Home growing
Growing cannabis at home for yourself.
171 entries, 1924–2026 · 54 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Home growing 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.
🇬🇩 Grenada Legalisation ✓ Article
Grenada legalises possession and home growing
From February 2026 adults aged 21 and over may possess 56 g of cannabis, and four plants at a household are outside the growing offence. The agriculture ministry says a grower registers with the Cannabis Secretariat before planting, and that the rules for signing up would follow. Parliament passed the bill with support from both sides. Past convictions for those amounts are wiped, and sale remains an offence.
1139+28 points
🇫🇮 Finland Debate ✓
Finland's parliament rejects a citizens' initiative to legalise cannabis
Parliament voted 145 to 18 against an initiative that would have legalised the use, possession, home growing, production and sale of cannabis with age limits. The Legal Affairs Committee had advised rejection, saying a legal market could raise consumption and harm across the population. Two members, from the Greens and the Left Alliance, dissented.
🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓
South Africa publishes draft limits for private cannabis
The justice department gazetted draft regulations under the 2024 Cannabis for Private Purposes Act and invited comments until 5 March 2026. They would cap an adult's possession at 750 grams, in private or in public, and private growing at five plants of any size or strain, and set rules for carrying cannabis in a vehicle out of sight and for expunging old convictions. Until they are made final the Act is not in force.
🇧🇭 Bahrain Enforcement ✓ Article
Bahrain appeal court cuts a cannabis-seed sentence to ten years
An appeal court reduced a man’s sentence from fifteen years to ten and retained a 5,000-dinar fine and confiscation in a cannabis-seed and multiple-drug case, The Daily Tribune reported. Prosecutors said he held cannabis seeds for trafficking and hashish and pregabalin for personal use; investigators described a home-growing operation. Laboratory tests identified viable cannabis seeds and several drugs.
🇨🇿 Czechia Legalisation ✓ Article
Czechia legalises possession and home growing
Act No. 270/2025, a reform of the criminal code, took effect on 1 January. Adults 21 and over may grow three plants and keep 100 g at home or 25 g in public; before, small amounts were only an administrative offence. Four or five plants, or up to twice those amounts, is an administrative offence, and more is a crime. Shops and clubs are still not allowed.
2944+15 points
20254 entries0 score changes
🇻🇺 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.
🇵🇾 Paraguay Tightening ✓
A Paraguayan woman in her sixties is jailed over two plants
The case drew public criticism. The same month a deputy, Jatar Fernández, presented a bill to authorise growing at home, and in May a Senate committee examined changing article 30 of the drug law to raise the amount allowed and permit up to three plants.
🇩🇪 Germany Legalisation ✓ Article
Germany legalises possession and home growing
From 1 April any adult may carry 25 g of cannabis. People who have lived in Germany for six months may grow three plants at home and keep 50 g there, and the same six months are required to join a non-profit growing association. Giving that cannabis to another person is a crime.
2142+21 points
🇱🇺 Luxembourg Legalisation ✓ Article
Luxembourg legalises home growing
Adults may grow up to four plants per household and consume at home. Cannabis stays prohibited in public, but carrying up to 3 g became a €145 fine instead of a criminal matter. There is no legal place to buy it.
2037+17 points
🇱🇷 Liberia Tightening ✓ Article
Liberia adds prison minimums for cannabis use and bars trafficking bail
President George Weah signed a drug law setting four months to one year for first-time Schedule I drug use, including cannabis, and raising repeat use to a second-degree felony. Cannabis trafficking became non-bailable; personal possession and cultivation remained separate second-degree felonies with cash bail set at twice the bond. After a dispute over bail in the Senate, the signed law also required deportation of non-Liberians convicted under it and drug clearance for institutional admission or employment.
🇫🇯 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.
🇩🇿 Algeria Other law ✓ Article
Algeria lowers personal growing penalties while raising drug fines
Algeria added a two-to-five-year prison term and a 200,000–500,000-dinar fine for growing cannabis for personal consumption; the original law had imposed life imprisonment without that exception. For personal use, buying or possession, the prison range stayed at two months to two years, while the fine floor rose to 20,000 dinars, with a fine alone still possible. The amendment also strengthened treatment protections for minors and increased penalties for certain suppliers.
58+3 points
🇱🇺 Luxembourg Debate ✓
Luxembourg sketches a state-controlled cannabis supply
The government presented plans for two domestic production licences and a supply chain ending in fourteen dispensaries, and said the draft would not be finished before the October elections. Only the home-growing part became law that summer.
