Thresholds
Gram and plant limits, personal doses and the quantities that divide users from dealers.
248 entries, 1878–2026 · 80 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Thresholds 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.
🇫🇯 Fiji Other law ✓ Article
Fiji signs a drug rewrite separating personal use from supply
Fiji signed a new drug law with a separate personal-use offence and diversion into support programmes. For cannabis plant material it sets a maximum FJ$500 fine or three months in prison, or both, with custody restricted to prior-conviction or exceptional cases; at 28 g a rebuttable presumption of supply begins. The law also creates a Counter Narcotics Bureau and replaces the older drug Acts, with commencement dependent on a ministerial Gazette notice.
🇰🇾 Cayman Islands Debate ✓
Cayman expects cannabis reform proposals in November or December
Premier André Ebanks told Parliament that the final cannabis-reform report and supporting legislation were expected to reach the Attorney General for government consideration in November or December 2026. The July consultation had asked about possession limits, home growing, administrative penalties and clearing old minor convictions, following the 2025 referendum. Adults remained subject to the existing criminal law while the review and preparation of legislation continued.
🏳️ Abkhazia Other law ✓ Article
Abkhazia sets a ten-plant threshold for serious cannabis-growing cases
The cabinet announced a ten-plant threshold for the large-scale cultivation offence, expressly including plants of the Cannabis genus, in an amendment to the 2013 quantity rules. The decision was to take effect upon official publication. Ordinary unauthorised cultivation remained a separate offence carrying six to eight years in prison, while the large-scale tier carried ten to twelve years.
🇲🇴 Macau Tightening ✓
Macau adds HHC to its controlled drugs
HHC, or hexahydrocannabinol, entered Macau’s controlled-drug Table II-B on 18 August 2026. The amendment also added other substances and replaced the daily-reference annex used in drug cases. Cannabis, resin and oil remained controlled under the existing law.
🇨🇱 Chile Tightening ✓ Article
Chile lets trafficking penalties reach small amounts
Law 21.817, passed by the Chamber of Deputies on 23 March by 130 votes to 12 and published on 23 May, adds a rule to Law 20.000: small quantities of substances that a regulation lists as capable of serious harm are punished as trafficking. The ministry has six months to write that list. Cannabis is not named, but the existing decree classes it with the most harmful drugs, and 37 deputies challenged the rule at the Constitutional Court for that reason.
🇦🇲 Armenia Debate ✓
An Armenian bill would double the fine for a small amount
Hayk Sargsyan, of the governing Civil Contract party, presented amendments in second reading to a parliamentary committee. The fine for making, acquiring or keeping a small quantity for personal use would rise from 200,000–400,000 drams to 400,000–800,000, and to as much as 1.6 million for a repeat within a year. Selling through Telegram would bring five to ten years where it now brings three to six, and selling to minors eight to fifteen.
🇬🇩 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
🇲🇽 Mexico Debate ✓
Mexico's Supreme Court falls one vote short of ending the 5 g limit
Five of nine justices voted to strike the 5 g limit from the health law with general effect, one fewer than the six needed. The man in the case, a homeless person held in Ciudad Juárez in 2021 with 14 g, won individual protection: the judge must weigh whether the cannabis was for his own use. The limit stays in force for everyone else.
🇿🇦 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.
🇪🇪 Estonia Debate ✓
Estonia's justice minister proposes easing punishment for drug users
The ministry proposed raising the threshold for a large quantity of a narcotic from 10 doses to 30, so that holding less would be a misdemeanour and not a crime, while making it easier to convict dealers. The minister said possession of any narcotic would still be a misdemeanour with a fine of 2,400 euros.
🇨🇿 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
202515 entries3 score changes
🇧🇼 Botswana Easing ✓ Article
Botswana excludes imprisonment for possession of 60 grams or less
Act 26 of 2025 commenced on 22 December. It adds a low-level cannabis possession offence covering 60 grams or less, with a fine up to P10,000 or prescribed alternatives and an explicit prohibition on imprisonment. Notices require payment within 21 days and mandatory rehabilitation as prescribed; nonpayment leads to alternatives to imprisonment. Larger quantities and cannabis preparations remain subject to separate criminal penalties. Possession is still an offence, and the amendment does not legalise recreational supply.
🇲🇻 Maldives Death penalty ✓
The Maldives introduces the death penalty for drug smuggling
President Muizzu ratified amendments passed by 65 votes to none. Death can be imposed for importing or possessing more than 350 g of cannabis, and only on a unanimous Supreme Court verdict; otherwise the sentence is life imprisonment.
🇸🇮 Slovenia Debate ✓
Two Slovenian coalition parties table a personal-use bill
The Freedom Movement and the Left submitted a bill to carry out the 2024 referendum: four plants per adult and six per household, 7 g in public and 150 g at home, unpaid sharing of small amounts, and no sales. The Social Democrats had not endorsed it and it has not been enacted.
