Hemp
Fibre, food or industrial hemp and its THC limits.
161 entries, 1563–2027 · 6 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Hemp 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.
20271 entry0 score changes
202617 entries0 score changes
🇺🇸 United States · Missouri Hemp ✓
Missouri lets cultivators bring in low-THC genetics
On 21 October the Division of Cannabis Regulation issued a variance, effective 12 November, so that a licensed cultivator may acquire plants, tissue culture, pollen and other genetic material of no more than 0.3 per cent total THC from outside the state's licensed cultivation system. Plants under two inches above the root are presumed to meet that limit; taller plants need a test. Marijuana sold in the state must still be grown in a Missouri-licensed facility. Seeds from a plant over 0.3 per cent total THC count as marijuana even if the seed itself is low in THC, and taking those seeds from an unlicensed source is unlawful. New material has to be entered in the tracking system on the day it arrives.
🇦🇷 Argentina Hemp ✓
Argentina sets horticultural hemp licences at 1% THC
ARICCAME Resolution 69/2026, adopted on 2 September and published on 3 September, creates four licences for horticultural hemp: growing it, making derivatives, related services, and foreign trade. A crop at or below 1 per cent total THC on a dry-weight basis meets the limit; between 1 and 2.5 per cent is an administrative margin, not an automatic breach. Article 12 puts the resolution into force 30 administrative working days after publication. The agency's own page says applications open during October, so the publication day was not a day on which anyone could already apply.
🇺🇸 United States · Virginia Tightening ✓
Virginia ends its CBD-ratio exception to the hemp THC cap
According to the Cannabis Control Authority's implementation notice, products containing more than two milligrams of total THC per package could no longer be produced or sold as hemp products from 15 August. The change removed the exception based on a CBD-to-THC ratio of 25 to one. It concerns the hemp-product market, not a new adult-use flower possession limit.
🇵🇫 French Polynesia Medical ✓
Nine growers are chosen for French Polynesia's cannabis pilot
Nine producers were selected for a one-year pilot under the 2024 law, with plants below 0.3% THC and first harvests expected in April 2027. A last arrêté designating the plots was still due.
🇬🇭 Ghana Hemp ✓
Ghana issues its first two low-THC cultivation licences
On 31 July the Narcotics Control Commission presented the first cannabis cultivation licences to MG Adom Limited and Juliopta Limited. Director-General Maxwell Obuba Mantey said the licences are only for cannabis of no more than 0.3 per cent THC, for industrial, medicinal and research purposes that the licence allows. He told the companies to keep to those conditions, and said that growing without a licence, or above that THC limit, would be dealt with under the law. Recreational cannabis remains illegal.
🇧🇲 Bermuda Debate ✓
Bermuda prioritises hemp and medical cannabis reform
National Security minister Ryan Robinson Perinchief said drafting instructions had been issued for hemp and medical cannabis reforms, with initial implementation targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026. The hemp changes were intended to clarify compliance for products already being sold, while the medical work aimed to improve patient access. He said a wider regulated adult-use regime would take longer because of Bermuda’s constitutional relationship with the UK and the need for further coordination.
🇳🇿 New Zealand Hemp ?
New Zealand lets hemp be grown on notice instead of under licence
Amendment regulations replaced the hemp licensing scheme of 2006. Hemp, cannabis of at most 1% THC by dry weight and the seed of such plants, may now be grown, processed, held and supplied within New Zealand without a licence for specified purposes, among them breeding, making hemp products and supplying the medicinal cannabis scheme. A grower must first notify both Police and the Ministry for Primary Industries; a notification is valid for a year. Importing and exporting hemp plants and seed still needs a licence. Hemp remains a controlled drug outside these rules, and growing any other cannabis is still a crime.
🇬🇷 Greece Tightening ✓ Article
Greece bans retail sale of hemp flower
Article 43 of Law 5302/2026 raised the THC limit for hemp from 0.2% to 0.3%, but at the same time banned selling dried hemp flower to consumers, and consumers buying or using it. Import and wholesale for industrial processing, such as cosmetics, stay legal. The medicines agency said the ban applied at once and announced shop inspections.
