Court ruling
A court decides a case or the validity of a law.
233 entries, 1891–2026 · 19 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Court ruling 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.
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Enforcement ✓ Article
Zimbabwe reports a four-year prison term for 19.49 kg of cannabis
Prosecutors reported that Clever Makwarimba, a fifty-three-year-old man from Zvishavane, received an effective four-year prison sentence for unlawful possession of 19.49 kg of cannabis. Detectives acting on a tip searched his travelling bag and satchel on the Beitbridge–Masvingo Highway on 11 July and found eight large packages. The report came after separate medical-production and industrial-hemp licensing routes had been introduced.
🇰🇪 Kenya Other law ✓
Kenya's High Court upholds the cannabis ban against a Rastafari challenge
Justice Bahati Mwamuye dismissed in its entirety a petition by the Rastafari Society of Kenya against the provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act that criminalise possessing, using and growing cannabis. The society had asked only for an exemption for private use in worship. The court found that the petitioners had not proved a violation of their rights, that any limit was justified by public health and safety, and that they had not first used other legal and administrative routes. The judge added that cannabis use is now widespread, questioned whether scarce enforcement resources should go on small amounts, and called for a full and frank conversation, while saying that a change of policy belongs to other institutions and not the courts.
🇳🇦 Namibia Other law ✓ Article
Namibia's High Court declines to rule on the cannabis ban
Judge Claudia Claasen upheld the government's special plea and ended, at this stage, the challenge filed in 2021. She held that cannabis policy is primarily for the executive and the legislature, that the dispute involves public health, law enforcement and social policy together, and that a court should not interfere while the government is reviewing the legislation. She did not decide whether the ban is constitutional.
202510 entries0 score changes
🇧🇬 Bulgaria Other law ✓
Bulgaria's Constitutional Court upholds taking the cars of drugged drivers
A car driven after alcohol or drug use is confiscated if the driver owns it; otherwise its value is charged. The Supreme Court of Cassation and a district judge in Svilengrad had asked whether that squares with the constitution. The court held that it does, by seven judges to five.
🇦🇩 Andorra Tightening ✓
Andorra's Constitutional Court rules that CBD flower is a drug
The court dismissed the appeal of a resident who spent more than a year in prison after being caught at the border with just over half a kilo of cannabis flowers sold as CBD, and was then expelled for five years. It held that under the Penal Code any cannabis containing THC, however little, counts as a toxic drug.
🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea Tightening ✓
Madang court gives two men 25 years for marijuana
Six people were convicted under the Controlled Substance Act. Four received five years and two received 25 years each for possessing 14–20 kg, with the court relying on the quantity and the need for deterrence.
🇷🇺 Russia Debate ✓
Russia's Supreme Court proposes softer penalties for personal possession
The plenum of Russia's Supreme Court put forward a bill to soften the punishment for keeping drugs for personal use and, in some cases, to replace prison with treatment for addiction. In 2024 about 50,800 people had been convicted under Article 228, roughly one in ten of all convictions.
🇲🇨 Monaco Enforcement ✓
A Monaco court convicts a pensioner over 15 g of cannabis and CBD products
A Monegasque man born in 1956, with a clean record, was tried for possession and use of narcotics after a search of his home found 15.62 g of cannabis, a CBD spray and CBD chewing gum. The prosecutor cited a ministerial order banning cannabis and its derivatives, including CBD, even at low THC levels, and asked for three months suspended. The defence argued that CBD is legal in the neighbouring countries. The court gave one month in prison, suspended, with two years' probation and an obligation to undergo care.
🇭🇺 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.
🇷🇴 Romania Medical ✓
Romanian prosecutors charge a couple carrying prescribed cannabis
A Romanian couple living in Britain were held for hours at Bucharest airport, charged with importing drugs and had their cannabis seized despite their medical papers. The Bucharest Court of Appeal later overturned the indictment and the seizure. The government had said that cannabis prescribed by doctors elsewhere in the European Union would be accepted.
🇵🇹 Portugal Other law ✓
Portugal's top court says drug detection is not influence
A uniform judgment published on 15 July 2024, about an insurer's claim after a crash, held that the insurer must prove the driver was under the influence of a psychotropic substance in a way that diminished the fitness to drive safely, shown by a medical or expert examination. In that case 0.8 ng/mL of THC and 4.3 ng/mL of THC-COOH, without such a report, did not establish influence. The judgment does not itself decide every administrative driving case.
🇧🇷 Brazil Easing ✓ Article
Brazil's Supreme Court decriminalises personal possession
After a case that ran for nine years, the court ruled that possessing cannabis for personal use is not a crime. Up to 40 g or six female plants is presumed to be personal use and is handled with a warning or an educational course. It is still prohibited, and the cannabis is seized.
1523+8 points
🇵🇫 French Polynesia Enforcement ✓
A Tahiti father who grew cannabis for his epileptic son is acquitted
The court in Papeete acquitted a father prosecuted for two years over about a hundred plants grown in Taravao to make oil for his son; the prosecutor had asked it to waive punishment. Growing for therapy remained prohibited.
🇵🇫 French Polynesia Enforcement ✓
A Papeete court fines Guy Laliberté for cannabis possession and use
The Cirque du Soleil founder, investigated since 2019 over cannabis plants on his atoll, was convicted of possession and use and fined 2 million francs, and cleared of most other charges. The prosecutor had also asked for a six-month suspended sentence and rejected his reliance on a Canadian prescription.