🇦🇼 Aruba Easing ✓ Article
Aruba raises the cannabis dismissal band from 5 to 30 grams
Aruba’s revised prosecution instruction raised the soft-drug surrender-and-dismissal band from 0–5 g to 0–30 g. Its possession/courier table replaced the earlier short prison request with fine requests of AWG 250 for 30–100 g, AWG 750 for 100–300 g and AWG 1,500 for 300–500 g. Exceptions remained for minors, repeat offending, another offence and specified settings, including carnival parades, workplaces and government buildings.
2124+3 points
🇹🇻 Tuvalu Tightening ✓ Article
Tuvalu introduces minimum prison terms for cannabis offences
Tuvalu introduced minimum prison terms for cannabis offences: the smallest smoking or possession band, no more than 5 g, carries two to five years, while up to one plant carries one to five years. The same law lets the minister license medical and scientific cultivation, manufacture, sale and use. It took effect on 3 July 2025, continuing the drug controls inherited from the colonial ordinance.
96−3 points
🇬🇪 Georgia Tightening ✓ Article
Georgia brings back prison for possessing more than 5 g
Parliament amended the Criminal Code so that buying or holding more than five grams of dried marijuana can be punished with up to six years in prison, 70 to 250 grams with five to eight years, and more with up to twenty years or life. A repeat offence under five grams can bring up to a year. The change overrode Constitutional Court rulings that had ruled out prison for small amounts; the rules on consumption were left as they were.
2216−6 points
🇻🇳 Vietnam Other law ✓
Vietnam raises the quantities for a death sentence for selling drugs
Law 86/2025/QH15 took effect on 1 July 2025. Illegal possession that is not for sale, transport or production is three to five years from 1 g of cannabis resin or 1 kg of the listed plant parts, and a prior penalty can make a smaller amount criminal. Illegal sale is three to seven years. Twenty years or life applies from 5 kg of resin or 75 kg of the listed plant parts. Life or death applies from 30 kg of resin or 150 kg of those plant parts. Death in that bracket is an alternative, not a required sentence. The same law removed death for illegal transport.
🇰🇾 Cayman Islands Debate ✓
Cayman’s premier asks for cannabis limits and penalty options
Premier André Ebanks told Parliament that small-scale cannabis reform would be referred to the Law Reform Commission after voters backed decriminalisation. He asked for recommendations on possession limits, administrative penalties, enforcement, international obligations and the protection of vulnerable people. The commission’s later discussion paper dates Cabinet’s referral to the same day and opened those questions to public consultation in July 2026.
🇪🇨 Ecuador Other law ✓
Ecuador rewrites its personal-use rule without bringing back thresholds
The National Solidarity Law, proposed by President Noboa and passed with 84 votes, reformed Article 228 of the criminal code to separate use from trafficking. The fixed amounts removed in November 2023, 10 g for marijuana, did not return: the health ministry, the judiciary council and the prosecutor's office are to set the criteria by joint resolution. Meanwhile judges decide case by case.
🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda Easing ✓
Antigua and Barbuda plans to wipe old cannabis convictions
After its weekly meeting the Cabinet said it would bring a bill to the next sitting of Parliament to pardon people convicted of possessing less than 15 grams of marijuana and to expunge their records. The attorney general was asked to draft it. Whether the bill has passed was not confirmed.
202411 entries3 score changes
🇫🇯 Fiji Enforcement ✓ Article
Fiji’s appeal court cuts two cannabis growers’ prison terms by four years
Waisake Kaloulia’s nineteen-year cannabis cultivation sentence was reduced to fifteen years, and Kaminieli Naqeleca’s eighteen years to fourteen. The Court of Appeal applied its newer plant-count and role guidelines to the men’s older case, involving a remote plantation with at least 208 whole plants confirmed in the analyst’s report. Both convictions stood, while the periods before parole eligibility also fell.
🇲🇿 Mozambique Enforcement ✓ Article
Mozambique's top court cuts a cannabis seller's sentence to six years
The Supreme Court reduced Raiva Rafael Meponda's seventeen-year sentence to six years and a 30,000-metical fine after police found 590 grams of cannabis in 232 portions at his Maputo home. The judges rejected his personal-use argument but treated his simple, direct sales without an organisation as small-scale trafficking. His role as a police officer counted against him when the court chose the sentence.
🇬🇱 Greenland Tightening ✓ Article
Greenland requires low-THC imports to pass through local distribution
Greenland required the low-THC cannabis exception to use imports in batches for distribution after receipt at storage controlled by the authorised importer. The earlier rule already required an authorised legal entity and a 0.2% THC ceiling; the replacement added the distribution condition and more detailed product documentation. Those conditions remain in the current regulation.
🇩🇪 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
🇨🇾 Cyprus Hemp ✓ Article
Cyprus raises its agricultural hemp definition to the EU’s 0.3% limit
Cyprus replaced the hemp-production law’s fixed 0.2% definition with the THC limit in EU agricultural legislation, allowing the definition to follow the 0.3% standard. Published in February 2024, the amendment deemed itself effective from 7 December 2021. Farmers and suppliers still needed licences under the system introduced in 2016.
🇹🇭 Thailand Tightening ✓
Thailand treats more than 30 grams as intent to sell
A notification in the Royal Gazette classed possession of more than 30 grams or 30 millilitres as intent to distribute.
