Cannabis Freedom Index

Taxes and monopolies

Taxes on cannabis and state monopolies over its trade.

64 entries, 1793–2026 · 20 moved a score · back to the whole history

World average score and Taxes and monopolies 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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20261 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇴 Colombia Debate ✓ Article

    A Colombian House committee backs a legal cannabis market

    The First Committee of the House of Representatives approved in first debate a bill to regulate adult use: sales to adults through dispensaries, clubs of 10 to 350 members, up to 20 plants per adult at home, a 20% tax, and most cultivation licences reserved for peasant and ethnic growers. It was the ninth such bill since 2020; the earlier ones were all shelved. It still needed the full House and the Senate.

20252 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇦🇹 Austria Tightening ✓

    Austria puts hemp flowers under the tobacco monopoly

    The National Council passed a tax law under which legal low-THC cannabis products may be sold only by tobacconists from 2029, supplied by approved wholesalers. Hemp and CBD shops may keep selling until the end of 2028. The cannabis trade association said it would challenge the law at the Constitutional Court.

  2. 🇨🇾 Cyprus Debate ✓

    Cyprus’s Volt party proposes a regulated cannabis market for adults

    Volt Cyprus called for legal adult possession and a licensed cannabis market overseen by an independent regulator. Its proposal included controlled production, retail and clubs, taxation, and easier medical access through the national health system. The party argued that criminalisation burdened courts, harmed young people and strengthened the illicit market, and invited public discussion.

20241 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇿 Czechia Debate ✓

    Czechia's cannabis bill drops the commercial market

    The government presented a draft cannabis law covering home growing, cannabis clubs, licensed sales and exports, and taxation, with registration of users, small growers and clubs. It left out the open regulated market that had been planned. Pro-legalisation groups criticised the omission, and the drug coordinator Jindřich Vobořil said he was not giving up.

20211 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇷 Greece Medical ✓

    Greece ends the state monopoly on selling medical cannabis products

    Law 4801/2021 amended the 2013 drug law. It repealed the state's monopoly on the sale of finished cannabis products, so that they can be sold directly to pharmacies, wholesalers, clinics and public hospitals; made the medicines agency EOF the sole licensing body; and allowed exports of finished products and of dried flower in packs of up to 30 g. Products for the Greek market still need EOF's approval before they can be prescribed.

20192 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇵 Northern Mariana Islands Other law ✓ Article

    Northern Mariana Islands protect home growers while filling licensing gaps

    Adults could continue growing within the legal limits while homegrown-registry regulations were unfinished, provided they obtained a card once it became available. The amendment set a $75 annual registry fee and business licence fees after the governor vetoed the original fee proposals. It also imposed a 15% cannabis excise tax and retailer surtaxes of 15%, or 7.5% on medical cannabis revenue, as the territory prepared to license businesses.

  2. 🇫🇷 France Debate ✓

    French deputies from four groups propose a state cannabis monopoly

    A bill to create a state monopoly on the production and sale of cannabis was tabled by deputies from four political groups, including the governing party. In January 2017, 150 public figures in Marseille, among them lawyers, judges and doctors, had called for controlled legalisation, saying that most of the city's gangland killings were tied to the cannabis trade. A poll in 2021 found 51 per cent of the French in favour of decriminalisation.

20181 entry1 score change

  1. 🇲🇵 Northern Mariana Islands Legalisation ✓ Article

    Northern Mariana Islands legalise adult use, home growing and gifts

    Adults aged 21 and over gained legal possession, home cultivation and capped gifts under a law signed by Governor Ralph Torres. Households could keep six mature and twelve immature plants and up to eight ounces of usable cannabis, with a larger plant allowance for medical patients on a doctor’s recommendation. Torres backed a regulated market for health, jobs and revenue but vetoed proposed fees and tax terms, which lawmakers revisited in 2019.

    1148+37 points

20162 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇹 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.

  2. 🇬🇹 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.

20151 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇷 Iran Debate ✓

    Iran's Expediency Council discusses growing cannabis under a state monopoly

    An Iranian news agency reported a proposal to regulate the cultivation of the poppy and of cannabis through state monopolies; the council, which makes Iran's drug laws, had discussed it without approving it. The same month an international conference on addiction in Tehran held a panel on regulating and legalising cannabis, and Saeed Sefatian, who leads the council's working group on reducing demand, set out steps towards it in a lecture. Cannabis use had been rising since the 2000s, with plants grown on city balconies.