🇨🇦 Canada Other law ✓
Canada's Supreme Court lets provinces ban home growing
In Murray-Hall v Quebec the court held that Quebec's ban on growing cannabis at home, although the federal Act allows four plants, was a valid use of provincial powers.
🇩🇪 Germany Debate ✓
Germany drops its plan for licensed cannabis shops
The coalition had promised a nationwide regulated market. After talks with the European Commission, ministers announced a narrower plan: home growing and non-profit associations first, with shops only as regional trials later.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong Tightening ✓ Article
Hong Kong ends lighter trafficking sentences for herbal cannabis
Herbal cannabis and cannabis resin were placed on the same trafficking sentencing scale after the Court of Appeal accepted evidence of similar THC concentrations. The court also set cultivation bands based on estimated annual yield, ranging from below two years for under 5 kg to over ten years above 150 kg, subject to the grower’s role and circumstances. Nguyen Thang Loi’s seven-and-a-half-year sentence and Dang Hung Ngoc’s eight-and-a-half-year sentence were upheld.
🇻🇮 US Virgin Islands Legalisation ✓ Article
US Virgin Islands sign adult-use cannabis and patient growing into law
Governor Albert Bryan Jr. signed a law setting adult possession limits at two ounces of cannabis, 14 grams of concentrate and one ounce of cannabis products. Qualified resident patients could grow six flowering and six immature plants for personal medical use with landowner consent. Bryan also announced pardons for simple possession and an application process; in March his administration said use and sales still awaited implementing regulations.
1633+17 points
🇹🇲 Turkmenistan Other law ✓ Article
Turkmenistan sets five-to-twelve-year prison terms for drug supply
Turkmenistan’s replacement criminal code set five to twelve years in prison for unauthorised drug supply and possession with intent to supply, rising to fifteen to twenty-five years in the most serious tier. The ordinary offence of possessing drugs without intent to supply allowed a fine or up to five years, while unauthorised cannabis growing allowed corrective labour or two to five years in prison. President Serdar Berdimuhamedow signed the new edition in April 2022 for commencement on 1 January 2023.
20226 entries1 score change
🇲🇴 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.
🇭🇷 Croatia Debate ✓
Croatia's parliament debates nine plants for every adult
The Social Democrats' bill 'on using the full potential of hemp', submitted in March, would have legalised growing and use and let every adult grow up to nine plants. Thirty signatures were needed to force a debate, and they included deputies from the governing coalition's partners and from the right. The government rejected the bill in its opinion, saying the nine plants would encourage drug use.
20218 entries3 score changes
🇲🇹 Malta Legalisation ✓ Article
Malta becomes the first EU country to legalise
Adults may carry 7 g, keep 50 g at home and grow four plants per household. Instead of shops, the law allows licensed non-profit associations that grow for their members. Smoking in public is still prohibited. President George Vella, a doctor, signed it despite calls from opponents to refuse, saying the president could not impose his own view on parliament, and the law was published on 18 December.
2238+16 points
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Easing ✓ Article
Kyrgyzstan moves small possession and cultivation to administrative fines
New codes took effect on 1 December 2021, moving small possession without intent to supply and small unauthorised cultivation out of the former misdemeanour code. The replacement offences code sets administrative penalties: a 200-unit fine or 40 hours of community work for small possession, and a 125-unit fine for an individual’s small grow. The former code had coupled these offences with probation-style restrictions on liberty.
1321+8 points
🇱🇨 Saint Lucia Legalisation ✓ Article
Saint Lucia legalises 30 g and home growing
An adult holding 30 g or less for personal, private use is no longer guilty of an offence, and a household may grow four plants. There is no legal market.
1139+28 points
🇯🇴 Jordan Debate ✓
Jordan’s Lower House backs broader first-offence record protection
The Lower House backed extending first-offence record protection to a longer list of personal-use acts, including importing, transporting and storing drugs. Its proposal also expanded drug-control offences, including distribution without payment. The amendment was published later in September and took effect in October, while personal-use prosecution remained possible.
20208 entries2 score changes
🇸🇲 San Marino Debate ✓
San Marino shelves a plan to regulate recreational cannabis
In 2019 the Grand and General Council approved a citizens' proposal that would have allowed 30 grams and four plants. In March 2020 it backed away, saying it would wait to follow Italy.