202317 entries2 score changes
🇪🇨 Ecuador Tightening ✓ Article
Ecuador repeals its personal-use thresholds
President Noboa scrapped the table that had treated up to 10 g of cannabis as personal use. The constitution still says users must not be criminalised, but there is no longer a safe amount: a person has to convince police and a judge that it was for their own use.
2318−5 points
🇦🇿 Azerbaijan Other law ✓
Azerbaijan amends its narcotics law to cover parts of plants and to define small amounts
Law No. 1024-VIQD added "(their parts)" to the definition of plants containing narcotic substances and reworded Article 21: amounts below the substantial amount set by law are a small amount that leads to administrative liability.
🇹🇯 Tajikistan Other law ✓
Tajikistan replaces the quantity list used in drug prosecutions
A Criminal Code amendment replaced the annex governing drug quantities and updated the cross-reference used for its quantity bands. The code distinguishes its lowest and next quantity bands from large and especially large amounts, with different penalties for personal possession and supply. Cultivation quantities follow a separate plant-count list.
🇱🇺 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
🇨🇭 Switzerland Easing ✓ Article
Swiss Federal Court: up to 10 g may not be confiscated
The court went a step beyond its 2017 ruling and held that police have no basis to seize up to 10 g that an adult holds for their own use.
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Hemp ✓ Article
Zimbabwe excludes industrial hemp up to 1% THC from its cannabis-plant ban
The criminal code excluded industrial hemp from its dangerous-drug definition for the cannabis plant, defining hemp at no more than 1% delta-9 THC by dry weight. The definition includes seeds and plant derivatives, while someone asserting in an investigation that material is cannabis rather than industrial hemp must prove that assertion. The enacted amendment followed the narrower 0.3% authorisation and growing-permit rules introduced in 2019 and 2020.
🇲🇾 Malaysia Death penalty ✓
Malaysia ends the mandatory death penalty
Judges gained discretion to impose 30 to 40 years in prison instead of death for drug trafficking. The presumption that 200 g of cannabis means trafficking was kept.
🇫🇯 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.
🇷🇴 Romania Debate ✓
Romanian deputies propose fines instead of criminal charges for three grams
Deputies introduced a bill to replace criminal penalties for possessing up to three grams of cannabis for personal use with fines of 1,000–3,000 lei. It proposed using the revenue for prevention and support services and exempting medically prescribed cannabis possession from the personal-use penalties. REPER’s sponsors argued that prosecution damaged users’ records and obstructed treatment; the Senate later rejected the proposal.
🇭🇰 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.
🇬🇱 Greenland Easing ✓ Article
Greenland allows low-THC cannabis through authorised importers
Greenland’s new drug law and regulation took effect together, creating an exception for cannabis products with no more than 0.2% THC imported by an authorised legal entity. The law retained prescription and pharmacy routes for controlled medicines and replaced the inherited Danish statute. The change followed parliament’s 2019 calls for access to low-THC oils.
🇯🇴 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.
🇯🇴 Jordan Medical ✓ Article
Jordan sets approval and prescription rules for CBD medicines
Patients could receive approved CBD natural medicines and preparations containing no more than 0.3% THC on a valid medical prescription under new product rules. Health Minister Firas Hawari’s instructions set registration, testing and import controls, alongside separate requirements for external-use cosmetics and medical devices. They followed the 2021 expansion of licensing authority for controlled plants and seeds.
20227 entries3 score changes
🇬🇾 Guyana Easing ✓ Article
Guyana ends jail for small amounts
The National Assembly removed prison for possessing up to 30 g. Up to 15 g is simple possession, and 15 to 30 g brings community service. Before, anything over 15 g was treated as trafficking, with at least three years.
917+8 points
🇲🇴 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.
🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea Tightening ?
Papua New Guinea's new controlled-substances regime takes effect
The Controlled Substance Act put cannabis, resin, oil and cannabis plants in Schedule I and introduced quantity tiers. Ten grams or less can bring two years, more than 10 g but less than 2 kg up to 15 years, and more than 2 kg from 16 years to life; cultivation is graded by plant count. A companion amendment had also raised the old Dangerous Drugs Act ceiling to 40 years.
117−4 points
🇰🇪 Kenya Easing ✓ Article
Kenya lowers the penalty for cannabis for personal use
An amendment to the narcotics Act halved the maximum for cannabis held solely for one's own use, from ten years to five, and added the option of a fine of up to 100,000 shillings and of a court-ordered treatment programme. Possession that is not shown to be for personal use falls under the trafficking section, with at least 30 million shillings or thirty years for 1 to 100 grams and at least 50 million shillings or fifty years above 100 grams. Using a drug carries a fine of not less than 250,000 shillings or at least five years.
16+5 points
20219 entries4 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
202011 entries4 score changes
🇿🇼 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.
🇫🇷 France Easing ✓ Article
France introduces a €200 on-the-spot fine
Possession stays a crime with up to a year in prison on paper, but police can now settle cases under 50 g with a fixed fine, which has become the usual outcome.