20142 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Debate ✓ Article

    Kyrgyzstan’s addiction doctor proposes a legal cannabis pilot

    Addiction specialist Jenishbek Nazaraliev proposed legalising cannabis for medical and recreational use, beginning with a pilot around Lake Issyk-Kul. He argued that regulation could reduce corruption, improve control of growers and sellers and bring tax revenue. The state drug-control service opposed the idea, arguing that legalisation would leave international trafficking networks in place.

  2. 🇺🇸 United States · Colorado Other law ✓

    The first licensed cannabis shops open in Colorado

    Thirteen months after the vote, Colorado's first stores for adults opened. Sales exceeded 996 million dollars in 2015 and brought in 135 million in taxes. By April 2017, 176 of the state's 272 municipalities had chosen to prohibit retail cannabis.

20101 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · California Debate ✓

    California's Proposition 19 narrowly fails

    The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act would have let adults over 21 hold an ounce and grow limited amounts, with cities and counties regulating sales. It lost by 53.5 per cent to 46.5. A post-election poll found half of voters thought cannabis should be legal but disliked the details.

19941 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓ Article

    The US Supreme Court stops Montana taxing marijuana it had already destroyed

    Montana's Dangerous Drug Tax Act taxed illegal drugs at 10 percent of their market value or a fixed rate such as $100 an ounce for marijuana, whichever was greater. After the Kurth family were convicted over a marijuana farm, the state assessed almost $900,000 in tax, interest and penalties on drugs that police had seized and presumably destroyed. In Department of Revenue of Montana v. Kurth Ranch the Supreme Court held that a tax with "an unmistakable punitive character", imposed after the criminal case, was a second punishment barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause.

19891 entry1 score change

  1. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh Ban ✓ Article

    Bangladesh bans cannabis outright

    Ganja had been grown under licence and sold in government-approved shops, a holdover from colonial excise law. Cultivation was prohibited in 1987 and sales in 1989, and the Narcotics Control Act 1990 made the ban complete.

    325−27 points

19881 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇳🇱 Netherlands Other law ✓

    EU court excludes tolerated Dutch hashish sales from VAT

    In Happy Family, arising from hashish sales at an Amsterdam youth centre, the Court of Justice held that unlawful cannabis-drug supplies outside strictly controlled medical and scientific channels fell outside VAT under the Sixth Directive. Selective non-prosecution did not turn those sales into lawful trade. The judgment preserved national powers to punish drug offences; it did not legalise retail cannabis or exempt it from every kind of tax.

19851 entry1 score change

  1. 🇮🇳 India Ban ✓ Article

    India bans ganja and charas nationwide

    Until 1985 cannabis was regulated by state excise laws and sold in licensed shops in much of the country. The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act made flower and resin illegal everywhere, with prison even for small amounts. Leaves were left out, which is why bhang is still legal.

    4011−29 points

19701 entry1 score change

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Easing ✓ Article

    The United States passes the Controlled Substances Act

    The Act replaced the tax law struck down the year before. It put marijuana in Schedule I, the category for drugs with no accepted medical use, where it largely remains. It also repealed the mandatory minimum sentences of the 1950s and made simple possession a misdemeanour.

    711+4 points

19691 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓ Article

    The US Supreme Court strikes down the Marihuana Tax Act

    In Leary v. United States the court ruled that the 1937 tax law, the basis of federal prohibition, forced people to incriminate themselves. State laws still banned cannabis, and Congress replaced the tax act with the Controlled Substances Act the following year.

19611 entry1 score change

  1. 🇳🇵 Nepal Tightening ✓

    Nepal starts taxing and licensing cannabis shops

    Nepal began licensing and taxing the sale of cannabis, and licensed shops in Kathmandu, along Freak Street above all, became famous on the hippie trail. The trade lasted until the king revoked every licence in 1973 under pressure from the United States.

    10049−51 points

19562 entries1 score change

  1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Ban ✓ Article

    Independent Morocco bans kif

    Under the protectorates kif had been sold legally through a state tobacco and kif monopoly. France ended this in its zone in 1954, while the Spanish zone still licensed growing. When Morocco became independent in 1956 and joined the existing drug conventions, the ban was extended to both former zones. After putting down an uprising in the Rif, provoked partly by the ban on growing, King Mohammed V condoned cultivation in the five historical villages around Ketama, where it has gone on since.