🇻🇮 US Virgin Islands Easing ✓
US Virgin Islands replace a hemp inventory freeze with a sales window
Governor Albert Bryan Jr. approved a replacement rule telling retailers to report their intoxicating-cannabinoid inventory within 60 days and sell or otherwise dispose of it within 75 days of the act’s effective date. The cannabis regulator was then to plan the lawful disposal of remaining stock. This replaced the January law’s ban on selling or distributing existing inventory until regulations and retail licences were in place.
🇬🇭 Ghana Hemp ✓ Article
Ghana opens licensing for low-THC cannabis
The interior minister launched the programme for growing low-THC cannabis for medical and industrial use, under the 2023 amendment act and regulations. Applicants must be Ghanaian citizens or permanent residents aged 18 or over, and companies at least half Ghanaian-owned.
🇹🇷 Türkiye Hemp ✓
Türkiye rewrites its hemp cultivation rules
A new regulation on growing and controlling hemp allows fibre, seed and stalk production in 21 provinces with a permit from the local administrative authority. Growing for medicines and health products is confined to the state alkaloid factory site, organised agricultural zones or secure indoor facilities approved by the health ministry, with applications to the state grain board.
🇻🇮 US Virgin Islands Tightening ✓ Article
US Virgin Islands require cannabis licences for intoxicating hemp products
Governor Albert Bryan Jr. approved a law requiring cannabis-regulator licences or permits for selling, possessing or manufacturing intoxicating hemp and artificially derived cannabinoids. It covered THCA products and specified altered or intoxicating cannabinoids, set civil fines starting at $2,500, and required age checks, independent testing and child-resistant packaging for licensed retail. Its original inventory freeze was replaced by reporting and sell-or-dispose deadlines in March.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Other law ✓
Vanuatu keeps cannabis illegal outside its export licences
Agriculture Director General Timothy Tumukon told the public that cannabis and hemp activity required strict licensing, secure management and export, with no local sales. His comments followed public confusion in late 2025; he said the government had changed legislation to help approved firms obtain bank accounts. The export industry followed the licensing law and February 2023 rules.
🇧🇼 Botswana Hemp ✓
Botswana publishes rules for industrial cannabis with a 0.7% THC limit
Regulations published in January allow licensed farming, processing, transport, research and trade in what the government calls industrial cannabis, with a THC limit of 0.7 per cent. Cultivation licences run for three years and manufacturing licences for five. Applicants must supply site maps, security clearance, crop plans, THC testing protocols and proof of financial capacity, which some politicians called elitist. Marijuana and CBD remain illegal. In February the second licence went to a company linked to a Swedish hemp firm, and the finance minister said trials would begin at the agricultural university.
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates Hemp ✓
The UAE's industrial-hemp law takes effect
The federal decree regulating industrial and medical uses of industrial hemp, issued on 1 October 2025, took effect on 1 January 2026. It allows licensed cultivation at or below 0.3% THC in secured zones, licensed import and export of approved seeds by agricultural companies, and authorised medical products that contain hemp compounds. Personal and recreational use stay prohibited, as do hemp foods, supplements, veterinary products and smoking products. An emirate may prohibit or restrict an activity. Whether any cultivation licence has been issued, or any product is in a pharmacy, was not verified.
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🇵🇪 Peru Hemp ✓
Peru creates an industrial-hemp framework
Law 32195 established a framework for producing, supervising and commercialising industrial hemp below 1% THC. It covers seeds, cuttings, plants and their parts and requires authorisation and registration, with detailed rules left to a regulation.
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Debate ✓
A Kyrgyz MP proposes legalising marijuana, then industrial hemp
At a session of the Jogorku Kenesh, MP Dastan Bekeshev proposed revising drug policy and legalising light natural substances such as marijuana, arguing that banning and destroying natural drugs only drives up their price and pushes young people to cheaper and more harmful synthetic ones. In February 2026, as parliament prepared to review a draft law allowing medicinal herbs to be grown on arable land, he proposed also allowing industrial hemp under stricter state supervision. The agriculture ministry's list of medicinal crops did not include it.
🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea Hemp ✓
National study says Papua New Guinea is not ready for hemp
A report for the National Narcotics Bureau, summarised by the National Research Institute in September 2024, found demand for industrial hemp products in Papua New Guinea but little support for legalising its production and marketing, and a widespread belief that the country lacks the capacity to regulate it. It recommended that hemp production not be legalised until the country has that capacity. It did not legalise the crop.
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Other law ✓
Kyrgyzstan replaces its drug-control law and extends it to living organisms
A replacement drug-control law took effect on 12 September 2024, six months after publication, replacing the 1998 law. It expressly covered listed living organisms containing controlled substances and defined gathering wild organisms as manufacture or production. President Sadyr Japarov signed the law, which also banned medical and veterinary use of substances in its prohibited lists; implementing rules followed in 2025.
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🇮🇹 Italy Hemp ✓
An Italian court restores use of the whole hemp plant
The regional administrative court of Lazio annulled a ministerial decree of January 2022 that had limited industrial hemp to its seeds. The leaves and flowers could be used again, until the security decree of 2025 banned trade in the flowers.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Medical ✓
Vanuatu signs rules for licensed cannabis and hemp production
Vanuatu signed rules for licensed medical-cannabis and hemp importation, cultivation, processing and export on 8 February 2023. The rules set a ten-year licence term and annual VT10 million fee; medical cannabis was confined to Efate, Santo and Malekula, while hemp also included Tanna and Erromango. The agriculture ministry later reported revenue from cannabis and hemp licences during 2023.
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🇫🇷 France Hemp ✓ Article
France's top administrative court legalises CBD flower
The Council of State struck down a government ban on selling hemp flowers and leaves with less than 0.3% THC, ruling that they pose no risk that would justify it.
🇱🇦 Laos Medical ✓
Laos opens a licensed route for low-THC hemp medicines
Companies could seek approval to grow, process and sell low-THC hemp under a health ministry decision issued on 28 December 2022. The decision specified a thirty-day transition after signing. Its permissions covered prescribed dried hemp flower and low-THC medicines, alongside registered consumer products; the narcotics law and Penal Code still awaited alignment.
🇫🇯 Fiji Hemp ✓ Article
Fiji approves a hemp exemption at up to 1% THC
Parliament passed and signed an amendment excluding hemp and plant parts derived from hemp with no more than 1% THC from the drug schedule’s references to the cannabis plant. A person prosecuted under the law who claims the material is hemp must prove that it meets the limit. The government promoted the change as the basis for an export crop, with plans for tested imports, university trials and seed distribution to farmers.
🇬🇭 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.
🇧🇿 Belize Debate ✓
Belize puts its cannabis legalisation law on hold
The National Assembly had passed the Cannabis and Industrial Hemp Control and Licensing Bill, which awaited the Governor General's signature, when the Council of Churches gathered the 20,000 signatures needed to force a referendum. Prime Minister John Briceño deferred the vote until further notice, citing its cost of 5 million dollars and banks' fears for their links with US banks. The bill was to be amended so that it could become law only after a referendum.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Medical ✓ Article
Vanuatu starts licensing medical cannabis for export and industrial hemp
A new licensing law took effect on 17 January 2022, allowing licensed medical-cannabis cultivation for export and industrial-hemp production. The original Act required applicants to show ten years’ relevant experience, VT10 million in a local bank, an agricultural lease and an export market or buyer; licences ran for ten years. Hemp was defined at no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry-weight basis, and implementing rules followed in February 2023.
🇺🇸 United States Hemp ✓
The DEA says cannabis seeds are not federally controlled
Answering a lawyer's inquiry, the Drug Enforcement Administration wrote that marijuana seed with no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight meets the 2018 definition of hemp and is not controlled, and likewise tissue culture and other genetic material. A second letter in December 2022 added that material grown from a seed is marijuana once it exceeds 0.3%.