1113+2 points
🇮🇱 Israel Debate ✓
Israeli bills to decriminalise up to 50 grams advance
Legislation to decriminalise possession of up to 50 grams began its passage through the Knesset.
🇨🇦 Canada · Nunavut Other law ✓
Nunavut limits a person to 150 grams of dried cannabis
The Cannabis Regulations, in force on 1 June 2020, provide that a person shall not possess more than 150 grams of dried cannabis or its equivalent. The limit does not apply to cannabis held for sale by the Commission, an Agent, a licensee or a registered supplier, including their authorised employees and a person delivering cannabis to them or a purchase for a remote sales store. The federal limit of 30 grams in public remains. On 12 October 2018 the territorial government described the same split as 30 grams on the person and 150 grams at home.
🇸🇲 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.
🇻🇨 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Easing ✓ Article
Saint Vincent's two-ounce reform enters force
Act No. 10 of 2019 took effect by proclamation. Possession of up to 56 g remained an offence but ceased to be arrestable or detainable, with a fine capped at EC$500 and a procedure that can discharge liability without court proceedings or a criminal record.
1122+11 points
201911 entries6 score changes
🇦🇼 Aruba Medical ✓ Article
Aruba recognises CBD medicines and exempts low-THC CBD from narcotics rules
Aruba designated cannabidiol and its preparations as medicines and excluded CBD preparations with no more than 0.2% THC from a narcotics designation. The minister cited growing use of cannabis preparations for health reasons and the need to protect consumers. A companion rule exempted specified external-use products, supplements, herbs and foods from medicinal classification, but was withdrawn the following month.
🇹🇹 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
🇷🇸 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
🇽🇰 Kosovo Other law ✓ Article
Kosovo keeps prison possible for first-time cannabis possession
Kosovo’s replacement criminal code retained a fine or up to one year in prison for a first offence involving less than three grams of cannabis or hashish for personal use. Ordinary unauthorised possession carried a fine and one to three years. The small-amount rule was already present in the code that took effect in 2013.
🇬🇺 Guam Legalisation ✓ Article
Guam legalises adult use of cannabis
Adults 21 and over could possess one ounce of cannabis, eight grams of concentrate or infused products containing up to 800 mg THC, and give cannabis to another adult without payment. The law also allowed six plants per residence, with no more than three flowering, in an enclosed and locked growing area. Governor Lou Leon Guerrero signed it with immediate effect, citing patients’ long wait for access and the illicit market; business rules and operating permits followed over the next seven years.
2043+23 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
🇰🇬 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
201811 entries4 score changes
🇸🇽 Sint Maarten Other law ✓ Article
Sint Maarten tells prosecutors to drop many cannabis cases up to 25 g
Sint Maarten’s prosecutors applied a cannabis policy providing for confiscation and dismissal, potentially conditional, in the 0–25 g band. Exceptions include minors, repeat offending, indications of dealing, other offences and places such as carnival parades, workplaces or government buildings. The next 25–50 g band carries a proposed fine of up to NAf 500, while cultivation cases require an individual sentencing assessment. The guideline replaced the 2015 version.
🇨🇼 Curaçao Other law ✓ Article
Curaçao renews guidance to drop most cases involving up to 25 grams
Curaçao’s renewed prosecution guideline directs seizure and a potentially conditional dismissal for cannabis in its 0–25 g band, and a fine request up to NAf 500 in its 25–50 g band. Exceptions cover minors, repeat offending, signs of dealing, another offence and settings such as carnival parades, workplaces or government buildings. The guideline replaced July 2015 instructions and leaves cultivation cases to individual assessment; Curaçao’s later replacement law kept the underlying possession and growing bans.
🇨🇦 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.
🇨🇴 Colombia Tightening ✓
Colombia tells police to confiscate the personal dose
A decree from President Duque let police seize even a personal dose found on someone in public and fine them. The Constitutional Court struck down the blanket ban on public use the following year.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Debate ✓
Lithuania's parliament twice refuses to undo the criminalisation of 2017
Within a year of making possession of any amount a crime, the Seimas twice rejected amendments that would have returned small quantities of drugs to the administrative code.
🇧🇩 Bangladesh Tightening ✓ Article
Bangladesh's new narcotics act sets up to ten years for cannabis and death for harder drugs
Parliament passed the Narcotics Control Bill in October 2018, replacing the act of 1990. It introduced death or life imprisonment for the largest quantities of Class A drugs: 25 grams or more of heroin or cocaine, and 200 grams or more of yaba. Herbal cannabis is Class B: six months to five years for up to 5 kilograms, five to seven years for 5 to 15 kilograms and seven to ten above that, and for plants one to five years for up to fifty. Hashish is classed with the Class A drugs. Consuming a drug carries three months to two years. An earlier version of this entry said death was possible for two kilograms of cannabis, which the report of the act does not support for herbal cannabis.
53−2 points
201712 entries4 score changes
🇧🇲 Bermuda Easing ✓ Article
Bermuda decriminalises possession of up to 7 g
Bermuda removed criminal liability for simple possession of seven grams of cannabis or less, while police retained power to seize it and prosecutors could still pursue evidence of intent to supply. Cultivation, supply, importation and unauthorised consumption remained offences. The change followed a proposed caution system for amounts under three grams; a later law created an application route to clear qualifying older convictions.