🇳🇷 Nauru Enforcement ✓ Article
Nauru fines two adults after a one-gram cannabis case
Two adults received fines of A$1,500 each, community service and one year’s probation after pleading guilty in a one-gram cannabis case. A teenager received a A$200 fine and one month’s community service, with no conviction recorded. The magistrate considered imprisonment disproportionate for the adults, months before parliament introduced mandatory custody for possession.
🇫🇯 Fiji Enforcement ✓ Article
Fiji’s appeal court cuts two cannabis growers’ prison terms by four years
Waisake Kaloulia’s nineteen-year cannabis cultivation sentence was reduced to fifteen years, and Kaminieli Naqeleca’s eighteen years to fourteen. The Court of Appeal applied its newer plant-count and role guidelines to the men’s older case, involving a remote plantation with at least 208 whole plants confirmed in the analyst’s report. Both convictions stood, while the periods before parole eligibility also fell.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Enforcement ✓ Article
Vanuatu suspends a five-plant sentence after months already spent in custody
A first offender who grew five cannabis plants weighing 15.5 grams received a suspended sentence, sixty hours of community work and six months’ supervision. Brightly Kaiding had already spent three months and two days in custody before bail, which the court deducted from a nine-month term, leaving five months and twenty-eight days suspended for two years. The court treated the grow under the least serious category of the 2013 cultivation guidance.
🇲🇴 Macau Easing ✓ Article
Macau’s top court keeps one drug conviction for linked growing and selling
A cannabis grower’s combined sentence stayed at nine years three months after Macau’s top court rejected prosecutors’ demand for separate production and trafficking convictions. His growing, keeping, giving and selling cannabis formed one continuous operation under a single plan; the appeal court had reduced an earlier twelve-year combined sentence. The top court also refused the grower’s request for a further reduction, citing the operation’s duration and scale.
🇲🇿 Mozambique Enforcement ✓ Article
Mozambique's top court cuts a cannabis seller's sentence to six years
The Supreme Court reduced Raiva Rafael Meponda's seventeen-year sentence to six years and a 30,000-metical fine after police found 590 grams of cannabis in 232 portions at his Maputo home. The judges rejected his personal-use argument but treated his simple, direct sales without an organisation as small-scale trafficking. His role as a police officer counted against him when the court chose the sentence.
202313 entries0 score changes
🇨🇭 Switzerland Easing ✓ Article
Swiss Federal Court: up to 10 g may not be confiscated
The court went a step beyond its 2017 ruling and held that police have no basis to seize up to 10 g that an adult holds for their own use.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong Enforcement ✓
Hong Kong jails a traveller in its first CBD imprisonment case
A traveller received two months overall after convictions for possessing CBD, possessing ketamine and having injection equipment. Officers had found two personal-care bottles containing about 5 g of CBD, about 2.2 g of ketamine and ten syringes after her arrival from the United States in March. Customs described the July sentence as the first imprisonment since CBD became a dangerous drug in February 2023.
🇫🇯 Fiji Other law ✓ Article
Fiji’s appeal court sentences growers by plant count and their role
Cannabis growers would be sentenced according to the number of plants and whether they led the operation, managed it or played a lesser role. The Court of Appeal set a non-custodial to suspended-sentence range for lesser-role cultivation of fewer than ten plants for personal use, and a sixteen-to-twenty-year range for leaders growing at least 100 plants. The new guidelines addressed conflicting approaches based on plant weight; Jone Seru’s own nine-year sentence for growing twenty plants stood.
🇬🇭 Ghana Other law ✓
Ghana's Supreme Court refuses to revisit its cannabis ruling
A nine-judge panel voted five to four to dismiss the Attorney-General's application for review, leaving the licensing clause struck down. Parliament restored licensing by amending the law that July.
🇺🇬 Uganda Other law ✓
Uganda's Constitutional Court strikes down the 2015 drug law
The court annulled the Narcotic Drugs Act because parliament had passed it without a quorum. The judiciary stressed that the ruling did not legalise cannabis. Parliament passed a replacement, and that Act commenced on 14 April 2025. The national score stays on the earlier ban until then.
202220 entries2 score changes
🇮🇳 India Enforcement ✓
An Indian court asks police to prove rats ate 581 kg of seized ganja
Asked by a special NDPS court in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, to produce marijuana seized by two police stations, police said rats had eaten more than 500 kg of it. The prosecutor told the court that "being small in size, the rats have no fear of the police". In an order of 18 November 2022 the court told the district's senior police superintendent to deal with the rats and to bring proof that they had eaten 581 kg, and issued directions for auctioning or disposing of drugs stored in police warehouses.
🇧🇼 Botswana Other law ✓ Article
Botswana's Court of Appeal overturns the ruling that restored a cannabis exemption
On 21 January 2022 the Gaborone High Court had restored Fresh Standard's exemption to cultivate cannabis and industrial hemp. The state appealed, arguing that the company had brought its review outside the four-month period, and the Court of Appeal, in a judgment delivered by Judge President Tebogo Tau and reported on 8 November, set the High Court ruling aside with costs.
🇲🇴 Macau Easing ✓ Article
Macau’s top court cuts two home growers’ sentences for a single plant
Two first offenders who grew one cannabis plant for personal use had their combined prison sentences reduced from five years nine months each to one year nine months and two years. The plant yielded 37.208 grams of leaves and flowers, above the five-day reference quantity, but the top court applied the lesser production tier after considering the whole case. The ruling showed how the lesser tier remained available under the stricter personal-use rules introduced in 2017.
