Cannabis Freedom Index

Seeds

Selling, holding or planting cannabis seeds.

44 entries, 1916–2026 · 0 moved a score · back to the whole history

World average score and Seeds entries per decade

13.2 today, from 99.1 in 1860

World average score, every country counted the same Entries that moved a score Context only

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20267 entries0 score changes

  1. October10
  2. September10
  3. August10
  4. July10
  5. June10
  6. January20

    1. 🇺🇸 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.

    1. 🇹🇿 Tanzania Debate ✓ Article

      Tanzania moves to make holding cannabis seeds a crime

      The Attorney General presented a bill amending the Drugs Control and Enforcement Act. It would make it an offence to hold or distribute seeds of prohibited plants, cannabis among them, whatever they are meant for, and would extend the law to drugs in liquid form. The report gave no penalties and no vote.

    1. 🇰🇼 Kuwait Other law ✓ Article

      Kuwait sets seed records and secure sites for licensed research growers

      Newly published Health Ministry rules limited controlled-plant cultivation permits to eligible government and research or educational institutions for medical or scientific purposes, Al-Jarida reported. They required a responsible pharmacist, seed and crop records, secure premises and official supervision of destruction when the licensed purpose ended. The rules implemented the institutional cultivation route in the 2025 drug law.

    1. 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Enforcement ✓

      Kyrgyzstan reports three arrests over cannabis teas and oils

      Police reported detaining three suspects after investigating cannabis products prepared for a festival in Tuura-Suu and searching homes and a shop. The Interior Ministry said laboratory tests found marijuana in two sample packages; searches also recovered cannabis oil, marijuana, seeds and products marketed as teas and other goods. A supply investigation was continuing when the arrests were reported.

    1. 🇦🇷 Argentina Medical ✓

      Argentina publishes a licence for medicinal cannabis seeds and cuttings

      ARICCAME Resolution 41/2026, adopted on 26 June and published on 30 June, opens a special adaptation licence for seeds, seedlings and cuttings of cannabis for medicinal use. The window runs until 1 March 2027. The recitals tie it to people and companies that already held authorisations from the health ministry, the seed institute or the agricultural health service. Selling flowers, or making derivatives, is outside the licence, and any flowers that appear while plants are multiplied for propagation cannot be sold. The resolution takes effect on the tenth administrative working day after publication.

    1. 🇧🇭 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.

    2. 🇦🇪 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.

20241 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone Medical ✓ Article

    Sierra Leone sets licensing rules for medical cannabis growers

    Licensed companies, manufacturers and approved health organisations could apply to grow and process cannabis under Pharmacy Board guidelines focused on medical production for export. The rules required suitable staff, secure sites, traceable planting material and inspections, using permission powers already contained in the 2001 pharmacy law. The document gives 17 May 2024 as its effective date and focuses on cultivation, harvesting and processing for medicinal products.

20234 entries0 score changes

  1. July10
  2. April10
  3. February10
  4. Month unknown10

    1. 🇱🇷 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.

    1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓

      Morocco receives its first legal cannabis seed

      The first shipment of imported seed for the legal programme landed at Casablanca airport, with a larger one due days later. The seed came from countries including Switzerland, Uruguay, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy and the United States, was enough for about a hundred hectares, and went to cooperatives in Al Hoceima and Chefchaouen.

    1. 🇻🇺 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.

    1. 🇯🇴 Jordan Hemp ✓ Article

      Jordan allows hemp seed foods with THC limits and label restrictions

      Food producers could use hulled, nonviable hemp seeds and specified seed products under rules limiting THC in food and restricting labels and advertising. The source crop had to contain no more than 0.1% THC in its leaves and flowering tops; the finished-food limits ranged from 0.2 mg/kg in beverages to 10 mg/kg in seed oil. Health Minister Firas Hawari’s instructions also required seed oil to be labelled unsuitable for cooking.

20223 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇫🇯 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.

  2. 🇻🇺 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.

  3. 🇺🇸 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%.