1219+7 points
🇧🇹 Bhutan Easing ✓
Bhutan softens its drug law for small amounts of cannabis
The National Assembly adopted an amendment to the 2015 narcotics act by 40 votes. A person holding up to twice the scheduled quantity of cannabis, who tests positive and has no trafficking record, is treated as a case of substance abuse and sent for treatment, not charged with trafficking. Minors get counselling first and compulsory treatment on later offences.
🇹🇿 Tanzania Other law ✓ Article
Tanzania splits cannabis trafficking penalties at fifty kilograms
Tanzania introduced thirty years in prison for cannabis trafficking involving fifty kilograms or less, while larger quantities remained in the life-imprisonment tier. The amendment added possession and production to a trafficking definition that already covered giving and storing drugs, and sent lower-quantity cases to subordinate courts. It also rewrote the treatment alternative for certain drug-use convictions, requiring consent, a medical report and the court's assessment.
🇲🇴 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.
🇮🇷 Iran Death penalty ✓
Iran raises the threshold for drug executions
Parliament amended the Anti-Narcotics Law in August 2017 so that trafficking in natural drugs such as cannabis and opium reaches the capital threshold at 50 kg, up from 5 kg; for heroin, cocaine and amphetamines it rose from 30 grams to 2 kilograms. The change applied retroactively. On 9 January 2018 the head of the judiciary ordered judges to halt executions and review the cases of some 5,000 people under sentence of death, most of whom would have their sentences commuted to 25 to 30 years. Death remained for gang leaders, those who use minors and those who carry arms.
20164 entries0 score changes
🇨🇾 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.
🇨🇳 China Other law ✓
China's top court fixes the cannabis quantities that make a crime
The Supreme People's Court adopted an interpretation, in force from 11 April 2016, fixing the quantities that the Criminal Law leaves undefined. For cannabis, 30 kilograms of leaf, 2 kilograms of resin or 1 kilogram of oil is a 'relatively large amount', where illegal possession becomes a crime, and 150 kilograms, 10 kilograms and 5 kilograms a 'large amount', the tier that for trafficking carries fifteen years, life or death. Growing becomes a crime at 5,000 plants. Below these lines possession, use and small plots are dealt with by the police as administrative offences.
20147 entries2 score changes
🇫🇷 France Easing ✓
France lets police settle cannabis use with a payment
Under the penal reform of the justice minister Christiane Taubira, voted in 2014, a 'transaction pénale' for minor offences punishable by less than a year in prison, the use of cannabis among them, came into application on 15 October 2014. The interior minister Manuel Valls had said in April 2013 that he intended to make possession of a small quantity a fine- only matter, without giving an amount or a date.
🇬🇲 Gambia Easing ✓ Article
Gambia gives first-time cannabis offenders a lower penalty scale
First-time cannabis possession gained a separate penalty scale: 0.1–150 grams carried a 50,000–100,000-dalasi fine, one to two years in prison, or both. The prison ranges rose to two to five years for 151–500 grams and three to ten years from 501 grams, each with a fine alternative. Interior Minister Ousman Sonko argued that lighter penalties would reduce the imprisonment of young people unable to pay large fines and ease pressure on prisons.
79+2 points
🇺🇸 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.
🇮🇩 Indonesia Other law ✓
Indonesian agencies sign a joint regulation on rehabilitating drug users
The head of the Supreme Court, the ministers of justice, health and social affairs, the attorney general and the heads of the police and the National Narcotics Board signed a joint regulation on sending drug users, including suspects and convicts, to rehabilitation. Like the Supreme Court circular before it, which treats a person with no more than 5 g of cannabis as a user, it works inside the framework of punishment; the Transnational Institute describes both as de-penalisation, with a judge's decision resting on an assessment team whose advice police investigators often ignore.
20127 entries2 score changes
🇬🇮 Gibraltar Other law ✓ Article
Gibraltar drops a supply presumption and raises the possession prison limit
Gibraltar’s replacement criminal code omitted the old presumption that 20 grams of cannabis or resin was held for supply, while keeping possession and supply as separate crimes. The lower-court prison maximum for Class B possession rose from six months to twelve months, with a fine available; the maximum on indictment remained five years. The code also required courts to treat adult drug supply near schools at relevant times, or using couriers under eighteen, as more serious.
🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe Other law ✓ Article
São Tomé and Príncipe cuts user penalties and raises trafficking terms
A new Penal Code took effect on 6 November 2012, allowing up to three months in prison or a fine for consuming cannabis and for acquiring, holding or growing a personal quantity within a three-day threshold. An occasional consumer within that limit could be excused from punishment, but ordinary trafficking now carried two to twelve years, compared with the former two-to-eight-year range. A separate drug law signed in the same year created overlapping rules.
79+2 points
🇱🇻 Latvia Debate ✓
Latvians begin collecting signatures for decriminalisation
An initiative on the citizens' platform ManaBalss.lv asked that adults be allowed to grow two or three plants, keep 20 to 30 grams at home and carry up to 5 grams in public. On 24 March 2015 it passed the 10,000 signatures needed to go to parliament, which rejected it that September.