🇿🇦 South Africa Easing ✓
South Africa's top court bars criminal diversion of children
The Constitutional Court confirmed that criminalising a child's use or possession of cannabis is invalid. It suspended that finding for 24 months and, during the suspension, ordered that no child may be arrested, prosecuted or diverted for that contravention. A child who is apprehended may be referred to civil processes. Use or possession by a child is still not permitted. Dealing, and an adult who uses a child to possess or use cannabis, are outside the order. The 2024 Act that would replace this criminal rule has not come into force.
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Debate ✓ Article
Timor-Leste’s president urges a different approach to cannabis
President José Ramos-Horta urged Timor-Leste to distinguish cannabis from methamphetamine and heroin, and to reconsider the costs of punitive prohibition. Speaking to Parliament after cannabis investigations in Dili, he criticised procedural failures that could undermine the presumption of innocence and argued for considering medical and economic uses. His intervention followed the justice minister’s call for tougher penalties; in November he again advocated medical cannabis in his independence-anniversary address.
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Debate ✓
Timor-Leste’s justice minister asks for tougher drug penalties
Justice Minister Tiago Amaral Sarmento asked Parliament to increase drug penalties and reconsider how cases were tried. His comments followed the release under court supervision of nine Dili suspects and criticism of the prosecution’s charges. A month later, President José Ramos-Horta urged a different direction, calling for cannabis to be distinguished from drugs such as methamphetamine and heroin.
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Enforcement ✓
Timor-Leste arrests nine in a Dili drug operation involving cannabis
Police and intelligence officers arrested nine suspects in Dili on 11–12 August; TATOLI reported seizures including suspected cannabis and methamphetamine. The district court imposed identity-and-residence declarations and periodic reporting, a decision later challenged publicly by a student movement. Justice Minister Tiago Amaral Sarmento also called for stronger penalties and criticised the prosecution’s handling of the case.
🇬🇭 Ghana Tightening ✓
Ghana's Supreme Court strikes down the cannabis licensing clause
By four votes to three the court declared section 43 of the Narcotics Control Commission Act, 2020 null and void. The section let the minister license cannabis with no more than 0.3% THC for fibre, seed or medicine. In a case brought by Ezuame Mannan, the court held that Parliament had not followed the constitution's procedure for passing bills.
🇮🇩 Indonesia Medical ✓
Indonesia's Constitutional Court rejects medical cannabis
The court dismissed a challenge brought by mothers of children with serious illnesses, leaving the absolute ban on using Class I narcotics for health care in place. It urged the government to carry out research that lawmakers could use when reconsidering the policy.
🇹🇿 Tanzania Enforcement ✓ Article
Tanzania overturns a thirty-year cannabis sentence over gaps in the evidence
Agnetha Sebastian won her appeal against a thirty-year sentence for alleged possession of 414 g of cannabis. The Court of Appeal found that the prosecution had not established the chain of custody connecting the seized parcel with samples sent for examination, leaving reasonable doubt. It reversed the conviction and ordered her release unless she was lawfully held for another reason.
🇦🇹 Austria Debate ✓
Austria's Constitutional Court refuses to hear a challenge to the cannabis ban
A man caught late in 2020 by two plain-clothes officers with a half-smoked joint asked the court to strike down the prohibition, arguing that cannabis carries less risk of dependence than nicotine or alcohol. The court had opened proceedings in February and asked the government to justify the ban. It then declined unanimously: cannabis, unlike alcohol and tobacco, is covered by international treaties, and how to regulate drugs is for parliament. The decision was made public on 18 July.
🇺🇸 United States Hemp ✓
A federal appeals court treats delta-8 products as lawful hemp
In AK Futures v. Boyd Street Distro, a trademark dispute and the first case on delta-8 THC before a US court of appeals, the Ninth Circuit held that the products could be protected as trademarks and, in passing, that they were lawful under the 2018 hemp definition. Federal courts later upheld state laws that restricted or banned delta-8, among them Virginia's and Wyoming's.
🇮🇳 India Other law ✓
Karnataka's High Court rules bhang is not prohibited
The court held that bhang does not fall under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.
🇧🇷 Brazil Medical ✓
Brazil's Superior Court of Justice allows medical home growing
The sixth panel of the Superior Court of Justice unanimously authorised three people to grow cannabis at home for therapeutic purposes. The decision became guidance for courts across the country and led to a large increase in court orders for domestic cultivation, though only for those able to go to court.
20217 entries1 score change
🇳🇷 Nauru Other law ✓
Nauru gives cannabis field-test certificates a defined role in court
Appointed officers could identify seized cannabis with specified colour-change tests and submit certificates that courts had to accept unless materially disproved. The regulations took effect on 27 August 2021 and replaced the earlier 2016 drug-analysis rules, while leaving existing proceedings under those rules. A 2024 one-gram cannabis prosecution later relied on a police test using the KN reagent system.
🇳🇦 Namibia Debate ✓
Namibian cannabis users challenge the ban in the High Court
Brian Jaftha, president of Ganja Users of Namibia and of the Rastafari United Front, and the group's secretary general Borro Ndungula asked the Windhoek High Court to declare the prohibition on adult possession and use of cannabis unconstitutional. They argued that the ban rests on outdated views and was partly motivated by a racist political agenda against the Rastafari religion. The government answered that the justice minister had approved a review of the cannabis laws by the Law Reform and Development Commission, so the claim was premature.