🇨🇿 Czechia Hemp ✓ Article
Czechia raises the hemp limit to 1% THC
The amendment raised the threshold for technical hemp from 0.3% to 1% THC, removed its permit requirement and simplified proof of compliance for growers. Farms larger than 100 square metres still had to report specified information to customs.
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🇿🇲 Zambia Medical ✓
Zambia enacts its Cannabis Act and Industrial Hemp Act
Parliament published both Acts on 20 May 2021. Each comes into operation only on a date the Minister appoints. The Cannabis Act would let the medicines regulator license cultivation, manufacture, storage, distribution, import and export for medicinal, scientific or research purposes. The hemp Act covers plants of not more than 0.3% THC. Neither Act was in force on the day it was published.
🇸🇰 Slovakia Hemp ✓
Slovakia takes CBD off its drug list
Slovakia had been the last EU country to class CBD as a psychotropic substance.
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🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Hemp ✓ Article
Zimbabwe sets permits and testing rules for hemp growers and traders
Hemp growers, researchers and merchants received separate permit routes, with commercial growing and merchant permits lasting one year and research permits three years. The Agricultural Marketing Authority required approved varieties, security checks, seed and harvest records, and testing under a 0.3% THC definition. These rules followed the 2019 authorisation of approved hemp farmers; the criminal code later adopted a broader 1% hemp definition in 2023.
🇵🇰 Pakistan Hemp ✓
Pakistan approves industrial hemp
The federal government approved growing hemp for industrial use and allowed cannabis extracts for industrial and medical purposes.
🇲🇱 Mali Hemp ✓
Mali withdraws its hemp-growing authorisation
Mali withdrew the industrial-hemp authorisation granted in 2017 for a supervised production project. Central drug office director Adama Tounkara said the producers had sought to change the agreed terms, leading to a new decision cancelling permission. He confirmed the withdrawal at a May press conference as claims that the project was still operating circulated on social media.
🇷🇺 Russia Hemp ✓
Russia sets a 0.1% THC limit for industrial hemp
Government Resolution 101 of 6 February allowed registered varieties of hemp to be grown for industry if the leaves and flowering tops hold no more than 0.1% THC, and barred seed of the fourth and later generations. It replaced a 2007 resolution on hemp varieties. For medicine it allowed the opium poppy, not cannabis. The hemp area had grown to 10,200 hectares in 2019.
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🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Hemp ✓ Article
Zimbabwe lets approved farmers grow industrial hemp
Farmers authorised in writing by the agriculture minister, and the state on its own farms, could lawfully acquire, possess and supply industrial hemp and grow it on approved farms. The exemption used a limit of no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight and covered seeds and derivatives. It created an industrial route alongside the existing medical-production licences, followed by detailed hemp permits in 2020.
🇪🇨 Ecuador Medical ✓
Ecuador legalises medical cannabis and hemp
A reform of the criminal code took cannabis with less than 1% THC out of the list of controlled substances and allowed cannabis medicines on prescription.
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🇭🇷 Croatia Medical ✓
Croatia allows domestic production of medical cannabis
An amendment in force from 25 April 2019 let cannabis be grown and produced for medical purposes by companies holding a medicines-manufacturing licence, with approval from the health ministry and the medicines agency. It also defined industrial hemp as EU-listed varieties with no more than 0.2% THC and made growers register before sowing.
🇲🇲 Myanmar Enforcement ✓
Myanmar police raid an American's hemp plantation
Police raided a 20-acre plantation on an industrial estate in Ngunzun township, Mandalay region, and arrested the American entrepreneur John Frederic Todoroki and two Myanmar employees. Six days later the region's chief minister said his government had allowed the firm to grow fibre plants for one year. Todoroki was released on medical bail in July 2019 and reportedly left the country. On 10 March 2020 the Myingyan District Court sentenced Shein Latt, a supervisor who had installed the irrigation, to 20 years for growing prohibited cannabis plants; the case against the translator was dismissed.