🇨🇴 Colombia Easing ✓
Colombia confirms that 20 grams is not a crime
The government formally decriminalised possession of up to 20 grams.
20113 entries1 score change
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan Easing ✓ Article
Kazakhstan moves large personal drug holdings out of criminal law
Kazakhstan made buying, carrying or keeping drugs without intent to supply in the legally defined large-quantity band an administrative offence, punishable by a fine of up to 200 calculation units or up to 45 days’ detention. The 2011 reform was part of a programme to reduce criminal prosecution and imprisonment of users. Especially large personal holdings still carried three to seven years in prison, while the replacement code made smaller holdings criminal in 2015.
1315+2 points
🇨🇴 Colombia Tightening ✓
Colombia's Citizen Security Law drops the personal-dose exception
The law removed from the criminal code the exception that had kept possession of a personal dose from being punished. The Constitutional Court answered the following year, in ruling C-491, that carrying a personal dose remains decriminalised.
🇬🇲 Gambia Tightening ✓ Article
Gambia raises the minimum trafficking fine tenfold
Gambia raised the general drug-trafficking fine from at least one million to at least ten million dalasi, alongside a prison term of at least ten years. The quantity rule covered holdings above ten grams of cannabis resin or two kilograms of cannabis, unless the accused proved the possession was not for trafficking. The same amendment replaced the separate death sentence for cocaine or heroin holdings above 250 grams with life imprisonment.
20108 entries1 score change
20096 entries2 score changes
🇷🇸 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.
20071 entry0 score changes
20063 entries1 score change
🇷🇺 Russia Tightening ✓ Article
Russia cuts the decriminalised amount to 6 g
Less than two years after setting generous thresholds, the government lowered them sharply. Above 6 g of cannabis, possession is a crime again.
1511−4 points
🇲🇩 Moldova Other law ✓
Moldova adopts a government framework for drug-quantity classifications
Government Decision 79 adopted lists of controlled drugs and plants found in illicit circulation, together with quantities distinguishing small, large and particularly large amounts. These classifications helped determine whether conduct attracted contraventional or criminal liability and the applicable punishment. The Constitutional Court later confirmed the decision's adoption date and role in the statutory scheme. This entry records adoption, rather than a separately verified commencement date, and does not backdate later numerical thresholds.
🇸🇰 Slovakia Other law ✓
Slovakia's new Criminal Code sets dose categories for personal possession
The new Criminal Code defined possession for personal use as no more than three usual single doses, and a larger personal-use category as no more than ten. Section 171 provided imprisonment of up to three years for the first category and up to five years for the larger category. The rules applied to controlled drugs generally, including cannabis. These were categories within criminal law, not quantities that could legally be possessed or fixed gram allowances.
20053 entries0 score changes
🇦🇫 Afghanistan Other law ✓ Article
Afghanistan separates personal cannabis use from trafficking penalties
Afghanistan's replacement drug law prescribed one to three months in prison and a 5,000–10,000-afghani fine for unauthorised personal cannabis use or possession, but holding more than ten grams of hashish brought the trafficking penalty scale into play. Cultivating less than one jerib of cannabis carried three to nine months and a fine, and illicit crops were to be destroyed without compensation. Courts could exempt a medically certified dependent user from prison and a fine and require treatment.
🇨🇱 Chile Other law ✓
Chile passes Law 20.000
The new drug law kept private personal use unpunished and created a lesser offence of small- scale dealing. It set no gram threshold, so police and prosecutors decide who is a user and who is a dealer.
🇧🇪 Belgium Easing ✓
Belgium restores uniform low-priority handling for small cannabis possession
A joint directive signed on 25 January took effect on 1 February, replacing regional instructions issued after the 2004 annulment. Adult personal possession of at most 3 g or one cultivated plant, without indications of sale or trafficking, aggravating circumstances or disturbance of public order, received the lowest prosecution priority and a simplified police report. Police sent monthly report summaries to prosecutors and did not seize cannabis in qualifying cases. The directive retained the quantity guideline from 2003; it did not legalise possession.
20043 entries2 score changes
🇲🇴 Macau Enforcement ✓
Macau’s top court treats shared-cost cannabis supply as trafficking
Macau’s top court upheld a cannabis trafficking conviction, ruling that providing cannabis to other people counted as supply even when they shared the purchase cost. The old law’s lesser-quantity tier used a three-day personal-use reference, which the court placed at six to eight grams for cannabis; the quantity supplied exceeded it. Macau’s 2009 replacement later introduced a daily-reference table for assessing lesser production and trafficking.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria Tightening ✓
Bulgaria abolishes the personal dose
Paragraph 3 of Article 354a of the penal code had exempted a dependent person holding a single dose from punishment. An amendment known as the single dose law repealed it, so that possessing any drug in any quantity became a crime, whether or not the person was dependent; wholesalers, small dealers and users were treated alike. A study a year later found the ban and its effects to be part of a wider failure of law and institutions. It made Bulgarian law among the harshest in Europe.