20207 entries0 score changes
🇹🇼 Taiwan Easing ✓
Taiwan's top court rejects the five-year minimum for growing cannabis
In Interpretation No. 790 the Council of Grand Justices found the mandatory minimum of five years for growing cannabis disproportionate, in the case of a Tainan man sentenced for six potted plants grown for his own use, and gave lawmakers a year to amend the law.
🏳️ Abkhazia Death penalty ✓
Abkhazia limits life and death sentences where drug cases have mitigation
A March 2020 amendment recast the highest drug-supply and import tiers with a fifteen-year prison term and a fine, reserving life imprisonment or death for cases without mitigating circumstances. The Supreme Court’s 2025 guidance expressly barred life or death where mitigation existed and explained further sentencing reductions for specified cooperation circumstances.
201911 entries2 score changes
🇮🇹 Italy Easing ✓ 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
🇸🇨 Seychelles Other law ✓
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 Geers’s separate cannabis case. The majority held that the Constitutional Court could not grant that remedy after finding no breach of his constitutional rights; Geers’s own appeal also failed. Two judges dissented on lifting the order, while agreeing that his appeal should be dismissed.
🇸🇨 Seychelles Medical ✓ Article
Seychelles court orders medical drug rules after a mother’s 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 Alzheimer’s 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.
🇺🇸 United States · Colorado Other law ✓
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.
🇷🇸 Serbia Enforcement ✓ Article
Serbia’s top court keeps three years for preparing cannabis to sell
Marko Luković’s 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.
🇧🇭 Bahrain Enforcement ✓ 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.
20187 entries3 score changes
🇰🇮 Kiribati Enforcement ✓
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.
🇸🇪 Sweden Medical ✓
The European Court of Human Rights rules in a Swedish medical cannabis case
In Thörn 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.
20179 entries2 score changes
🇨🇭 Switzerland Easing ✓ 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
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Enforcement ✓
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 months’ 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.
201610 entries0 score changes
🇶🇦 Qatar Death penalty ✓
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.
🇬🇪 Georgia Easing ✓
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.
🇸🇨 Seychelles Easing ✓
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 judiciary’s 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.
🇰🇮 Kiribati Enforcement ✓ 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.
20157 entries3 score changes
🇬🇪 Georgia Easing ✓ 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
🇰🇮 Kiribati Enforcement ✓
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.
🇻🇬 British Virgin Islands Other law ✓
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.
🇨🇱 Chile Easing ✓
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
20145 entries1 score change
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Easing ✓ Article
Vanuatu’s appeal court separates personal growing from commercial crops
Vanuatu’s 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. Wetul’s own immediate two-year-four-month term was replaced with seven months suspended for two years, alongside supervision and community work.
🇨🇿 Czechia Other law ✓ 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.
20124 entries0 score changes
20111 entry0 score changes
20101 entry0 score changes
20092 entries1 score change
🇦🇷 Argentina Easing ✓ Article
Argentina's Supreme Court protects private use
In the Arriola ruling the court held that punishing an adult for holding a small amount for personal use in private is unconstitutional. The law itself was never changed and no gram limit was set, so judges decide case by case.
1120+9 points
🇮🇩 Indonesia Easing ✓
Indonesia's Supreme Court issues initial guidance on rehabilitation for drug users
Supreme Court Circular 7/2009 addressed placing drug users in therapy and rehabilitation facilities. The court's archive dates it to 17 March 2009. A later Transnational Institute review describes conditions and procedures distinguishing users from dealers by quantities found at arrest, and records that a 2010 circular revised the guidance. This introduced a route within the criminal-law framework, not decriminalisation or an automatic entitlement to rehabilitation. The account relies on the official catalogue and the retrospective review; the original scanned circular has not been successfully read.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Hemp ✓
EU court rejects Lithuania's blanket prohibition of qualifying fibre hemp
In criminal proceedings against Edgar Babanov, the Court of Justice held that EU agricultural rules precluded national legislation prohibiting cultivation and possession of fibre hemp covered by Regulation 1782/2003. National courts could not apply conflicting prohibitions to that hemp. The order concerned qualifying agricultural hemp, not a general right to grow intoxicating cannabis.
🇮🇹 Italy Other law ✓
Italy's highest criminal court rules that growing cannabis for yourself is a crime
A grower in Lombardy had been convicted for seven cannabis plants. Lower courts disagreed on whether growing for your own use was a crime, and the Court of Cassation's united sections settled it: any unauthorised growing was, however small and whatever the purpose, and the conviction stood. Only plants that could not produce anything with a noticeable drug effect fell outside the offence. Later rulings changed this, and in 2019 the court accepted minimal home growing.
🇮🇹 Italy Easing ✓
Italy's Court of Cassation orders a retrial for a Rastafarian convicted of dealing
Carabinieri found a man asleep in his car, and he handed them 97 grams of loose marijuana, saying it was for his own use as a Rastafarian. He was sentenced to sixteen months in prison and a €4,000 fine for holding it for supply, and the conviction was upheld on appeal in 2004. The Court of Cassation found the courts had relied on the weight and ignored his religion and the circumstances, and sent the case to the Florence appeal court to be judged again.
🇵🇪 Peru Other law ✓
Peru's Constitutional Court overturns a retroactive cannabis-cultivation conviction
In Jorge Isidro Murga's habeas corpus case, the Constitutional Court annulled a conviction and returned the proceedings to the prosecution stage. The cultivation facts occurred in May 2003, before Law 28002 introduced the cannabis-cultivation offence applied to him. The court found that applying that provision retroactively violated criminal legality. It required the trial judge to reconsider the custody measure rather than ordering immediate release, and did not establish a general right to cultivate cannabis after the 2003 law.