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🇻🇺 Vanuatu Debate ✓
Vanuatu’s cabinet backs plans for a cannabis export industry
Vanuatu’s cabinet backed a policy direction proposing medical-cannabis and hemp production for overseas markets, with legislation still to follow. Agriculture Director Antoine Ravo saw agricultural potential, while farmer-network representative Lavinia Kaumaitotoya warned about diversion into illicit use. The proposal was to be reviewed by Agriculture Minister Hosea Nevu before parliamentary debate; the eventual licensing law began in January 2022.
🇧🇼 Botswana Other law ✓
Botswana grants, then withdraws, its first exemption to grow cannabis and hemp
In August 2018 a company, Fresh Standard, proposed to the agriculture minister to grow and process cannabis and hemp for medical and industrial use, and the ministry's permanent secretary approved an exemption under the Plant Protection Act. After the company acquired land and planted, police narcotics officers removed the crop, and in May 2019 the ministry revoked the exemption by letter.
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🇧🇬 Bulgaria Hemp ✓
Bulgaria denies that it has legalised growing cannabis
Public radio reported that farmers could now grow cannabis legally and that about 100 hectares were already sown, and headlines announced legalisation. The agriculture ministry answered that it had only drafted a regulation on hemp for industry, repeating rules in force since 2001: varieties must hold less than 0.2% THC, and plants above that are confiscated and destroyed.
🇨🇳 China Hemp ✓
Heilongjiang opens industrial hemp growing
Heilongjiang became the second Chinese province, after Yunnan, to allow industrial hemp to be grown, processed and sold. Jilin planned a hemp chapter in its anti-drug regulations in 2018, but the version adopted in 2022 left it out.
🇲🇱 Mali Hemp ✓ Article
Mali authorises a company's hemp-growing project for medical exports
Mali granted African Seeds permission to grow industrial hemp for seed exports intended for medical use, under conditions supervised by the authorities. Reported licence terms required approved seed and a variety with no more than 0.2% THC, and a 2018 amendment added oil to the authorised exports. The central drug office later confirmed the 2017 authorisation and said it had been withdrawn in February 2020 after the producers sought changes to its terms.
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🇧🇾 Belarus Hemp ✓ Article
Belarus lists hemp among plants barred from introduction and establishment
Cannabis sativa appeared on a revised environmental list prohibiting the introduction and establishment of specified plants from 31 December 2016. The Environment Ministry also removed the rule’s earlier reference to wild-growing plants. Drug-producing cultivation was already prohibited under the narcotics law and punished separately in the criminal code.
🇯🇵 Japan Tightening ✓
Tottori Prefecture bans hemp growing after arrests at a licensed firm
After the president and two employees of a permitted hemp processing company in Chizu were arrested on suspicion of possessing cannabis, the Tottori prefectural assembly unanimously passed an ordinance banning hemp production in the prefecture, to be enforced within a year. It stops any company from receiving a hemp production licence there. Governor Shinji Hirai called a complete ban the ultimate way to prevent cannabis being grown under cover of the industrial hemp programme.
🇹🇷 Türkiye Medical ✓
Turkey allows cannabinoid medicines
Regulations permitted cannabinoid medicines such as Sativex on prescription, and allowed hemp growing in nineteen provinces.
🇮🇹 Italy Hemp ✓ Article
Italy's hemp law opens the door to 'cannabis light'
Law 242 of 2016, in force from 2017, let farmers sow certified hemp seed with less than 0.2% THC without authorisation and tolerated crops testing up to 0.6%. Shops began selling the flowers. In September 2018 the interior minister, Matteo Salvini, ordered zero tolerance towards them, and in May 2019 the Court of Cassation ruled the sale of buds, oils and resins illegal unless they have no narcotic effect.
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🇲🇼 Malawi Debate ✓
A Malawian MP campaigns for legal hemp
The independent member Boniface Kadzamira led a campaign in parliament to legalise industrial hemp and other uses of cannabis. Five years later parliament passed the law, and he became chairman of the board of the new regulator.
