Cannabis Freedom Index

Military

Armies and soldiers, military governments and war.

45 entries, 1903–2026 · 9 moved a score · back to the whole history

World average score and Military 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

× Reset

20261 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇩🇯 Djibouti Enforcement ✓

    Djibouti gendarmes seize 12 kg of cannabis in Balbala

    The Einguella gendarmerie brigade broke up what it called a cannabis distribution network in the Balbala district of Djibouti City, finding 88 packages weighing 12 kg at a storage site, with an estimated street value of 1.76 million Djiboutian francs. Several people were arrested, held in police custody before presentation to the justice authorities.

20251 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇭🇳 Honduras Enforcement ✓

    Honduras's army reports 180,000 marijuana plants seized in half a year

    The Honduran armed forces said they had secured 13 illegal marijuana fields with about 180,000 plants so far in 2025, beside 37 coca plantations with more than 770,000 bushes. The latest marijuana field, at Tocoa in Colón, held about 36,000 plants on eight manzanas.

20221 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇫 Central African Republic Enforcement ✓

    Central African Republic police seize cannabis during a security operation

    A joint security operation in Ouandago had led to eleven arrests and the seizure of eleven homemade weapons and over ten kilograms of cannabis, MINUSCA reported. The operation responded to abuses by a self-defence group; the figures were a mid-operation report.

20142 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇸🇾 Syria Enforcement ✓

    Islamic State films itself burning a Syrian cannabis farm

    After taking the town of Akhtarin, north of Aleppo, from the Free Syrian Army, fighters of the Islamic State cut down a field of cannabis, soaked it in fuel and set it alight for the camera. Across the rebel-held north a cannabis economy had grown up in three years of war: in Jabal al-Zawiya, in Idlib, hills once known for olives were reported to grow almost nothing else, and the crop paid for weapons.

  2. 🇮🇹 Italy Medical ✓ Article

    Italy gives its army the job of growing medical cannabis

    The state's medical cannabis is grown by the army's chemical and pharmaceutical plant on the edge of Florence, which also makes antidotes and orphan drugs; the operation was launched in 2014 and is overseen by the Defence Industries Agency. Its two registered varieties are called FM1 and FM2, for Farmaceutico Militare. Output was 50 kg in 2020 and 300 kg in 2022, against a national need of about 1,500 kg a year; the rest is imported from the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark and Germany.

20131 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇸🇾 Syria Tightening ✓

    Kurdish forces raid cannabis growers in northern Syria

    With the war in its third year, the Kurdish enclaves along the Turkish border, poor and without work, had become centres of cannabis farming; people in Kobane had begun planting in 2012. The security forces of the Democratic Union Party carried out many operations against the crop. On 23 June a raid at Tal Ghazal, near Kobane, left three civilians dead, and on 27 June the Asayish seized 200 kilograms of hashish in a village in Afrin. Rival Kurdish parties said drug charges were being used against their activists.

20121 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇧 Lebanon Enforcement ✓

    Bekaa clans fight the army to save their cannabis fields

    Three Shia clans of the Bekaa, the Jaafar, Shammas and Sharif, fought gun battles with soldiers and police to stop the annual destruction of their fields, and residents of Yammouneh blocked the road with burning tyres. The interior minister visited the village and promised compensation.

20111 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇧 Lebanon Culture & science ✓

    Lebanon's cannabis farms expand as the Syrian war draws the army away

    From 2011 the fields grew again while the government's attention was on security during the war in Syria. In 2014 a news agency reported farms flourishing as the army looked the other way.

20091 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇻🇨 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Tightening ✓

    Operation Vincy Pac sweeps the hills

    Local police and soldiers from Regional Security System countries, Trinidad and Tobago among them, burned cannabis fields and shanties in an anti-crime operation. Three men, one a Barbadian, were shot dead at Vermont on 21 May. Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves contrasted it with the US-led operation of December 1998, which he said was done for public relations.

20031 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇶 Iraq Death penalty ✓

    Iraq's occupation authority suspends the death penalty

    The Coalition Provisional Authority suspended capital punishment across Iraq, halting its availability under the drug law as well as other criminal laws. Its order allowed life imprisonment or a lesser lawful penalty where death had been the sole punishment and said the former government had used criminal law to repress people. Iraq's interim government restored death penalties for selected offences in August 2004, including drug trafficking aimed at funding or assisting the violent overthrow of the government.