🇶🇦 Qatar Death penalty ✓
A Doha court sentences a man to death over 160 kg of hashish
An Iranian man was sentenced, unanimously and in his absence, to death by firing squad for trying to bring 160 kilograms of hashish into Qatar. He had slipped away from detectives about seven months earlier.
🇨🇿 Czechia Medical ✓
Czech Supreme Court requires individual assessment of therapeutic cannabis cultivation
In case 3 Tdo 52/2008, the Supreme Court quashed an appeal decision against a woman growing cannabis for therapeutic preparations and returned the case for reconsideration. It rejected the offence classification used below and found that the specific treatment circumstances could lack the social harmfulness required for a crime. The ruling did not create a general medical-cannabis licence or prevent other production or possession offences from applying in different cases.
🇸🇪 Sweden Medical ✓
A Swedish court jails a multiple sclerosis patient for cannabis
The woman, a first offender, was given an unconditional prison sentence; the court treated her statement that cannabis eased her symptoms as an aggravating circumstance. The medicines agency reported that year that no cannabinoid drug was available in Sweden.
🇨🇦 Canada Medical ✓
Canada's Federal Court strikes down the one-patient limit on designated growers
In Sfetkopoulos, the Federal Court declared paragraph 41(b.1) of the medical-access regulations invalid under section 7 of the Charter. The rule prevented a designated grower from holding more than one production licence. The court set aside refusals of applications naming a common producer and returned them to the minister for reconsideration; it did not abolish medical licensing or legalise recreational cultivation.
20071 entry0 score changes
20062 entries0 score changes
🇲🇺 Mauritius Easing ✓
Mauritius's final appeal court upholds judicial power to consider bail in drug cases
In State v Khoyratty, the Privy Council dismissed the State's appeal against the invalidation of an absolute bar on bail in specified drug cases. It upheld the Supreme Court's separation-of-powers reasoning: the constitutional amendment supporting the bar had not met the special requirements protecting the democratic state, leaving Section 32 of the Dangerous Drugs Act without valid constitutional support. The defendant faced a heroin-selling charge; the ruling concerned the wider drug-case bail framework, including cannabis offences within its scope. It restored judicial consideration of bail rather than requiring release in every case.
🇧🇷 Brazil Easing ✓
Brazil's Supreme Court rejects the blanket ban on prison-regime progression
By six votes to five in HC 82,959, the Supreme Federal Court held unconstitutional the provision requiring an entire sentence under the Heinous Crimes Law to be served in a closed regime. That provision also covered drug trafficking. The case itself concerned a sexual offence; the court's report discussed its relevance to cannabis suppliers. Progression required assessment by the execution judge rather than automatic release, and the ruling arose from review in an individual case.
20056 entries0 score changes
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Medical ✓
England and Wales rejects medical necessity defences in cannabis appeals
In Quayle and related cases, the Court of Appeal rejected attempts to justify continuing unlicensed cannabis activities through a medical necessity defence. It held that the proposed defence conflicted with the statutory licensing scheme and rejected the claimed grounds involving chronic pain. The judgment concerned England and Wales and did not establish a new cannabis offence or a prescribing route.
🇩🇪 Germany Medical ✓
Germany's administrative court opens the way to individual medical cannabis permits
In case 3 C 17.04, the Federal Administrative Court held that treating an individual patient could serve the public interest required for an exceptional cannabis acquisition permit. It ordered the federal medicines authority to reconsider a multiple sclerosis patient's application. The court did not itself grant a permit; the authority still had to exercise its discretion and examine the other statutory requirements.
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🏳️ Transnistria Other law ✓ Article
Transnistria’s top court tells judges to treat drug gifts as supply
Giving cannabis to another person without payment counted as supply under the Supreme Court’s guidance, alongside selling, exchanging or lending drugs. Judges were also told to treat gathering wild hemp as acquisition and unauthorised sowing as completed once seeds or seedlings were planted, even if nothing grew. The court drew on the 2002 drug law to explain how the existing offences applied.
🇩🇪 Germany Easing ✓
Germany's Constitutional Court rejects driving penalties based solely on trace THC detection
In 1 BvR 2652/03, the Federal Constitutional Court overturned a cannabis driving fine and driving ban and remanded the case. The lower courts had relied on THC below 0.5 nanograms per millilitre without distinguishing detection from a possible effect on driving. The Court required a concentration capable of supporting the statutory assumption of an abstract traffic danger and discussed the then-used 1 nanogram threshold. This limited trace-only findings under the existing traffic offence; it was neither a general guarantee of safe driving nor the later statutory THC limit.
🇭🇺 Hungary Tightening ✓
Hungary's constitutional court narrows drug diversion exemptions
In decision 54/2004, dated 13 December, the Constitutional Court ordered several diversion exemptions annulled on publication, including provisions covering offering or handing over drugs for joint consumption. It found the joint-consumption criteria too uncertain and also required legislation addressing the protection of minors. The ruling retained the exemption for small-quantity cultivation, production, acquisition or possession for personal use, conditional on six consecutive months of treatment, other drug-use assistance or preventive counselling certified before the first-instance judgment. It rejected the broader challenge to criminal penalties for personal cultivation and possession.
