    From 1793 anyone retailing ganja in Bengal, which included today's Bangladesh, had to buy a licence from the local colonial officer. Once licensed, a seller could buy as much as he wanted from the growers and sell it where he liked; the Company cared about the income, not about how much was grown or smoked.

    10096−4 points

Most entries

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

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