    5712−45 points

  2. 🇲🇦 Morocco Culture & science ✓

    France reports to the United Nations on kif in Morocco

    A study sent by the French delegation described the situation two years after the dahir of 24 April 1954 had banned all dealings in cannabis in the French zone, where kif had until then been sold by the Tobacco Monopoly. Even medical use was now prohibited, with an exception only for science by permission of the health minister. Seizures reached 30,723 kg in 1955. Almost all smuggled kif came from the Spanish zone, mainly the Ketama region of the Rif, while hemp for fibre was still grown legally on about 143 hectares.

19542 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓

    The Spanish zone of Morocco keeps kif licensed, with a five-kilogram limit

    In the year the French protectorate prohibited all cultivation, a dahir in the Spanish zone still authorised growing, production and distribution under licence of the monopoly. It set a possession threshold of five kilograms, above which administrative sanctions applied, and allowed cultivation in municipalities it did not name, with the permission of local authorities and the monopoly.

  2. 🇲🇦 Morocco Ban ✓

    The French protectorate bans all kif cultivation

    France ended the licensed growing it had allowed for the kif and tobacco monopoly and prohibited all cultivation in its zone. In the Spanish zone a dahir of the same year still authorised it.

19532 entries2 score changes

  1. 🇵🇭 Philippines Ban ✓ Article

    The Philippines adopts its first national marijuana controls

    Republic Act 953 required prior authority, annual registration, tax stamps and written orders for marijuana transactions. Unauthorised possession could bring up to five years in prison, while section 15 declared marijuana cultivation prohibited as national policy.

    1007−93 points

  2. 🇹🇳 Tunisia Ban ✓ Article

    Tunisia ends legal cannabis sales

    Under French rule a state monopoly had sold cannabis, known as takrouri, alongside tobacco. The decree of 23 April 1953 prohibited growing, possessing, trading and consuming Indian hemp and takrouri. Pharmacies could use up their medical stocks until 1 January 1955 at the latest, and hemp for textiles could still be grown under licence. Independent Tunisia kept the ban.

    553−52 points

19501 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓

    The US Supreme Court upholds the marihuana tax

    In United States v. Sanchez the court held that the tax of $100 an ounce on transfers to unregistered persons was a valid use of the taxing power even though its purpose was to regulate. It quoted the Senate report's aim of making cannabis extremely difficult to acquire for illicit uses.

19491 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Enforcement ✓

    The French zone of Morocco seizes 7.6 tonnes of contraband kif

    While kif was still sold legally by the Tobacco Monopoly, the monopoly's agents and the police pursued kif sold outside it, paying informers out of the fines. In 1949 they seized 7,651 kg of kif or whole plants and 4,139 plants from illicit plots; by 1952 the yearly figure was 18,803 kg. Most seizures were made near the Spanish zone, the main source of supply.

19392 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article

    The United Provinces raise the duty on charas and cut hemp shops

    In 1939 the United Provinces raised the duty on charas by 20 rupees a seer and cut the number of opium and hemp-drug shops by about a fifth. The province took over the management of all opium and hemp-drug shops in selected areas of Garhwal, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Bulandshahr, Cawnpore, Moradabad, Aligarh, Agra, Jhansi, Gorakhpur and Basti.

  2. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article

    Bihar bans ganja and bhang where prohibition was extended

    In 1939 Bihar prohibited the transport and possession of ganja and bhang in the Hajipur subdivision and in parts of Ranchi, Hazaribagh and Manbhum, where a prohibition scheme was extended. The duty on a seer of ganja rose from 35 to 50 rupees, and on a seer of bhang from 3 to 4 rupees.

19376 entries3 score changes

  1. October32
  2. September11
  3. June10
  4. April10

    1. 🇺🇸 United States Enforcement ✓

      A Denver court hands down the first Marihuana Tax Act sentences

      Samuel Caldwell, a labourer in his late fifties, was arrested at a Denver hotel on 2 October, the day after the Act took effect, while selling cannabis to Moses Baca. Three days later Judge Foster Symes gave Caldwell four years in Leavenworth and a $1,000 fine, and Baca eighteen months for possession.