🇮🇳 India Hemp ✓
An Indian state legalises hemp farming
Uttarakhand became the first state to allow cannabis to be grown for industrial purposes. Two years later the central government issued its first licence for research cultivation.
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🇲🇪 Montenegro Hemp ✓ Article
Montenegro sets permit rules for hemp farmers and their whole harvest
New permit rules covered food and industrial hemp containing no more than 0.2% THC in dry plant material. Farmers had to identify their land, variety, certified seed and planned sowing and harvest, supply a whole-crop purchase-contract number, and report hemp-growing land by 1 May each year. Agriculture Minister Petar Ivanović signed the rules under the earlier drug law, which required the whole harvest to reach the contracted buyer within four months.
🇭🇷 Croatia Hemp ✓
Croatia promises hemp farmers an end to burning their stalks
Under the drug abuse act hemp growers could keep only the seed, for oil, and had to destroy the rest of the plant, although its THC was below the European limit of 0.2%. After a Croatian member of the European Parliament obtained a reply from the Commission, the health ministry said it was preparing an amendment to allow hemp for building, textiles, paper and other industries. The change came into force in April 2019.
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🇳🇵 Nepal Hemp ✓ Article
An Italy–Nepal project links Himalayan hemp craft with fair-trade textiles
Parrella’s 2014 account dates the operational start of Italia-Nepal canapa solidale to 2011, after preparatory years. It describes support for Himalayan communities to maintain hemp-working knowledge and supply textiles through alternative trading channels. The account does not establish a cannabis-law reform or verified export volumes.
🇲🇪 Montenegro Other law ✓
Montenegro publishes a drug law covering possession and hemp
Montenegro published its drug law after President Filip Vujanović promulgated it on 3 June. The law brought prevention, treatment and controlled production and trade into one statute; by its 2013 consolidation, personal possession carried a €100–€2,000 misdemeanour fine and food or industrial hemp required a permit and a buyer for the whole harvest. Detailed hemp-permit rules followed in 2014.
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🇷🇸 Serbia Other law ✓ Article
Serbia keeps hemp growing under licence and bans high-THC crops
Parliament adopted a controlled-substances law allowing licensed hemp crops for fibre, animal-feed seed, propagation and specified seed activities. It prohibited growing cannabis varieties capable of containing more than 0.3% THC and required landholders to destroy wild drug-producing plants. The law replaced earlier drug-production and trade legislation; detailed hemp permit conditions followed in 2013.
🇨🇳 China Hemp ✓
Yunnan becomes China's first province to license industrial hemp
A provincial regulation took effect that allows industrial hemp, defined as cannabis plants and extracts with less than 0.3% THC, to be grown and processed.
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🇱🇻 Latvia Hemp ✓
Latvian farmers sow hemp again
Fibre hemp was sown in Latvia again, 114 hectares of it by farmers around Krāslava, in the east. Hemp had once stood beside flax among the country's main crops, and in the nineteenth century the British fleet used ropes of Riga hemp. A textile-industry leader warned growers that they could end up at a police station, proving for half a year that their plants held nothing harmful.
🇮🇹 Italy Hemp ✓
Italy allows hemp seeds in food
Companies had asked to use hemp in baked goods, flour, sweets, oils and supplements. The health ministry answered that hemp seeds and products made from them could be used as food, because the seeds contain no THC; traces come only from flower parts clinging to them. Producers stayed responsible for safety checks, and the drug law's ban on advertising for cannabis still applied.
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🇱🇹 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.
🇹🇷 Türkiye Tightening ✓
Turkey sets penalties for growing hemp without a permit
Effective on publication, Law 5728 amended Article 23 of the narcotics law. Sowing hemp without a permit, or knowingly exceeding its area or using a different location, carried a judicial fine of at least fifty days. A separate paragraph prescribed one to seven years in prison for sowing hemp exclusively to obtain cannabis. Cultivation covered the whole process from sowing the seed to harvesting. The law was adopted on 23 January 2008; its commencement date was 8 February.