🇲🇵 Northern Mariana Islands Other law ✓
Northern Mariana Islands adopt rules to start licensing cannabis businesses
The cannabis commission approved emergency rules for producers, retailers, processors, wholesalers and lounges, preparing the industry for business applications. Its chair linked the accelerated timetable to the COVID-19 revenue shortfall and economic diversification. The commission reserved medical, laboratory and edible-processing rules for later work; it began accepting applications that August.
🇳🇵 Nepal Debate ✓
A former law minister registers a bill to legalise cannabis farming in Nepal
Sher Bahadur Tamang's private bill would have licensed farmers to grow cannabis, let them export it, and allowed sale to patients on a doctor's prescription and to drug makers. The draft also let a household grow six plants without a licence. It was never put to a vote.
🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago Legalisation ✓ Article
Trinidad and Tobago decriminalises cannabis
Adults may possess up to 30 g and grow four plants each with no penalty. Between 30 g and 60 g is a fixed-penalty ticket instead of a prosecution. Before, possession could mean years in prison. No legal market was created.
639+33 points
🇮🇹 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
🇷🇸 Serbia Tightening ✓ Article
Serbia raises cannabis-growing sentences and punishes large drug stocks
Unauthorised cannabis cultivation now carried two to eight years in prison, up from six months to five years. The amendment also created a three-to-ten-year offence for possessing a large quantity, while keeping a fine or up to three years for a small personal amount. It added aggravated supply cases involving minors and specified locations or abuse of professional roles; the large-quantity offence later upheld a three-year sentence for personal cannabis possession.
119−2 points
🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda Easing ✓ Article
Antigua and Barbuda passes its Cannabis Act
The Cannabis Act, 2018 (No. 28 of 2018) regulates cannabis for medicinal and scientific use through an Antigua and Barbuda Medicinal Cannabis Authority. It lets adherents of religious bodies, including Rastafari, register to cultivate more than four plants and possess more than 15 grams for sacramental use. The Governor-General assented on 22 January 2019 and it was gazetted on 24 January 2019. The four-plant household limit and the 15 g decriminalisation came earlier, in the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2018.
3637+1 point
🇻🇮 US Virgin Islands Medical ✓ Article
US Virgin Islands approve medical cannabis for registered patients
Governor Albert Bryan Jr. signed the medical cannabis law sponsored by Positive T.A. Nelson, after final legislative approval in December. The programme provided practitioner certification, patient cards, licensed businesses and home cultivation for residents whose cards authorised it. Its preamble cited the 2014 vote supporting medical-cannabis legislation; the broader Cannabis Use Act replaced the programme in 2023.
🇧🇭 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.
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Tightening ✓ Article
Kyrgyzstan puts small drug possession under fines and probation rules
The new misdemeanour code punished small drug possession without intent to supply, and small unauthorised cultivation, with a fine and restrictions supervised by probation officers. For adults, the restriction category ran for three to six months and required reporting to probation and permission for foreign travel; a misdemeanour finding did not create a criminal record. Harm-reduction workers had warned that the incoming fines would be unaffordable for many users.
1813−5 points
201813 entries4 score changes
🇨🇦 Canada · Newfoundland and Labrador Other law ✓
Newfoundland and Labrador keeps home growing indoors
The Cannabis Control Regulations came into force on 17 October 2018. Up to four non-medical plants may be grown in the grower's ordinary dwelling, or in an enclosed structure on the premises. The yard itself is excluded. The plants must not be accessible to anyone under 19 or visible from a public place.
🇨🇦 Canada Legalisation ✓ Article
Canada legalises cannabis nationwide
The Cannabis Act made Canada the second country, and the first G7 member, to legalise. Adults may carry 30 g, grow four plants per household in most provinces, share with other adults and buy from licensed shops.
1553+38 points
🇬🇺 Guam Medical ✓ Article
Guam lets medical patients apply to grow cannabis at home
Qualified patients or their designated caregivers could apply for a $15 annual permit to grow up to six flowering and twelve juvenile plants while no medical dispensary was operating. Senator Louise Muña’s proposal required indoor, secured cultivation and medical certification. Governor Eddie Calvo called it an interim way to help people still waiting after the 2014 medical-cannabis vote.