    2. 🇻🇮 US Virgin Islands Ban ✓

      The US Virgin Islands come under the Marihuana Tax Act

      An executive order of President Roosevelt carried the new federal Marihuana Tax Act into the Virgin Islands. From 1 October 1937 it was unlawful to import, grow, make or deal in cannabis without registering and paying the tax, which in practice ended legal trade, as on the mainland.

      10011−89 points

    3. 🇺🇸 United States Tightening ✓ Article

      The United States passes the Marihuana Tax Act

      Most states had already restricted cannabis. The federal act did not ban it outright but taxed and registered every transaction so heavily that legal supply, including prescriptions, became impractical. The first arrests came within days.

      2211−11 points

    1. 🇺🇾 Uruguay Ban ✓ Article

      Uruguay puts hashish under a state monopoly

      Law 9.692 made the import of hashish and other narcotics a state monopoly, let only pharmacies sell them on prescription and made possession by unauthorised persons an offence punished with one to two years in prison.

      10011−89 points

    1. 🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓

      The House passes the marijuana tax bill without a roll call

      When the bill was first raised on 10 June, one member objected to taking it so late in the day, and Congressman Rayburn explained only that it concerned something called marihuana, a narcotic of some kind. On 14 June members who asked what it did heard a repetition of the crimes Anslinger had attributed to users. After less than two pages of debate it passed without a recorded vote.

    1. 🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓

      The Treasury unveils its marijuana tax bill

      Two weeks after the Supreme Court upheld the prohibitive tax in the National Firearms Act, the Treasury introduced H.R. 6385, prepared without publicity by its general counsel, Herman Oliphant. Dealers and practitioners would register and pay an occupational tax, and transfers would be taxed at $1 an ounce to registered persons and $100 to anyone else. At the hearings William Woodward of the American Medical Association stood alone in opposing it, warning that it would end medical use.

19321 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Tightening ✓

    France bans kif growing in its Moroccan zone, except for the monopoly

    Citing its obligations under the 1925 Geneva convention, France prohibited cannabis cultivation in its zone, apart from crops grown for the Régie around Kenitra and Marrakech. Licensed growing continued in the Spanish zone, which became the monopoly's main source.

19301 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Other law ✓

    India's Dangerous Drugs Act leaves cannabis to the provinces

    The Dangerous Drugs Act 1930 became the national law for narcotics, but it contained no national rule on growing, selling, possessing or consuming hemp; those remained matters for provincial, later state, excise laws. Making cannabis extract and tincture was prohibited except under licence.

19241 entry1 score change

  1. 🇦🇫 Afghanistan Ban ✓ Article

    Afghanistan's Penal Code forbids domestic cannabis production and use

    Article 125 of the 1924–1925 penal code forbade producing and using charse and bhang for the domestic market. Users under 25 faced 25 to 39 lashes and older users 50 to 75, although the chapter says there is little evidence about enforcement. Cannabis intended for export was exempt and taxed.

    1007−93 points

19221 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓

    French Morocco bans hashish imports but leaves kif alone

    The government of the French protectorate banned imports of hashish and controlled access to pharmaceutical cannabis. Kif, the chopped cannabis sold by the monopoly, was not mentioned, and it was not fully banned until 1954.

19211 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Culture & science ✓

    Taxes on cannabis bring British India over 18 million rupees

    Government reports tracked the revenue from hemp drugs: about 5.6 million rupees across British India in 1900, 7.8 million in 1905 and 18.3 million in 1921. In Bengal they still made up about a fifth of all excise income in 1921, in Bihar and Orissa over a quarter, and in Delhi a third, even though consumption per head in Bengal had fallen since 1905.

19171 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓

    Spain regulates kif in its Moroccan zone

    A regulation against tobacco and kif smuggling in the Spanish zone required growers to sell their kif to the Régie marocaine des kifs et tabacs, the Tangier company that had held the monopoly on cannabis and tobacco since the 1906 Algeciras Conference. It was widely circumvented.