121−11 points
🇷🇺 Russia Easing ✓ Article
Russia decriminalises small amounts
New thresholds made possession of up to 20 g of cannabis an administrative offence punished by a fine, not a crime.
815+7 points
20036 entries2 score changes
🇵🇪 Peru Easing ✓
Peru fixes the personal-use limit at 8 g
Law 28002 specified non-punishable possession for one's own immediate use: up to 8 g of marijuana or 2 g of its derivatives. Possession of two or more types of drugs was excluded. The same law introduced Article 296-A on cannabis cultivation, with a lower penalty of two to six years where the number of plants did not exceed one hundred. Published on 17 June, the law took effect the following day under the constitutional commencement rule.
🇧🇪 Belgium Easing ✓
Belgium limits police reporting for adult personal cannabis possession
The Law of 3 May 2003 took effect on publication on 2 June. Article 16 required only police registration for an adult's personal-use quantity of cannabis without public nuisance or problematic use. Possession remained an offence. The accompanying 16 May prosecution guideline treated up to 3 g or one cultivated plant as personal use absent indications of sale or trafficking. The Court of Arbitration later annulled the reporting exception for its vague criteria.
1724+7 points
🇨🇦 Canada Debate ✓
Canada introduces a bill to replace some small-possession prosecutions with tickets
Government Bill C-38 received first reading. It proposed fine-only treatment for possession of up to 15 g of marijuana or 1 g of resin, with ticket procedures where the relevant contraventions arrangements applied; 15–30 g of marijuana could follow either a criminal or ticket route. The bill did not reach third reading or become law in that parliamentary session. Its introduction did not decriminalise possession.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Other law ✓
Lithuania's new Criminal Code provides a separate small-possession tier
The new Criminal Code entered into force on 1 May. Article 259 provided a fine, arrest or up to two years' imprisonment for unauthorised drug possession and related acts without intent to distribute. For a small quantity, it instead classified the conduct as a criminal misdemeanour punishable by community service, restriction of liberty, a fine or arrest. It also provided release from criminal liability for specified acts when a person voluntarily sought medical help or surrendered the drugs. This was a tier within criminal law, rather than legal possession or supply.
20025 entries1 score change
🇱🇾 Libya Tightening ✓
Libya redefines trafficking: even one act or a small quantity counts
Law 23 of 2002 amended Law 7 of 1990. Its new Article 35 bis says intent to traffic is established even for a single act, a small quantity, or when the offender cannot prove another purpose. Article 34 keeps death or life imprisonment for trading in drugs.
🇧🇳 Brunei Death penalty ✓
Brunei applies the death penalty to smaller quantities
After cannabis was made a Class B drug in 2001, the Sultan worked with the Narcotics Control Bureau on stricter rules, and the death penalty was applied to trafficking in smaller amounts.
20015 entries4 score changes
🇺🇦 Ukraine Other law ✓ Article
Ukraine rewrites penalties for small possession and home growing
From 1 September 2001, the new criminal code made ordinary unlawful cannabis growing punishable by a fine, up to six months’ arrest or up to three years of restriction of liberty, with no plant-count minimum. It replaced the 1995 requirement of repetition after an administrative penalty for that ordinary criminal tier. The old code’s separate crime for repeated small personal possession disappeared; the Supreme Court later directed judges to handle small amounts administratively. Aggravated growing, including 500 or more plants and specified prior crimes, could bring three to seven years in prison.
1717+0 points
🇫🇮 Finland Easing ✓
Finland creates a separate lower-penalty drug-use offence
Law 654 added Penal Code chapter 50 section 2a, covering unlawful drug use and possession or attempted acquisition of a small quantity for personal use, including cannabis. It carried a fine or up to six months in prison, compared with the ordinary drug offence's two-year maximum. Revised section 7 allowed prosecution or punishment to be waived for minor cases or where the person sought approved treatment. The reform took effect on 1 September 2001; it did not remove criminal liability.
1113+2 points
20002 entries0 score changes
🇦🇺 Australia · New South Wales Easing ✓
NSW starts a statewide cannabis cautioning trial
New South Wales began a twelve-month statewide trial allowing police to issue formal cautions instead of charges for eligible adult minor cannabis offenders. The original scheme covered up to 15 g of dried cannabis and allowed no more than two cautions, with eligibility conditions and police discretion. It changed enforcement procedures rather than legalising possession.
🇸🇮 Slovenia Other law ✓
Slovenia's drug law sets separate penalties for small personal-use possession
The Production of and Trade in Illicit Drugs Act took effect fifteen days after its 27 December 1999 publication. Original Article 33 made unlawful possession a minor offence carrying 50,000–150,000 tolars or up to thirty days' imprisonment. A small quantity for a single personal use carried 10,000–50,000 tolars or up to five days instead, with scope for leniency through voluntary treatment or approved social programmes. These are the original sanctions, not today's penalties. Article 9 provided agricultural permits for food and industrial cannabis cultivation; it did not legalise recreational growing.