20213 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇯🇴 Jordan Other law ✓ Article

    Jordan grades drug penalties and widens first-offence record protection

    Jordan divided personal-use drug offences into four penalty bands, ranging from one to three years plus a fine to one to six months, a fine, or both, depending on the controlled-drug schedule. It broadened the acts covered by first-offence record protection and expressly allowed plant and seed licences under future regulations. The same amendment expanded the distribution offence to include gifts and retained prison as a possible personal-use punishment.

  2. 🇮🇸 Iceland Hemp ✓

    Iceland lets its food authority license imports of hemp seed

    A new article in the drug act allows the Food and Veterinary Authority to permit imports of seeds of Cannabis sativa under conditions set by regulation, as an exception to the general ban on importing and handling cannabis.

  3. 🇷🇼 Rwanda Medical ✓ Article

    Rwanda licenses medical cannabis and sets prescription rules

    Rwanda opened a licensing system for growing, processing, researching, importing and exporting cannabis for medical or research purposes on 28 June 2021. Medical use required a prescription from a doctor with written health-ministry authority, and operators had to meet detailed security and tracking rules. The order used powers in the 2012 drug-control law; licences lasted five years and could be renewed.

20203 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇼 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.

  2. 🇨🇭 Switzerland Hemp ✓

    Swiss court confirms that high-THC hemp seed is a banned narcotic

    The Federal Supreme Court upheld the confiscation and destruction of seed a farmer had saved from his own hemp, which had tested at 1.8% THC. Because the seed could again grow plants above the 1% limit, it fell under the list of prohibited narcotics, although the farmer himself had been acquitted.

  3. 🇲🇱 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.

20191 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇼 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.

20182 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇦 Laos Other law ✓ Article

    Laos sets treatment and prison bands for personal cannabis possession

    People possessing under five grams of cannabis for consumption were to receive treatment under the replacement Penal Code, which took effect on 1 November 2018. Possessing five to ten grams of dried cannabis for consumption carried six months to two years in prison and a fine of five to twenty million kip. The code retained separate dried-cannabis trading and THC/hashish penalties, and set escalating sanctions for addiction recurring after certified treatment.

  2. 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Medical ✓ Article

    Zimbabwe lets licensed producers grow cannabis for medicine and research

    Licensed producers could grow and process cannabis for medicinal and scientific purposes under five-year licences. Applications required site plans, security clearances and production records, with a published US$50,000 production-licence application fee. The medicines regulator later reported that the first licence was issued in 2019 and that production was directed towards exports, with local use limited to research.

20171 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇱 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.

20162 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇧🇬 Bulgaria Tightening ✓

    Bulgaria narrows cannabis licences to research and hemp to fibre and seed

    An amendment to the drug control act took effect. Health ministry licences for Schedule I substances, cannabis among them, were limited to medical research where the law had said medical purposes, and the hemp licence was confined to fibre and seed, which made other hemp products unlawful. Hemp growers had asked for clear rules on processing; a definition drafted by a parliamentary working group was dropped after a letter from the customs service was read out. The Academy of Sciences had supported the growers.

  2. 🇨🇾 Cyprus Hemp ✓ Article

    Cyprus licenses hemp farming and trade at up to 0.2% THC

    Farmers and suppliers gained a licence-based route for industrial hemp containing no more than 0.2% THC. The law required registered premises, controlled seed and crop records, while a companion amendment separated qualifying hemp from the narcotics restrictions. In 2024 parliament replaced the agricultural definition with a reference to the EU’s 0.3% limit.

20141 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇪 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.

20131 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇷🇸 Serbia Hemp ✓ Article

    Serbia sets annual hemp permits and a THC limit below 0.3%

    Hemp growers had to use registered varieties containing less than 0.3% THC and apply for a permit before sowing, by 30 April each year. Agriculture Minister Goran Knežević’s rules required seed and land documents, checks for drug convictions and a permit valid for one production year. They put the 2010 law’s licensed fibre-and-seed crop rules into practice.

20121 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇹 Italy Hemp ✓ Article

    Italy's top court rules that selling cannabis seeds is not a crime

    The united sections of the Court of Cassation held that merely offering seeds for sale is an unpunishable preparatory act, because what the buyer will do with them cannot be known. Selling them with detailed growing instructions is not the drug-law offence of inducement either, but may be prosecuted as incitement under the criminal code.

20101 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇷🇸 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.