🇧🇪 Belgium Other law ✓
Belgium's constitutional court annuls the vague cannabis registration exception
In judgment 158/2004, the Court of Arbitration annulled Article 16 of the Law of 3 May 2003, which allowed police registration alone for adult personal cannabis possession without problematic use or public nuisance. It found the quantity, problematic-use and nuisance criteria insufficiently precise for criminal-law legality. The Court preserved the provision's effects until publication of the judgment in the Belgian Official Gazette, which followed on 28 October. The ruling concerned the special reporting exception; personal possession had remained an offence under the 2003 framework.
🇲🇴 Macau Enforcement ✓
Macau’s top court treats shared-cost cannabis supply as trafficking
Macau’s top court upheld a cannabis trafficking conviction, ruling that providing cannabis to other people counted as supply even when they shared the purchase cost. The old law’s lesser-quantity tier used a three-day personal-use reference, which the court placed at six to eight grams for cannabis; the quantity supplied exceeded it. Macau’s 2009 replacement later introduced a daily-reference table for assessing lesser production and trafficking.
🇩🇪 Germany Other law ✓
Germany's Constitutional Court rejects a renewed cannabis-law referral as inadmissible
In 2 BvL 8/02, the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a referral from Bernau's youth court seeking reconsideration of cannabis penalties after the 1994 constitutional decision. It found that the referral failed to establish the relevance of the challenged provisions to the case and did not satisfy the requirements for reopening questions covered by the earlier ruling. The operative decision was procedural inadmissibility, although its reasons addressed the renewed arguments. Existing cannabis penalties remained in place.
🇹🇯 Tajikistan Other law ✓ Article
Tajikistan’s top court tells judges to apply lighter laws to old sentences
The Supreme Court told judges to review existing sentences under a criminal-law reform that had taken effect on 22 May. Its public guidance required release where conduct was no longer criminal and a reduction to the new maximum where a penalty had been lowered. The code separately grouped possession and cultivation into quantity bands in the later consolidated text.
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🇨🇦 Canada Other law ✓
Canada's Supreme Court upholds cannabis possession prohibitions
In Malmo-Levine and Caine, the Supreme Court dismissed constitutional challenges to prohibitions on simple possession and possession for trafficking. The majority held that Parliament could criminalise cannabis possession while remaining free to decriminalise it through legislation. The judgment upheld existing offences rather than introducing a new possession ban.
🇭🇷 Croatia Other law ✓
Croatia's first decriminalisation is struck down with the law that carried it
A large amendment to the criminal code, passed in July 2003 and due to apply from 1 December, limited the possession offence to drugs held for sale. Possession 'for one's own needs', as it was called in the debate, would have stopped being a crime, as it had not been before 1996. The Constitutional Court repealed the whole amending act, and possession stayed a crime until 2013.
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🇨🇭 Switzerland Hemp ✓
Switzerland upholds cannabis-sachet convictions despite scent-product labelling
In BGE 126 IV 198, the Federal Supreme Court rejected a hemp-shop operator's challenge concerning cannabis sold as scented sachets and pillows. The products contained 0.5–2.5 percent THC; the Court used existing agricultural and food limits as benchmarks, including the then 0.3 percent industrial-hemp limit. It held that conditional intent could suffice when the seller knowingly accepted narcotic use of the products. Signed warnings to customers did not overcome the circumstances demonstrating that acceptance. The judgment applied existing prohibition rather than creating a new statutory THC threshold.
🇧🇴 Bolivia Other law ✓
Bolivia's Constitutional Tribunal upholds challenged drug-case procedural rules
Constitutional Judgment 11/2000 rejected a challenge to Articles 108 and 109 of Law 1008 as amended by the 1996 sworn-bail law. The applicant argued that restrictions on preliminary issues and provisional release violated the presumption of innocence and defence rights. The Tribunal held that the procedural provisions did not contradict that presumption and also found the challenge insufficiently explained. The ruling preserved the challenged framework; it did not abolish provisional release altogether or identify the drug involved in the applicant's case.
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🇳🇿 New Zealand Other law ✓
New Zealand's Court of Appeal sets sentencing bands for growing
In R v Terewi the court set three sentencing bands for growing cannabis, so that the scale of the growing decides the range of the sentence.
🇨🇦 Canada · Ontario Medical ✓
An Ontario judge exempts an AIDS patient from the cannabis ban
Justice Harry LaForme of the Ontario Superior Court granted Jim Wakeford a constitutional exemption from prosecution, so that he could possess and grow cannabis while the health ministry considered his application. Nineteen other patients had applied; government lawyers admitted the ministry had adopted only preliminary guidelines that week. The government did not appeal.
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🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓ Article
Supreme Court upholds random drug tests for student athletes
In Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, the Supreme Court upheld an Oregon public school's suspicionless urine-testing policy for student athletes. The panel tested for marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines; confirmed positives could lead to assistance or exclusion from athletics. The Court cautioned against extending its reasoning to other contexts. This records school-testing policy without changing adult cannabis scores.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong Other law ✓
Hong Kong doubles two hashish couriers’ sentences after a weight dispute
Two men caught with more than 51 kg of cannabis resin had their sentences increased from two to four years each. The Court of Appeal held that sentencing began with the full weight, with a limited adjustment for low THC concentration, and revised the lowest trafficking bands into one covering under 2 kg. It also retained more lenient treatment of herbal cannabis than resin, a distinction revisited in 2023.
🇬🇮 Gibraltar Easing ✓ Article
Gibraltar’s appeal court rejects a charge for intended cannabis supply abroad
A man who carried 737 grams of cannabis resin through Gibraltar for supply in England defeated the prosecution’s appeal against the removal of his possession-with-intent-to-supply charge. The court held that the intended act of supply had to take place in Gibraltar, even after the 1985 amendment concerning recipients abroad. He had admitted possession, importation and exportation; the ruling concerned the separate intent-to-supply count.