19961 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇸🇴 Somalia Enforcement ✓

    Somali warlords are reported to fund themselves with cannabis

    A Nairobi newspaper reported that warlords were growing cannabis to pay for military operations, with yearly harvests of 160 tonnes worth US$272 million. Cannabis had been described in 1970 and 1971 as one of the few narcotic drugs found in Somalia apart from khat, and it is named in the penal code.

19922 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇧 Lebanon Tightening ✓

    Lebanon cracks down on cannabis farming

    Hashish had been grown openly in the Bekaa valley throughout the civil war. Under pressure from the United States, the post-war government sent the army to destroy the fields.

  2. 🇮🇱 Israel Medical ✓

    Israel begins to permit cannabis for patients

    In the early 1990s cannabis was allowed case by case for people with cancer and painful illnesses, the beginning of what became a national programme. In 2004 the army started an experimental treatment of soldiers' post-traumatic stress with THC. By 2012 about 10,000 patients were registered, and by 2017 about 26,000.

19901 entry1 score change

  1. 🇬🇭 Ghana Tightening ✓ Article

    Ghana's military government passes a drug law with ten-year minimums

    The Narcotic Drugs (Control, Enforcement and Sanctions) Law, PNDCL 236, criminalised every drug-related activity, including use, possession, trade and production. Possession and production each carried a minimum of ten years in prison, and use and supply at least five. It stayed in force for thirty years. In June 2015 the Narcotics Control Board counted more than 11,000 people in prison for drug offences, 8,600 of them on remand awaiting trial for drug use.

    92−7 points

19892 entries1 score change

  1. 🇸🇩 Sudan Death penalty ✓ Article

    Sudan allows death sentences for hashish trafficking after the coup

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

    53−2 points

  2. 🇬🇳 Guinea Other law ✓ Article

    Guinea separates personal drug use from trafficking in its drug ordinance

    Personal drug use or possession carried two months to a year, a fine, or both under the ordinance signed by General Lansana Conté, while cultivation and trafficking carried five to twenty years and a fine. Prosecutors could direct users into treatment, with prosecution withheld after completion in the conditions stated by the law. The ordinance took effect immediately; the 1998 Penal Code later set a higher personal-use prison range.

19843 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇳🇬 Nigeria Death penalty ✓

    Nigeria's second military government adds death for drug trafficking

    During Nigeria's second military government the rulers issued Decree 20, which made the death penalty available for drug trafficking, and amended the Indian Hemp Decree to increase penalties and jail terms. The death penalty was used sparingly, was aimed at cocaine, and was removed in 1985. Cannabis use became popular among young Nigerians between 1980 and 1990.

  2. 🏳️ Somaliland Tightening ✓ Article

    Somalia raises northern drug-supply penalties to ten years in prison

    A Somali decree covering the north set ten years in prison and a 50,000-shilling fine for unlawful drug manufacture, production, import, dealing or supplying another person. Allowing a place to be used for consumption carried five years and a fine; entering it to consume carried three years and a fine. The decree transferred drug cases to the National Security Court and its regional branches, and parliament converted it into statute in June.

  3. 🇸🇴 Somalia Tightening ✓

    Somalia raises penalties for supplying drugs and hosting consumption

    Somalia set ten years in prison and a 50,000-shilling fine for unlawful drug manufacture, production, import, dealing or supplying another person. Hosting a place for drug consumption carried five years and a fine; entering it to consume carried three years and a fine. Drug cases went to the National Security Court and its regional branches, while earlier offences kept their earlier penalties.

19831 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇳🇬 Nigeria Tightening ✓

    Nigeria raises cannabis cultivation’s prison term to at least 21 years

    The military government raised the Indian Hemp Act’s prison term for cultivation and import or sale from at least ten to at least 21 years; smoking or possession brought at least four years without a fine option. The decree was made on 14 September 1984, published on 20 September, and declared effective from 31 December 1983. It amended the prison wording introduced by the 1975 removal of the cultivation death sentence.

19781 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇵🇪 Peru Tightening ✓

    Peru's military government issues the drug law that is still the base of its legislation

    Decree Law 22095 became the foundation of Peru's drug legislation, later amended by a legislative decree of 1981 and overlaid by the Penal Code of 1991, which removed the penalty for possession for immediate personal use.