19142 entries1 score change

  1. 🇵🇰 Pakistan Tightening ✓

    Punjab puts bhang, charas and ganja under excise licence

    The Punjab Excise Act consolidated the law on importing, transporting, making, selling and possessing intoxicating liquor and drugs, cannabis among them, so that they could be bought only from licensed vendors. Baluchistan followed with its own excise regulation in 1915. Pakistan kept this licensed trade after independence until General Zia's prohibition order closed the shops in 1979.

    10035−65 points

  2. 🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓

    Kif is added to Morocco's state tobacco farm

    The tobacco monopoly had been given to a state-owned farm in 1910; in 1914 kif was added to its crops, so that the cannabis sold in Morocco was grown under the monopoly.

19051 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇦🇹 Austria Other law ✓ Article

    Austria distinguishes domestic hemp-cigarette sales from controlled imports

    A contemporary newspaper reports a Finance Ministry order dated 12 April 1905 clarifying that domestic manufacture and sale of Indian or hemp cigarettes are not prohibited by the existing monopoly regulations, so fiscal objections should not be raised on that ground. Imports still require special permission from the fiscal authority and payment of the customs and licence charges fixed for tobacco cigarettes. The date is that of the order as reported on 27 May, not an independently established commencement. The clarification does not remove separate pharmaceutical restrictions or authorize cannabis generally.

18962 entries1 score change

  1. 🇸🇷 Suriname Other law ✓

    Suriname limits ganja sales to pharmacies

    According to the Dutch Wikipedia article, ganja was already heavily taxed in 1894 and from 1896 could be sold only by pharmacies. No statute text has been read.

  2. 🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓

    Morocco's new sultan restores the kif and tobacco monopolies

    Hassan I's son and successor reinstated the state monopolies on kif and tobacco that his father had abolished in 1888. As French influence grew, European diplomats agreed to keep them.

    4257+15 points

18922 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇪🇬 Egypt Debate ✓

    Egypt's customs chief says the ban is not working

    Caillard Pasha, the British director general of customs, reported that prohibition had produced trafficking and that hashish was too widely used to stamp out. A law modelled on India's, to register, license and tax its manufacture, sale and import, was drafted but never put into effect.

  2. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article

    Baroda restricts cannabis sales, transport and larger possession

    Notification No. 10 of 10 December 1891 took effect on 1 February 1892. It restricted sales to licensed channels, imposed permission requirements above specified ganja and bhang possession limits, and provided fines, imprisonment and confiscation. Cultivators could sell only to licensed dealers. A clause preserved bona fide medical preparation and supply. The commission describes the resulting system as a state monopoly in importation and sale, rather than a ban on every use or all cultivation.

18911 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇾 Malaysia Tightening ✓ Article

    North Borneo authorizes a bhang and ganja sales monopoly

    A League of Nations summary of North Borneo’s government reply identifies an 1891 ordinance authorizing a monopoly for bhang or ganja sales and forbidding sale without a licence. The 1922 report explicitly says it lacks information on whether a monopoly was operating or how extensively the drug was used. The original ordinance and precise commencement remain unverified. This is regional North Borneo context, not a law for all of modern Malaysia.

18901 entry1 score change

  1. 🇹🇳 Tunisia Other law ✓

    Takrouri joins Tunisia's state tobacco monopoly

    Takrouri, Tunisian smoking cannabis, was added to the monopoly that had controlled tobacco since 1884. The 1890 law set prices for two products, flower heads and mixed herb; from 1902 a single product was sold, trimmed and chopped flower heads in five-gram boxes. Tunisia first relied on imports from Constantine in Algeria and later grew its own. In the 1910s about five tonnes were sold a year, and the monopoly lasted into the 1950s.

    7255−17 points

18891 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓

    Madras extends its excise law to hemp drugs

    The Madras Abkari Act of 1886 was extended in 1889 to intoxicating drugs prepared from the hemp plant, after the governor-general ordered the province to begin taxing ganja. At first the authorities only auctioned licences for sellers; cultivation was not confined to specific tracts until 1898. By 1900 the province had 433 licensed shops selling cannabis drugs, nearly 60 per cent more than two years earlier, and revenue that had been nil before 1889 reached 172,766 rupees.

18781 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓

    Bombay's excise law defines ganja and bhang as intoxicating drugs

    The Bombay Abkari Act (Act V of 1878) brought cannabis into the province's excise law, defining intoxicating drugs as ganja, bhang and every preparation of them. Until then revenue had come from auctioning the right to retail. From 1 January 1881 makers of ganja and other hemp drugs needed a licence from the local collector, and wholesalers needed permits to import, export or move the drugs between districts. Cultivation was not restricted.