20091 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇹 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.

20081 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇽🇰 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.

20051 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇦 Canada Enforcement ✓

    Canadian police arrest the seed seller Marc Emery for the United States

    Acting on a request from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Canadian police raided the BC Marijuana Party bookstore in Vancouver and arrested Marc Emery in Nova Scotia for extradition. From 1998 until then he had paid nearly 600,000 dollars in taxes as a declared marijuana seed vendor. Canada's justice minister signed the surrender order on 10 May 2010.

20031 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇵🇹 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.

20001 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇾 Cyprus Hemp ✓ Article

    Cyprus bans seed sales made with knowledge of illegal growing plans

    Supplying, offering or selling cannabis seeds became an offence when the seller knew the recipient intended to grow illegally. The new rule allowed up to eight years in prison, a fine of up to 1,500 Cyprus pounds, or both, subject to regulatory exceptions. Licensed industrial hemp received a separate route in 2016, and the seed clause was widened to imports in 2019.

19921 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇹 Guatemala Other law ✓ Article

    Guatemala sets separate prison terms for personal cannabis possession

    The drug law signed in September 1992 prescribed four months to two years in prison plus a fine for acquiring or possessing drugs for personal consumption. It required a reasonable amount for immediate use and supporting circumstances, leaving the quantity unnumbered. Compared with the older penal code’s three-to-five-year terms, the new law set five to twenty years for unauthorised growing and twelve to twenty years for trafficking, both with fines.

19801 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇵🇭 Philippines Ban ✓

    The Philippines brings marijuana seeds under the ban

    Presidential Decree 1708 added cannabis seeds to the statutory definition of marijuana after a Court of Appeals ruling had exposed the omission and led to an acquittal for seed possession.

19761 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇱🇷 Liberia Other law ✓ Article

    Liberia punishes cannabis possession and orders plants destroyed

    Liberia’s public-health law treated unauthorised cannabis possession as a second-degree misdemeanor, while growing it or allowing it on one’s property was a first-degree felony. Landholders had to destroy wild cannabis or report it to police or health officers. A separate court-ordered treatment system could keep a dependent person under inpatient care and supervision for up to seven years. These criminal rules were replaced in 2014.

19731 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇹 Guatemala Other law ✓ Article

    Guatemala sets prison terms for cannabis growing, supply and possession

    Unauthorised growing of drug-producing plants and possession or supply of their seeds carried three to five years in prison plus a fine under the new penal code. The same prison range applied to unlawful drug import, delivery, sale and keeping drugs. The code took effect on 15 September 1973; a separate 1992 drug law later set higher cultivation and trafficking terms and a distinct personal-possession offence.

19681 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇶 Iraq Death penalty ✓ Article

    Iraq adds death penalties for specified drug-trafficking cases

    Repeat offenders convicted of specified supply offences, leaders of trafficking groups and customs or other officials with drug-related duties could now face death or lifelong hard labour. Ordinary trafficking, including cannabis growing for trade, carried lifelong hard labour, while unauthorised possession or growing for personal use rose from one to five years to three to ten years in prison, with higher fines. The government said the earlier penalties had failed to deter smugglers; further military penalties followed in 1970.

19651 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇶 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.

19591 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇵🇷 Puerto Rico Tightening ✓ Article

    Puerto Rico makes cannabis possession a felony carrying five to twenty years

    Cannabis possession and use became felonies carrying five to twenty years in prison, with a possible additional fine of up to $20,000, replacing the earlier misdemeanor penalty of six months to two years. The law also prohibited doctors from prescribing cannabis and allowed cultivation only with official permission for tightly supervised industrial purposes. It took effect immediately on approval; the Supreme Court later held that its harsher penalties could not be applied to conduct from before that date.

19161 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇿🇦 South Africa Debate ✓ Article

    South Africa drafts a national ban on cannabis use, possession and growing

    A government draft proposed banning cannabis use, possession, trafficking and unlicensed cultivation, with fines of up to £100 and prison terms of up to three months. It also targeted smoking equipment and listed cannabis separately from Leonotis plants that were also called dagga. The draft was prepared in response to the 1912 Hague drug convention but was never presented to parliament; nationwide prohibition followed in 1922.

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
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