19751 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇳🇬 Nigeria Death penalty ✓ Article

    Nigeria removes the death penalty for growing cannabis

    Nigeria’s military government removed the death penalty for cultivating and importing or selling cannabis, replacing it with imprisonment of at least ten years. Smoking or possession became punishable by a 200-naira fine, imprisonment of at least six months, or both. In 1984 the government raised the cultivation prison term to at least 21 years.

19742 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇳🇪 Niger Other law ✓

    Niger adopts national rules on narcotic sales, possession and use

    A national ordinance placed the import, export, purchase, sale, possession and use of poisonous substances and narcotics under rules to be set by decree. It was issued under the Supreme Military Council and was followed by implementing schedules in 1977. The 1999 drug ordinance later expressly repealed both texts.

  2. 🇳🇱 Netherlands Enforcement ✓ Article

    Dutch navy pursues the hashish-carrying fishing boat Lammie

    The Dutch navy pursued the fishing boat Lammie carrying about 10,000 kg of hashish from Lebanon. Stephen Snelders describes the captain sinking the vessel as it was about to be boarded. The transport linked criminal entrepreneurs with fishermen and maritime contacts, illustrating the growth of the illegal supply network before the 1976 toleration reform.

19701 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇶 Iraq Death penalty ✓

    Iraq adds severe drug penalties for people serving its armed forces

    Iraq added a special penalty for members of its armed forces and people employed by or working with or for them: life imprisonment or at least ten years, plus a fine of 1,000–2,000 dinars. Courts could impose death if the offence occurred while confronting the enemy. The amendment to the drug law followed the 1968 penalty increases; its stated purpose was to deter drug smuggling and use among people connected to the armed forces.

19692 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇻🇳 Vietnam Enforcement ✓

    South Vietnam: US forces test cannabis detection dogs

    Two dog-handler teams arrived to help US forces detect cannabis in baggage and around barracks. The dogs had been retrained in Okinawa after the US command requested teams in May, drawing on US Customs experience at border stations. The command history reported finds of discarded cannabis before baggage inspections as the wider suppression campaign targeted both users and their supplies.

  2. 🇻🇳 Vietnam Enforcement ✓

    South Vietnam begins destroying cannabis fields

    US military aircraft began searching the Delta for cannabis fields so security forces could cut and burn the plants. The flights followed South Vietnam's 1968 directive against cultivation and formed part of a joint campaign against supplies reaching US troops. A later US health report estimated that half a million plants had been destroyed by 1971, mostly in the Delta.

19683 entries2 score changes

  1. 🇧🇷 Brazil Tightening ✓ Article

    Brazil's military government punishes users like traffickers

    A decree-law issued days after the regime suspended civil liberties gave possession for personal use the same sentence as dealing: one to five years of reclusion and a fine of ten to fifty times the highest minimum wage, against international guidance. Users kept facing prison until 2006.

    117−4 points

  2. 🇻🇳 Vietnam Enforcement ✓ Article

    South Vietnam orders provincial chiefs to stop cannabis cultivation

    South Vietnam ordered province chiefs to stop cannabis cultivation and publicly condemned cannabis and opium use and trafficking. The government expanded its Narcotics Bureau as US commanders pressed for action against supplies reaching their troops. Earlier restrictions dated to at least a 1954 order; the crackdown led into aerial searches and crop destruction in 1969.

    1008−92 points

  3. 🇯🇵 Japan Enforcement ✓

    A UN report finds most of Japan's cannabis offenders are foreigners

    The report said those who broke the cannabis law were mainly foreign sailors and soldiers on leave from the Vietnam war. In 1972 there were 853 violations; by 2006 there were 2,423, and in 2019 4,570 after six years of increases.

19661 entry1 score change

  1. 🇳🇬 Nigeria Tightening ✓ Article

    Nigeria's military government issues the Indian Hemp Decree

    Months after taking power, the military government replaced colonial-era fines with some of the harshest penalties in the world: the death penalty for cultivation, 21 years for importation, and severe penalties for use and possession. The death penalty was later removed.

    113−8 points

19641 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇧🇷 Brazil Tightening ✓

    Brazil's new military government hardens the drug article

    Early in the military dictatorship President Castello Branco signed Law 4.451, which reinforced and hardened the penalties of the 1940 Penal Code for narcotics. It was the first of three tightenings under the dictatorship: a decree-law of 1968 put the user on the same footing as the trafficker, and Law 5.726 of 1971 confirmed it.