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🇸🇮 Slovenia Hemp ✓
Slovenia aligns permitted hemp varieties with the referenced EU list
An amendment replaced the hemp-permit rules' national variety-list reference with Annex II of Commission Regulation 796/2004 as amended, while retaining the ceiling of 0.2 percent THC in dry matter. It also revised application details to identify the farm and the agricultural land-use units and areas planted with each variety. This adjusted the existing agricultural permit system without establishing personal recreational cultivation rights. The reproduced original identifies publication on 24 September 2007 and commencement the following day.
🇱🇻 Latvia Hemp ✓
Latvia adds a duty to destroy prohibited cannabis while retaining open-field hemp growing
A further amendment to Article 6(2), effective on 7 June, retained permission to grow Cannabis sativa subsp. sativa for fibre, seed and horticultural purposes only in open fields. It replaced the sentence delegating cultivation procedures to the Cabinet with an express duty on landowners or lawful possessors to destroy cannabis growing on their land that the law prohibited. The open-field restriction already appeared in the 2006 text; the amendment was not the first authorisation of fibre hemp.
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🇵🇹 Portugal Hemp ✓ Article
Portugal puts non-sowing cannabis seed under its drug law
Law 47/2003, the tenth amendment to the 1993 drug law, added "cannabis seeds not intended for sowing" to Table I-C, alongside the drug PMMA in another table. It took effect the day after publication.
🇨🇭 Switzerland Tightening ✓ Article
Swiss police end the hemp-shop boom in Ticino
Swiss law then banned hemp only when it was meant for use as a narcotic, so from 1996 shops in Ticino, following other cantons, sold it as scented sachets for wardrobes, dried flowers and bath additives. Visitors filled hotels and campsites and the press called the canton the new Amsterdam. Operation Indoor, begun in March 2003, seized 198,000 plants, four tonnes of marijuana and four million francs in cash within six months; shops were closed and 130 people jailed. That October thieves broke into a military depot and drove off with three vans of the confiscated hemp.
🇸🇪 Sweden Hemp ✓
European court rejects Sweden's ban on authorised industrial hemp
In Hammarsten, case C-462/01, the Court of Justice held that the EU hemp-market regulations precluded national rules prohibiting cultivation and possession of industrial hemp covered by those regulations. The case concerned a Swedish farmer's 2001 crop, not a right to grow intoxicating cannabis. A September 2004 parliamentary motion confirms that industrial hemp cultivation had again become permissible in early 2003, subject to restrictive conditions.
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🇲🇼 Malawi Debate ✓
A Malawian minister proposes legalising hemp to replace tobacco
The deputy agriculture minister, Joe Manduwa, argued in parliament that Indian hemp could take the place of tobacco, and a member who was also a doctor backed him, calling it non- addictive. The government explored the idea briefly and dropped it. A UN report of the late 1990s had estimated that up to 156,000 hectares of Malawi were under cannabis, and seizures jumped to more than 312,000 kilograms in 2000.
🇨🇭 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.
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🇮🇹 Italy Hemp ✓
Italian growers found Assocanapa to revive industrial hemp
Hemp growers set up Assocanapa, the national coordination for hemp farming, in Carmagnola, Piedmont, in 1998. Parrella describes how it went on to work on Italian hemp varieties, seed supply and processing technology. It speaks for hemp as a farm and industrial crop.
🇨🇦 Canada Hemp ✓ Article
Canada starts its licensed industrial-hemp programme
Health Canada dates the Industrial Hemp Regulation Program to 12 March 1998, following research in 1994–1998. The first commercial growing licence followed in May 1998. This was a controlled industrial-hemp route, not general recreational cultivation permission.
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🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article
Jack Herer publishes The Emperor Wears No Clothes
Herer says he completed the first edition in 1985 after collecting cannabis information since 1973. The book made industrial hemp, medical use and opposition to prohibition part of one reform argument. The supplied later text argues that hemp could replace major uses of timber and fossil fuels; these are the author's claims, not findings of this index.