🇨🇷 Costa Rica Easing ✓
Costa Rica's Supreme Court leaves a home-grow acquittal standing
The Criminal Chamber declared inadmissible the prosecution's appeal against the acquittal of a man who had repeatedly grown cannabis on his roof. That left intact the lower courts' finding that, without proof the crop was meant for trafficking or distribution, cultivation for personal use was not enough for a conviction.
2225+3 points
🏳️ Transnistria Enforcement ✓ Article
Transnistrian police seize a woman’s cannabis grown for rubbing tinctures
During the Mak-2018 campaign, police in the Dubossary district found thirteen cannabis plants and one poppy in a 55-year-old woman’s garden. She said she grew cannabis to make medicinal rubbing tinctures; officers also found her brother smoking cannabis in the basement and seized 2.62 g of dried material and a smoking device. Police opened a possession case against the brother and reported that the woman could face a fine, compulsory work or up to two years in prison.
20178 entries1 score change
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Enforcement ✓
Timor-Leste holds an Australian before trial over five cannabis plants
An Australian resident entered pretrial custody in Dili in a case involving five suspected cannabis plants, according to Lusa reporting. Prosecutors had challenged an earlier decision allowing him to remain outside prison with reporting requirements and a confiscated passport, and the appeal court backed detention. The case later led to a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, with the defence announcing an appeal.
🇲🇴 Macau Tightening ✓ Article
Macau raises personal-use penalties and exposes larger stocks to prison
Macau raised the personal-use penalty on 27 January 2017 from up to three months in prison to three months–one year, with an alternative fine of sixty–240 day-rates. Stocks above five daily reference quantities, even entirely for personal use, fell under production, trafficking or the lesser one-to-five-year tier, depending on the case. Ordinary production and trafficking minima rose from three to five years; in 2022 the top court used the lesser tier for two people growing one plant.
119−2 points
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Other law ✓ Article
Timor-Leste sets separate penalties for personal cannabis use
Timor-Leste’s drug law made illicit use, possession and growing solely for personal consumption punishable by up to one year in prison or a 120-day fine, rising to two years or a 240-day fine above five daily reference quantities. Courts may waive punishment for an occasional user in the lower band, and people seeking treatment have confidentiality protections. The law replaced reliance on inherited Indonesian legislation, kept trafficking penalties of five to fifteen years, and took effect the day after its 25 January publication.
🇲🇹 Malta Debate ✓
Malta's ReLeaf campaign asks for legal home growing
Before the general election the campaign group ReLeaf presented a manifesto asking to legalise possession of up to 28 g per person and six plants per household. The Labour Party's manifesto promised a national debate on recreational cannabis.
🇧🇷 Brazil Medical ✓
A Brazilian patients' association is authorised to grow cannabis
Abrace Esperança in Paraíba became the first patients' association in Brazil allowed to plant, harvest and process cannabis to supply therapeutic oil to its members. Ribeiro writes that it went on to supply some forty thousand patients. In the same year a federal judge in Rio Grande do Norte allowed a woman with Parkinson's disease and her son to grow six plants.
20163 entries1 score change
🇬🇳 Guinea Other law ✓ Article
Guinea sets a separate penalty for small personal possession and growing
Small personal buying, possession and growing carried one to three years, a fine equal to three times the value seized, or both under the new Penal Code. The 1998 code had punished personal possession and use with six months to two years, a fine, or both, while ordinary cultivation carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both. The replacement code took effect on promulgation and also allowed compulsory treatment, with two to five years for refusal.
79+2 points
🇬🇹 Guatemala Debate ✓ Article
Guatemala’s congressional committee opposes adult cannabis regulation
Congress’s legislation and constitutional committee opposed a bill that would permit private adult cannabis use, five home plants and licensed sales, Prensa Libre reported in November 2016. The committee cited constitutional health duties and treaty obligations; sponsor Álvaro Velásquez criticised its legal approach and said he would keep seeking support. The bill’s proposed permissions remained part of the political debate.
🇬🇹 Guatemala Debate ✓ Article
Guatemala’s lawmakers propose adult cannabis use and five home plants
A bill would let adults use cannabis privately and grow up to five plants at home for personal or family consumption. It proposed licensed commercial supply and a 10% sales tax divided between hospitals and police education programmes. Presented by Álvaro Velásquez, Sandra Morán and colleagues, it sought exceptions to the drug offences; a congressional committee opposed it later that year.