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🇲🇭 Marshall Islands Enforcement ✓ Article
Marshall Islands overturns a cannabis conviction after denial of a lawyer
George Sakaio’s marijuana conviction and two-year prison sentence were reversed after he pleaded guilty without a lawyer and was refused permission to withdraw the plea. The Supreme Court held that police and courts had failed to protect his right to counsel and ensure he understood the plea. It returned the case to the High Court for further proceedings.
🇫🇷 France Tightening ✓
France's highest criminal court applies restrictions on relief from drug-related expulsion orders
In appeal 88-87.571, the Court of Cassation upheld refusal to consider lifting a permanent exclusion from French territory imposed for drug offences. The 1987 trafficking law had removed that route of relief. The Court treated the change as a procedural rule governing sentence execution, immediately applicable even though the offences preceded the amendment. Only applications filed before the new rule took effect retained the earlier remedy. The judgment concerned drug offences generally; it did not identify the substance involved or change the cannabis possession penalty.
🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓
US Supreme Court upholds helicopter observation of a cannabis greenhouse
In Florida v. Riley, the Supreme Court upheld naked-eye observation of cannabis through openings in a greenhouse from a helicopter at 400 feet. Justice O'Connor's separate concurrence supplied the fifth vote and stressed the regularity of public air travel at that altitude, rather than aviation-rule compliance alone. The ruling did not approve every low-altitude flight over a home.
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🇵🇭 Philippines Easing ✓
Philippine Supreme Court acquits Aminnudin after excluding illegally seized cannabis
In People v. Aminnudin, G.R. 74869, the Supreme Court excluded cannabis seized during an unlawful warrantless arrest and bag search after a passenger left a ship in Iloilo. Officers had advance information and at least two days to seek warrants; the circumstances did not fit the claimed warrantless-arrest exceptions. Without the seized evidence, the Court reversed the life sentence and acquitted him. The decision enforced search-and-seizure protections rather than legalising possession.
🇳🇱 Netherlands Other law ✓
EU court excludes tolerated Dutch hashish sales from VAT
In Happy Family, arising from hashish sales at an Amsterdam youth centre, the Court of Justice held that unlawful cannabis-drug supplies outside strictly controlled medical and scientific channels fell outside VAT under the Sixth Directive. Selective non-prosecution did not turn those sales into lawful trade. The judgment preserved national powers to punish drug offences; it did not legalise retail cannabis or exempt it from every kind of tax.
🇮🇹 Italy Other law ✓
Italy's Constitutional Court again refuses to spare small imports for personal use
A Milan court asked again whether bringing a small amount of drugs into Italy for personal use could be treated like holding a modest quantity, which was not punished. The Constitutional Court dismissed the question as clearly unfounded: it had already answered it in 1982, and the Milan court offered no new arguments. Importing any amount stayed a crime.
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🇫🇲 Micronesia Other law ✓
Kosrae’s court upholds seizure of cannabis plants visible from a road
In Kosrae State v. Winfield Paulino, the State Court denies suppression of two marijuana plants after an officer saw one from a road and police obtained a warrant. The court applies possession section 13.531 and explains that weight determines the penalty category rather than whether possession is an offence. This suppression ruling does not establish a usual sentence or an exemption for a small home grow.
🇲🇵 Northern Mariana Islands Enforcement ✓ Article
Northern Mariana Islands’ court upholds a pest inspection that found cannabis
Cannabis found during a warrantless agricultural inspection could be used against Daniel Atalig, the appellate court ruled. An inspector found five pounds with deer meat after his flight from Rota to Saipan in September 1981, during a fruit-fly quarantine. Atalig received a year in prison, suspended except for thirty days, and a $1,000 fine; the court held that this quarantine search required neither a warrant nor consent.
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🇦🇷 Argentina Easing ✓ Article
Argentina's Supreme Court first protects personal use
In Bazterrica, the Supreme Court held Article 6 of Law 20.771 unconstitutional insofar as it criminalised simple drug possession for personal use within the private sphere protected by Article 19 of the Constitution. The majority reversed the conviction and returned the case for a new decision. The ruling protected private conduct that did not harm others rather than authorising trafficking or every form of public drug use.
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🇲🇺 Mauritius Easing ✓
Mauritius's Supreme Court rejects removing judicial control of drug-case bail
In Nordally v Attorney General, reported at 1986 MR 204, the Supreme Court held that the Dangerous Drugs Act's statutory exclusion of bail was inconsistent with the Constitution. It protected the judiciary's role in deciding bail and other matters incidental to criminal proceedings against executive interference. This was a procedural safeguard within the drug-control system, not an exemption from cannabis offences or an automatic entitlement to release. The ruling is documented retrospectively in the Privy Council's 2006 Khoyratty judgment.
🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓
US Supreme Court allows naked-eye aerial observation of backyard cannabis
In California v. Ciraolo, the Supreme Court held that police did not need a warrant to view a fenced backyard's cannabis plants with the naked eye from an airplane lawfully flying at 1,000 feet. Although the yard was within the home's protected surroundings, the Court found no reasonable expectation of privacy against this public aerial viewpoint. Police obtained a warrant before seizing the plants.
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🇬🇮 Gibraltar Tightening ✓
Gibraltar extends drug-supply wording to recipients abroad
Gibraltar amended its drug law to say that supply included supplying a person who was outside Gibraltar. The change followed a cannabis case involving drugs intended for England, according to the later appeal court’s account. In 1995 that court ruled that the amendment still required the intended act of supply to take place in Gibraltar.