19521 entry1 score change

  1. 🇨🇭 Switzerland Ban ✓ Article

    Switzerland puts cannabis under federal narcotics controls

    Switzerland brought cannabis under federal narcotics controls and extended its drug ban to hashish. The government cited the 1925 Geneva convention and feared cannabis arriving through neighbouring countries after the war. Parliament approved the law in 1951; it took effect on 1 June 1952, while a separate offence of consuming drugs followed through the 1975 revision.

    10018−82 points

19511 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇭 Switzerland Debate ✓

    Switzerland's government proposes new cannabis controls

    The Swiss government proposed adding Indian hemp to the narcotics list and extending the existing drug ban to hashish. It said cannabis had previously been of little importance in Switzerland but feared supplies reaching the country through neighbouring states after the war. The resulting law was approved later that year and took effect in June 1952.

19451 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇩🇪 Germany Other law ✓

    The Soviet occupation authority reinstates the 1929 Opium Law in East Germany

    At the end of the Second World War the Soviet occupation authority reinstated the 1929 Opium Law. It remained the only law on drugs in the German Democratic Republic until 1973.

19421 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Hemp ✓ Article

    The US government asks farmers to grow hemp for the war

    After Japan took the Philippines and cut off the supply of fibre, the Department of Agriculture and the army urged farmers to grow hemp and released the film Hemp for Victory. Tax stamps were issued and about 400,000 acres were grown between 1942 and 1945, without any change to the Marihuana Tax Act.

19331 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓ Article

    Army cannabis report recommends no further Canal Zone legislation

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

19221 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇷 Greece Culture & science ✓

    Refugees and soldiers from Asia Minor spread hashish in Greece

    After the defeat in Asia Minor, returning soldiers brought back hashish habits picked up in Turkey, and about one and a half million Greek refugees were resettled, many in the slums of Tavros, Kokkinia and Drapetsona around Athens and Piraeus. Hashish smoking and the tekedes, the cafes where it was smoked, flourished in the 1920s despite the law, alongside rebetiko music.

19211 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓

    The army bans marijuana at Fort Sam Houston

    The commanding general's order followed reports that American soldiers had taken up the habit on the Mexican border, where troops under General Pershing were stationed in 1916. An army doctor later recalled that the first white smokers he saw were guardsmen back from Mexico.

19192 entries2 score changes

  1. 🇵🇸 Palestine Ban ✓

    British military rule in Palestine bans hashish

    Early in British rule, the military government warned the public that it would henceforth be an offence to cultivate, export, introduce, buy, sell, offer for sale or possess hashish. It is the first known anti-hashish rule in Palestine; the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance of 1925 put it into a full drugs law.

    1009−91 points

  2. 🇮🇱 Israel Ban ✓ Article

    British military rule in Palestine bans hashish

    Early in British rule, the military government warned the public that it would henceforth be an offence to cultivate, export, introduce, buy, sell, offer for sale or possess hashish. It is the first known anti-hashish rule in Palestine; the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance of 1925 put it into a full drugs law.

    10012−88 points

19162 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom Other law ✓

    Britain's wartime drug regulation leaves cannabis out

    Regulation 40B under the Defence of the Realm Act made it an offence for anyone but doctors, pharmacists and vets to possess, sell or give away opium, and restricted cocaine to prescription. Indian hemp was not on its list, and the conference that drafted the regulation did not mention it. Its targets were cocaine and opium.

  2. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom Tightening ✓ Article

    Britain's Army Council restricts cannabis sales to service members

    An Army Council order forbade selling Indian hemp to a member of the armed forces unless a doctor or pharmacist authorised it on a dated, signed prescription marked not to be repeated. The civilian wartime drug rule adopted in July omitted cannabis, so this remained a military restriction rather than a general ban.

19131 entry1 score change

  1. 🇦🇴 Angola Ban ✓ Article

    Portugal bans cannabis in Angola

    A colonial law prohibited cannabis in Angola. It was aimed at colonial troops and also meant to push farmers towards growing tobacco. A United Nations survey names the order as Portaria No. 508 of 13 May 1913.

    10011−89 points

19031 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Ban ✓ Article

    The Orange River Colony bans giving and receiving dagga

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

Most entries

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

Fewest entries

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

    ↑↓ to move, ↵ to open.