20156 entries2 score changes
201411 entries1 score change
🇱🇷 Liberia Other law ✓ Article
Liberia makes personal possession a felony and offers users treatment
People holding Schedule I drugs for themselves faced a second-degree felony under the new law, replacing the public-health law’s misdemeanor for unauthorised possession. Growing for personal use became a lower-grade felony than growing for trafficking. Use was a separate offence, and courts could order treatment, education or rehabilitation instead of conviction or punishment. The law took effect on publication on 21 October 2014.
🇭🇷 Croatia Medical ✓
A Croatian with multiple sclerosis is charged over his cannabis garden
Police reported Huanito Luksetić, from a village near Rijeka, for growing eleven cannabis plants and possessing 15 kilograms of marijuana. He said he had made oil from it to ease his illness because he could not afford to buy it. In November 2017 the Rijeka court sentenced him to two years in prison, finding the amount too large for personal use, and in January 2019 the Osijek County Court upheld the sentence. His lawyer called it a death sentence in effect.
🇺🇸 United States · Alabama Enforcement ✓
An Alabama veteran gets life without parole for a marijuana garden
Police looking for stolen property in 2011 found a few dozen marijuana plants at the house Lee Carroll Brooker, a disabled veteran with chronic pain, shared with his son in Alabama. Weighed with stalks and leaves, the plants came to about 2.8 pounds, over the 2.2-pound trafficking threshold. Because of prior felonies, including armed robberies decades earlier, the Habitual Felony Offender Act left the judge no choice but life without parole. Chief Justice Roy Moore upheld it while calling the sentence "excessive and unjustified", and the US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.
🏳️ Transnistria Other law ✓ Article
Transnistria puts small drug offences in its new administrative code
Transnistria’s replacement administrative code provided fines or up to thirty days’ administrative arrest for drug possession falling below the criminal offence. Use without a prescription carried a separate fine or up to fifteen days’ arrest, while cultivation below the criminal threshold could bring a warning or fine. The code replaced the 2002 administrative rules and required courts to distinguish these cases from criminal drug offences.
🇸🇻 El Salvador Debate ✓
Salvadorans march for decriminalisation
More than 700 people protested in San Salvador in favour of decriminalising consumption and personal cultivation. A survey that year found only 8% of Salvadorans supported legalisation.
20133 entries1 score change
🇺🇾 Uruguay Legalisation ✓ Article
Uruguay becomes the first country to legalise
President Mujica signed Law 19.172, passed by the Senate on 10 December by 16 votes to 13, which put the whole chain under state control. Registered residents choose one of three routes: growing six plants at home, joining a club, or buying up to 40 g a month in pharmacies. Possession for personal use had not been a crime since 1974.
3249+17 points
🇻🇺 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.
🇽🇰 Kosovo Other law ✓ Article
Kosovo sets a lower penalty for first-time users with under three grams
First-time offenders possessing less than three grams of cannabis for personal use faced a fine or up to one year in prison under Kosovo’s replacement criminal code. Ordinary unauthorised possession carried both a fine and one to three years, while growing cannabis to produce drugs carried one to ten years. The special small-possession tier survived in the 2019 code.
20125 entries2 score changes
20103 entries1 score change
🇺🇾 Uruguay Debate ✓
A conservative deputy files Uruguay's first home-growing bill
Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou of the National Party presented the first bill in Uruguay's history to legalise growing cannabis at home for personal use. It set no limit on plants or on the amount counted as personal. By early 2012 a cross-party bill for eight plants and 25 g looked set to pass.
🇷🇺 Russia Easing ✓
Russia makes growing up to 19 plants an administrative offence
Federal Law 87-FZ put the growing of a small number of cannabis plants under the administrative code: up to 19 bushes bring a fine or short detention, and the criminal code begins at twenty. From June 2004 the criminal threshold had been 15 plants of cultivated hemp or 50 of the wild kind.
🇨🇿 Czechia Easing ✓ Article
Czechia sets decriminalised amounts
A new criminal code and a government decree defined what counts as a small amount: up to 15 g or five plants became an administrative offence with a fine, not a crime.
2028+8 points
20094 entries1 score change
🇷🇸 Serbia Other law ✓ Article
Serbia creates a separate offence for small personal drug possession
Small quantities held for personal use became a separate offence carrying a fine or up to three years in prison, with a court able to waive punishment. The September 2009 amendment also expressly punished unauthorised cannabis growing with six months to five years. The earlier law had already allowed punishment to be waived for personal use; cultivation sentences and rules for larger stocks became harsher in 2019.