🇯🇵 Japan Other law ✓
Japan's Supreme Court rejects constitutional challenges to cannabis controls
In decisions on 10 and 27 September, the Supreme Court's First Petty Bench dismissed appeals challenging cannabis controls on constitutional grounds. It accepted the lower courts' findings of harmfulness and rejected the appeals' premise that cannabis was harmless or minimally harmful. The decisions concerned cannabis importation and associated possession controls, leaving the existing restrictions in place.
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🇩🇪 Germany Other law ✓
West Germany's highest criminal court defines a serious cannabis quantity by THC content
In 3 StR 183/84, the Federal Court of Justice fixed the threshold for a non-small quantity of cannabis at 7.5 grams of THC for the aggravated import offence and the corresponding serious-case sentencing rule. The threshold concerned active THC rather than the weight of the cannabis product. The Court upheld the quantity classification in a hashish-import case but set aside the sentence for a separate sentencing error and ordered a new sentencing hearing. The threshold differentiated criminal penalties; it was not a lawful personal-possession allowance.
🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓
US Supreme Court reaffirms the open-fields doctrine in cannabis cases
In Oliver v. United States and its companion case, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the Fourth Amendment did not require a warrant for police entry into open fields to investigate cannabis cultivation, even behind fences or no-trespassing signs. It distinguished these fields from the home and its immediately associated surroundings, which retain constitutional protection.
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🇮🇹 Italy Other law ✓ Article
Italy's top court keeps punishing users with more than a "modest quantity" like dealers
Several Italian courts challenged the 1975 drug law, and the Constitutional Court rejected them all. Anyone holding more than a "modest quantity" still faced the same penalties as a dealer, even if the drugs were for their own use, because the court said a stock could always be sold on. Importing even a small amount was still punished like a large import. The court refused to treat cannabis more leniently than other drugs, pointing to the treaties Italy had signed, and a challenge to the vague term "modest quantity" failed on procedure, so how much counted stayed undefined.
🇯🇵 Japan Other law ✓
Japan's Supreme Court rejects a narrow species reading of the cannabis law
The Supreme Court's Second Petty Bench interpreted the Cannabis Control Law's term Cannabis sativa L. as encompassing plants throughout the Cannabis genus. It dismissed an appeal claiming that the plant definition was too unclear to satisfy constitutional due-process requirements. This clarified the existing statutory definition rather than enacting a new prohibition.
🇺🇸 United States Enforcement ✓
The US Supreme Court lets 40 years for nine ounces stand
Roger Trenton Davis was sentenced in Virginia to two consecutive 20-year terms and $20,000 in fines for possessing with intent to distribute, and distributing, about nine ounces of marihuana. A federal district court had found the sentence so grossly disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual. The Supreme Court reversed in a per curiam opinion, holding that its precedent in Rummel v. Estelle controlled. Justice Powell concurred while calling the sentence "unjust and disproportionate to the offense"; Justice Brennan, dissenting with Marshall and Stevens, called the ruling a "patent abuse of our judicial power".
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🇺🇸 United States · District of Columbia Medical ✓ Article
D.C. Superior Court accepts Randall’s medical-necessity defence
Judge James A. Washington finds glaucoma patient Robert Randall not guilty on grounds of medical necessity and dismisses the charges. Initial federally authorised cannabis supply also dates from November 1976. The criminal ruling is distinct from his 1978 civil settlement securing continued federal access; neither established general legal supply for all patients.
🇮🇹 Italy Other law ✓
Italy's Constitutional Court sends back a forced-treatment case after the 1975 reform
A Naples magistrate had asked whether the 1954 drug law was unconstitutional because people facing forced confinement in a clinic had no right to a defence. Before the court ruled, the 1975 reform repealed that law and brought in new treatment rules with safeguards for the people concerned. The court therefore sent the case back to Naples to reconsider whether the question still mattered, without answering it (Order 224/1976).
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🇲🇵 Northern Mariana Islands Easing ✓ Article
Northern Mariana Islands’ court throws out marijuana possession and sale charges
Mariano Bermudes had marijuana possession and sale charges dismissed after the territorial High Court struck down the drug-control law used against him. The court found that lawmakers had given health officials insufficient guidance to decide which drugs to prohibit, and criticised a penalty scheme that could punish marijuana offences more severely than opium or heroin offences. A later territorial code expressly listed marijuana and capped the fine for possessing or giving away up to one ounce at $50.
🇪🇸 Spain Easing ✓
Spain's Supreme Court: possession for personal use is not a crime
The court held that possessing drugs for one's own use fell outside the criminal offence of trafficking. Parliament wrote this into the penal code in 1983.
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🇳🇱 Netherlands Other law ✓ Article
Dutch court rejects a narrow reading of the hashish prohibition
Stephen Snelders describes a Hague court decision that hashish was prohibited under the Opium Act even when its origin in dried cannabis tops could not be proved. Three Rotterdam businessmen received sentences of eighteen months, eighteen months and nine months after a case involving a 110 kg seizure. This records a historical enforcement interpretation, not a new national ban.
🇺🇸 United States · Michigan Easing ✓
Michigan Supreme Court reverses John Sinclair’s conviction
In People v. Sinclair, the court reverses and sets aside the possession conviction and orders his discharge. The justices write separate opinions. This is distinct from his earlier release shortly after the December 1971 rally.