18761 entry1 score change

  1. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh Tightening ✓

    Bengal puts its ganja growers and stores under licence

    Bengal brought growers, stores and exports of ganja under licence, tightening the control that had begun with licences for sellers in 1793. Growing was concentrated around Naogaon, in today's northern Bangladesh, where the crop later passed through government warehouses to licensed shops. That licensed trade lasted until independent Bangladesh banned growing in 1987 and sales in 1989.

    9632−64 points

18751 entry1 score change

  1. 🇹🇳 Tunisia Tightening ✓

    Ottoman Tunisia bans growing cannabis

    In the mid-1800s cannabis was smoked openly in Tunisia; in 1875 its cultivation was banned. Licensed growing returned under the French tobacco monopoly of 1884.

    10072−28 points

18741 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇪🇬 Egypt Other law ✓ Article

    Egypt taxes cannabis imports it had already banned

    Six years after cultivation, use and importation were first forbidden, a tax was imposed on cannabis imports, although possession remained illegal.

18731 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Other law ✓ Article

    India directs provincial governments to restrict and tax hemp drugs

    Finance Department Resolution No. 3773 urged local governments to discourage ganja and bhang consumption through restrictions on cultivation, preparation and retail, and through duties kept below the level encouraging illicit trade. It followed the 1871 provincial inquiry and acknowledged opposition to changing existing arrangements in most provinces. The 1894 commission reproduces the resolution; it was an administrative policy direction, not a single new uniform cannabis ban or tax tariff.

18702 entries2 score changes

  1. 🇸🇬 Singapore Tightening ✓ Article

    The Straits Settlements regulate bhang through a licensed monopoly

    The Excise Ordinance dated 15 July 1870 provided for exclusive licensed rights over bhang preparation and sale. Its text, read in the 1886 consolidated edition, permits licensed retail shops and penalizes imports, dealings and knowing possession outside the authorized supply system. It therefore supports restrictive excise control rather than a blanket cannabis ban. The compilation incorporates later amendments; the original session-law version and separate commencement notice were not inspected.

    10011−89 points

  2. 🇲🇾 Malaysia Tightening ✓ Article

    Penang and Malacca come under the Straits bhang monopoly law

    The Straits Settlements Excise Ordinance provided for a licensed monopoly in bhang preparation and sale, with licensed shops and penalties for unauthorized supplies and possession. The 1886 consolidated text contradicts describing the arrangement simply as a blanket cannabis ban. This entry concerns Penang and Malacca within the colony; it does not establish the law of every Malay state. The date is the ordinance date, not a separately verified commencement date.

    10011−89 points

18541 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article

    Bengal confines ganja growing to a single supervised tract

    Rules issued by the government of Bengal at the end of 1853 ended the loose system of revenue farming. From 1854 cannabis could be grown for drugs only in a 6,000-acre area near Naogaon in Rajshahi district, the Ganja Mahal, under a special deputy collector. Growers needed a licence, the harvest was weighed and stamped by excise officers, and the crop went through a government warehouse where duty was paid before licensed dealers could take it.

18261 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇲🇾 Malaysia Other law ✓

    Britain taxes bhang in Malacca

    After acquiring Dutch Malacca, the British authorities began taxing the production of bhang.

17981 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇮🇳 India Debate ✓ Article

    Bengal’s Board recommends taxation rather than total prohibition

    In letter No. 22 of 29 May 1798, the Bengal Board advised the Governor-General in Council against altogether prohibiting the sale of the intoxicants it examined, including ganja, bhang and charas. It proposed restraining use and improving revenue through suitable taxation. The 1894 commission reproduces this recommendation. The reviewed passage does not establish a British parliamentary tax act or the immediate enactment of a particular tariff.

17931 entry1 score change

  1. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh Tightening ✓

    Ganja sellers in Bengal need a licence from the East India Company

    From 1793 anyone retailing ganja in Bengal, which included today's Bangladesh, had to buy a licence from the local colonial officer. Once licensed, a seller could buy as much as he wanted from the growers and sell it where he liked; the Company cared about the income, not about how much was grown or smoked.

    10096−4 points

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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