🇲🇴 Macau Other law ✓
Macau keeps personal-use penalties and sets a daily drug reference table
Macau’s replacement drug law took effect on 9 September 2009, keeping illicit consumption and specified personal-use acts, including growing and possession, punishable by up to three months in prison or a fine of up to sixty day-rates. A lesser production and trafficking tier carried one to five years, assessed using circumstances and five times a listed daily reference quantity. It replaced the 1991 law; the 2016 amendment later raised personal-use penalties and extended the quantity rule.
20083 entries1 score change
🇮🇹 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.
🇺🇦 Ukraine Easing ✓ Article
Ukraine moves the ordinary growing crime above 100 plants
From 7 May 2008, the ordinary criminal offence of unlawful cannabis or opium-poppy growing applied only above 100 plants, narrowing the offence in the 2001 code. The reform also added a fine and other sentencing options for ordinary possession without intent to sell. Its final provisions ordered release and case closures for conduct whose criminal liability it removed, while aggravated growing remained separately punishable. Parliament lowered the cannabis thresholds again in 2009.
1719+2 points
🇽🇰 Kosovo Tightening ✓ Article
Kosovo restricts cannabis to research, education and police work
Kosovo placed cannabis, resin, extracts and tinctures in a table restricted to scientific research, education and police purposes; ordinary medical prescribing belonged to other tables. The law also prohibited growing plants from which narcotics could be obtained and included supplying and holding seeds within its definition of cultivation for narcotic production. Promulgated by the UN mission, it operated alongside the provisional criminal code’s prison terms for drug production and supply.
20071 entry0 score changes
20052 entries0 score changes
🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓
The Supreme Court upholds federal power over home-grown medical cannabis
In Gonzales v. Raich the court held that Congress can criminalise cannabis grown and used at home under a state medical law.
🇷🇴 Romania Easing ✓ Article
Romania cuts cannabis possession penalties and lets courts impose fines
People caught growing, buying or possessing cannabis for themselves could receive six months to two years in prison or a fine from 7 March 2005. The amendment separated cannabis and other “risk drugs” from the higher drug category, whose personal-use penalty remained two to five years. Its treatment-linked alternatives to punishment were deferred until the new Penal Code took effect.
20045 entries0 score changes
🇩🇿 Algeria Death penalty ✓ Article
Algeria repeals its drug-law death clause but keeps life sentences
Algeria’s replacement drug law repealed the 1985 drug provisions, including their capital clause, while setting life imprisonment for unlawful cannabis cultivation and certain supply offences. Illicit use or possession for personal use carried two months to two years in prison, a 5,000–50,000-dinar fine, or either penalty alone. Qualifying users who followed treatment or medical supervision could avoid prosecution.
🏳️ 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.
🇭🇺 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.
20031 entry1 score change
20021 entry0 score changes
20014 entries3 score changes
🇲🇱 Mali Easing ✓ Article
Mali replaces long drug sentences with a lighter personal-use tier
Mali's replacement drug law set three months to one year, a fine, or both for a small personal supply of a high-risk plant or substance, including cannabis oil; cannabis derivatives other than oil carried two to six months, a fine, or both. The lighter tier covered possession, purchase and cultivation, replacing the earlier law's long forced-labour punishments. Ordinary high-risk drug cultivation and international trafficking still carried five to ten years and a fine, and landholders had to destroy cannabis plants growing on their land.
59+4 points
🇨🇫 Central African Republic Other law ✓ Article
Central African Republic gives small personal supplies a separate penalty
Small personal possession, purchase and growing received separate penalties under the drug law signed by President Ange-Félix Patassé: its cannabis-related prison ranges ran from one month to a year, with a fine alone also possible. Ordinary high-risk production and trafficking carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both, while courts could order treatment for a dependent person convicted of specified offences. The country joined two UN drug conventions later that year, and its 2010 Penal Code expressly kept this separate drug law in use.
19993 entries1 score change
🇦🇴 Angola Other law ✓ Article
Angola cuts personal-use penalties and raises trafficking terms
Angola shortened the ordinary personal-use sentence to three months, or up to one year above three days' supply, while raising ordinary trafficking terms to eight to twelve years. Growing for oneself came under the personal-use rule, and courts could suspend dependent users' sentences on condition of treatment. The law replaced colonial drug legislation and took effect ninety days after its August publication.