🇳🇱 Netherlands Culture & science ✓
A hash and hemp museum opens in Amsterdam
The Hash, Marihuana & Hemp Museum opened in Amsterdam's old centre, showing the medicinal, spiritual, cultural and industrial uses of the plant, with a live cannabis garden. It was founded by Ben Dronkers, who also founded the seed company Sensi Seeds. By the museum's count more than two million people have visited; a second museum opened in Barcelona in 2012.
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🇮🇶 Iraq Other law ✓ Article
Iraq raises personal-use penalties but lets some offenders receive treatment
Possessing or growing cannabis for personal use could bring three to fifteen years in custody, up from a ten-year maximum, plus a fine. Courts could instead order six months in a health facility when drug dependence arose from a medical condition, with earlier release on medical evidence of recovery. The same law removed permission for supervised fibre-and-seed cannabis crops and gave the police narcotics office a greater role in licensing.
🇰🇼 Kuwait Other law ✓
Kuwait lists cannabis resin, oil and tinctures in a replacement schedule
A replacement narcotics schedule took effect on gazette publication and expressly listed cannabis, Indian hemp, resin, powder, oil, extract, tincture and preparations. The health minister issued it following a recommendation from the standing drug-control committee, replacing earlier scheduling decrees. The 1960 law had already covered Indian hemp and its preparations and derivatives.
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🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Tightening ✓ Article
Kyrgyzstan ends southern Chuy hemp cultivation and converts its farms
A Soviet decision barred sowing southern Chuy hemp throughout Kyrgyzstan from 1965, according to historians who quote the June 1964 decision. They describe pressure from Kyrgyz party leader Turdakun Usubaliyev, the development of substitute industrial materials and the conversion of hemp farms to other crops and livestock. The earlier Soviet restriction had expressly targeted Indian hemp.
🇮🇶 Iraq Other law ✓ Article
Iraq keeps cannabis under drug controls but permits licensed fibre crops
Iraq kept cannabis growing and unauthorised possession prohibited, while allowing crops exclusively for fibre and seeds with special agricultural permission and direct supervision. General violations carried a fine of 100–1,000 dinars, six months to five years in prison, or both, and authorities had to uproot illegal and wild plants. The new law replaced the 1933 cultivation ban and 1938 drug law to bring the rules into line with the Single Convention; its penalties were rewritten in 1967 and the industrial-crop exception removed in 1979.
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🇨🇦 Canada Tightening ✓ Article
Canada prohibits unlicensed cannabis cultivation
Section 3 of the amended Opium and Narcotic Drug Act prohibited growing cannabis without a federal health permit. The new offence carried the same penalties as trafficking and simple possession and ended the country's remaining lawful commercial hemp cultivation.
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🇺🇸 United States Hemp ✓ Article
Popular Mechanics presents hemp as a new industrial cash crop
The February 1938 article New Billion-Dollar Crop promoted mechanised hemp processing and import substitution. It also identified obstacles: nearby processing equipment, sufficient acreage and federal grower registration. Its forecasts are evidence of contemporary industrial optimism, not proof of a realised billion-dollar market or of why Congress enacted the 1937 tax law.
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🇹🇯 Tajikistan Ban ✓ Article
Tajikistan comes under Soviet restrictions on growing Indian hemp
A Soviet decree restricted Indian-hemp sowing from 1935, allowing crops intended exclusively for medical and scientific needs. Unauthorised sowing was to bring criminal responsibility and compulsory confiscation of the crop, and republics were directed to amend their criminal codes. The decree had been signed on 27 October 1934.
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🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Ban ✓
Kyrgyzstan comes under the Soviet ban on growing Indian hemp
A Soviet decree began restricting Indian-hemp sowing in 1935, allowing only crops intended exclusively for medical and scientific needs. Unauthorised sowing was to bring criminal responsibility and compulsory confiscation of the crop, with republics directed to amend their criminal codes. The decree had been signed in October 1934; a later decision specifically targeted southern Chuy hemp from 1965.
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