🇳🇪 Niger Other law ✓ Article
Niger gives small personal supplies and growing a separate penalty
Small personal possession, purchase and growing could be punished with a fine alone under the replacement drug ordinance; its cannabis-related prison ranges ran from one month to a year. The law banned cannabis cultivation and required landowners and occupiers to destroy plants, while retaining a separate small-personal-quantity tier. It expressly repealed the 1974 ordinance and its 1977 implementing decree and allowed courts to order treatment for a dependent person convicted of specified offences.
🇧🇫 Burkina Faso Other law ✓ Article
Burkina Faso gives small personal supplies and growing a separate penalty
People buying, holding or growing a small personal quantity could receive a fine alone under the new drug code. Its cannabis-related prison ranges ran from one month to a year, while ordinary high-risk production and trafficking carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both. The law followed the 1996 Penal Code, which had punished personal possession and use with three to six months, a fine, or both; the 2018 code later replaced these drug penalties.
36+3 points
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🇧🇪 Belgium Easing ✓ Article
Belgium gives cannabis possession the lowest priority
A ministerial directive told prosecutors to treat adults holding cannabis for personal use as the lowest priority. A 2003 law and later directives fixed this at 3 g or one plant, usually ending in nothing more than a police record.
1117+6 points
🇹🇬 Togo Other law ✓ Article
Togo sets a shorter personal-use penalty for cannabis
Togo set one to six months in prison and a fine of 25,000–500,000 CFA francs, or either penalty alone, for a small amount of cannabis derivatives other than oil kept, bought or grown for personal consumption. The law also banned cannabis cultivation nationwide and required landholders to destroy plants growing on their land. After joining the UN convention against trafficking in 1990, Togo placed personal use and commercial supply under separate penalties; a 2015 rewrite later raised the personal-use range.
19973 entries1 score change
🇲🇬 Madagascar Other law ✓ Article
Madagascar distinguishes personal cannabis supplies from trafficking
Madagascar's replacement drug law gave small personal quantities of non-oil cannabis derivatives two to six months in prison, a fine, or both; cannabis oil fell under a three-month to one-year range with the same alternatives. Production and trafficking offences could bring forced labour or fines, while offering drugs directly for another person's consumption had a separate one-to-five-year range or a fine. The law replaced the 1960 rongony ordinance and required landholders to destroy cannabis crops.
39+6 points
🇨🇲 Cameroon Other law ✓ Article
Cameroon sets lighter penalties for small personal cannabis supplies
Cameroon set a separate penalty for possessing, buying or growing a small personal supply: two months to one year, a fine, or both for high-risk drugs, with a shorter range for cannabis derivatives other than oil. Judges could waive punishment after a promise not to reoffend, while the main cultivation and trafficking offences carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both. Landholders had to destroy cannabis growing on their land, and courts could require treatment for convicted people with drug dependence.
🇲🇿 Mozambique Other law ✓ Article
Mozambique raises trafficking penalties and gives growers shorter terms
Mozambique replaced its colonial drug law with ordinary trafficking penalties of sixteen to twenty years and a separate cannabis-growing offence carrying three days to one year. Using or possessing drugs for oneself carried up to two years plus a fine, with a one-year minimum above three days' supply and possible waivers for occasional users. The law sought to implement the 1988 UN trafficking convention and created a central drug-control office.
19952 entries1 score change
🇺🇦 Ukraine Other law ✓ Article
Ukraine eases growing penalties but criminalises public drug use
Parliament’s 1995 drug-law overhaul put ordinary first unlawful grows under an administrative fine and confiscation, while retaining crimes for repetition and aggravated growing. It also made open or group drug use at educational, sporting and cultural venues, and other crowded places, punishable by up to four years in prison or a fine, rising to three to five years in aggravated cases. The changes followed the 1991 removal of general penalties for non-prescribed use. The law was adopted in February and took effect on publication under a companion resolution that ordered releases and case closures for specified growers.
1317+4 points
🇺🇦 Ukraine Easing ✓
Ukraine orders releases for specified cannabis-growing convictions
Parliament ordered release from punishment for people convicted of ordinary prohibited cultivation, or its repeat-offence form, when it adopted the drug-law implementation resolution on 15 February 1995. Pending cases in those categories were to be closed, including cases whose sentences were not yet final or being served. The new law gave ordinary first cultivation an administrative fine and confiscation, while retaining criminal penalties for repetition and aggravated growing. The resolution expressly excluded specified other cultivation convictions from release.
19892 entries0 score changes
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Other law ✓
Vanuatu sets a twenty-year maximum for drug offences
Vanuatu’s 1989 amendment replaced the general drug-offence penalty with a fine of up to VT100 million, up to twenty years in prison, or both. The same general clause applied to possession, supply and cannabis cultivation. Later appeal-court guidance directed judges to distinguish small personal grows from commercial operations when choosing a sentence within that wide range.
🇺🇸 United States · California Debate ✓ Article
California research panel proposes limited home cultivation
The commentary in the Research Advisory Panel's annual report for 1989 proposed allowing cultivation at a person's residence, without authorising supply to others or increasing the one-ounce limit outside the home. It spoke for members as experts, not their appointing agencies, and included minority reports. The date identifies the reporting year, not a verified publication day; this was a recommendation, not an enacted reform.
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🇺🇦 Ukraine Tightening ✓ Article
Ukraine threatens repeat cannabis users with prison
A Soviet Ukrainian decree issued on 21 August 1987 set a fine, corrective labour or, exceptionally, up to fifteen days’ administrative arrest for small personal possession or drug use without a prescription. Repeating either offence within a year after an administrative penalty could bring up to two years in prison, corrective labour or a fine. Named prohibited hemp varieties carried criminal growing penalties directly, while other hemp growing brought a warning or fine before repetition could become a crime; voluntary surrender or seeking medical help could exempt people from specified offences. The decree followed the Soviet Union’s June crackdown and revised the drug offences introduced in Ukraine in 1974.
1110−1 point
🇲🇭 Marshall Islands Ban ✓ Article
Marshall Islands prohibits cannabis under its national narcotics law
Following earlier territorial cannabis controls, the national narcotics law took effect on 20 March 1987 and prohibited possession, cultivation and distribution, with specified medical and professional exceptions. In an early prosecution under that law, a man received two years for marijuana possession; the Supreme Court later overturned the conviction because his right to a lawyer had been denied.
10011−89 points
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🇰🇾 Cayman Islands Other law ✓
Cayman brings possession, use and growing under one drug law
Cayman’s replacement drug law prohibited unauthorised possession, consumption, cultivation and supply of cannabis, which it listed as ganja. Possession or growing carried imprisonment of up to five years with hard labour on a first conviction, rising to ten years on a repeat conviction, with additional fines possible. The law replaced an earlier Dangerous Drugs Law and described its purpose as bringing drug control into line with international standards; the official legislation history dates commencement to 12 December 1973.
🇬🇮 Gibraltar Other law ✓
Gibraltar brings cannabis growing, possession and supply under a new drug law
Gibraltar’s new drug law took effect on 1 June 1973, providing separate offences for unauthorised possession, possession with intent to supply, production and cannabis cultivation. Its later amendments extended the supply wording to recipients abroad and introduced a quantity-based presumption of intent to supply. The Act remained the main drug statute until the Crimes Act replaced it in November 2012.
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🇰🇮 Kiribati Ban ✓ Article
The Gilbert Islands ban cannabis growing, possession and gifts
The colonial drug ordinance that commenced on 20 October 1948 supplied Kiribati’s inherited cannabis controls. Its revised text prohibited growing Indian hemp for private use or otherwise, possessing it, selling it or giving it to another person, and importing or exporting cannabis seeds. It also regulated cannabis extracts and tinctures through a separate controlled-drug schedule.
1009−91 points
🇹🇻 Tuvalu Ban ✓ Article
The Ellice Islands' Dangerous Drugs Ordinance takes effect
The drug law inherited by Tuvalu dates to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands ordinance that commenced on 20 October 1948. Its later consolidated text controls Indian hemp alongside opium and coca leaf, including possession, supply and cultivation. Tuvalu later increased a general fine and introduced cannabis-specific minimum prison terms.
1009−91 points
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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.
1003−97 points
🇰🇬 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.
10018−82 points
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan Ban ✓
Kazakhstan comes under the Soviet ban on growing Indian hemp
From 1935 the Soviet Union prohibited sowing Indian hemp except for crops devoted exclusively to medical and scientific needs. The decree required criminal liability and compulsory confiscation of unauthorised crops, and instructed the union republics to amend their criminal codes. Signed on 27 October 1934, it expressly took effect the following year.
10013−87 points