19991 entry0 score changes
19981 entry1 score change
19974 entries1 score change
🇰🇭 Cambodia Other law ✓
Cambodia's king signs drug law banning cannabis cultivation
King Norodom Sihanouk promulgated the drug law parliament had approved the previous December, prohibiting cannabis cultivation with limited research permissions. Cannabis and resin appeared in its most restricted list, bringing production, distribution, purchase and use under the law's controls. Personal-use offences and discretion for very small quantities used in customary village practice were addressed separately.
🇷🇺 Russia Other law ✓ Article
Russia's new criminal code punishes only "large" amounts, and ten grams is large
Article 228 of the code that took effect on 1 January 1997 punished buying or keeping drugs without intent to sell only on a large scale, with up to three years. A summary table of 4 June 1997 was used to class 10 grams of marijuana as large. Valentin Ostroukhov, caught with that amount in 1996, got eighteen months; the courts refused to treat the new code as a decriminalisation, and in 2005 the UN Human Rights Committee declined to hear his case.
19963 entries2 score changes
🇰🇭 Cambodia Ban ✓ Article
Cambodia's parliament votes to ban cannabis cultivation
Parliament approved a ban on cannabis cultivation, with permission for specified research. People growing, buying or storing drugs for themselves faced six days to one month in prison, a fine, or both; prosecutors and judges could show leniency for very small quantities consumed in customary village practice. The king promulgated the law on 24 January 1997.
10012−88 points
🇳🇱 Netherlands Tightening ✓
The Netherlands cuts the tolerated amount to 5 g
New rules for coffeeshops cut the amount they may sell to one person in a day, and the amount a person may carry without being prosecuted, from 30 g to 5 g, and capped a shop's stock at 500 g.
3937−2 points
🇹🇿 Tanzania Tightening ✓ Article
Tanzania replaces colonial drug laws and separates small personal-use offences
Tanzania's new drug law prohibited unauthorised cannabis growing, possession, supply and use, with a separate tier for small amounts proved to be for personal consumption. Its original text provided a 200,000-shilling fine, seven years in prison, or both for that cannabis tier, while the main growing and supply offences could bring life imprisonment or a much larger fine. The law replaced the colonial noxious-plants and dangerous-drugs ordinances, took effect on 1 January 1996 and was amended before its replacement in 2015.
19952 entries0 score changes
🇻🇬 British Virgin Islands Other law ✓
BVI rewrites possession rules with a supply presumption above 50 grams
A 1995 amendment rewrote the BVI’s possession section, including a rule presuming possession for supply when someone holds more than 50 g of cannabis or cannabis resin. The accused can rebut that presumption; possession below it remains an offence under the ordinary possession rule. The same amendment is recorded in the later consolidated law’s cannabis-related definitions and penalty table.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong Other law ✓
Hong Kong doubles two hashish couriers’ sentences after a weight dispute
Two men caught with more than 51 kg of cannabis resin had their sentences increased from two to four years each. The Court of Appeal held that sentencing began with the full weight, with a limited adjustment for low THC concentration, and revised the lowest trafficking bands into one covering under 2 kg. It also retained more lenient treatment of herbal cannabis than resin, a distinction revisited in 2023.
19942 entries2 score changes
🇨🇴 Colombia Easing ✓ Article
Colombia's Constitutional Court protects the personal dose
The court ruled that punishing an adult for carrying or using a personal dose, 20 g of cannabis, violates the right to free development of personality. The dose itself had been defined in a 1986 law that still punished it.
1130+19 points
🇩🇪 Germany Easing ✓ Article
Germany's Constitutional Court limits prosecution of small amounts
The court upheld the ban on cannabis but said that cases involving a small amount for occasional personal use and no danger to others should generally not be prosecuted. It required enforcement authorities in the states to apply that principle in an essentially uniform way.
1520+5 points
19933 entries1 score change
🇵🇭 Philippines Death penalty ✓
The Philippines restores capital punishment for major drug offences
Republic Act 7659 made 750 g or more of marijuana subject to reclusion perpetua to death and fines of ₱500,000–10 million. The same range applied to cultivation and other prohibited-drug offences when the Act's quantity rules were met.
🇻🇪 Venezuela Easing ✓ Article
Venezuela replaces prison with treatment for a personal dose
A reform of the drug law defined a personal dose as up to 20 grams of cannabis or 2 grams of cocaine. Possession within it remained an offence, but prison was replaced by security measures such as treatment.
914+5 points
🇲🇲 Myanmar Other law ✓ Article
Myanmar's replacement drug law keeps prison for cannabis possession
Myanmar replaced its 1974 drug law and set five to ten years in prison for unauthorised cannabis possession and growing, with a possible fine. Holding at least 75 grams of cannabis or cannabis essence counted as possession for sale, carrying at least ten years. Production, distribution, sale and import or export could bring at least fifteen years or death. Drug users who failed to register for treatment or follow treatment directions faced three to five years.
19924 entries2 score changes
19911 entry1 score change
19903 entries1 score change
🇸🇬 Singapore Death penalty ✓
Singapore adds capital thresholds for cannabis
Amendments introduced in 1990 brought in the mandatory death penalty for trafficking in cannabis and opium, according to a study published in the Home Team Journal. The capital threshold for cannabis was 500 g.
🇮🇹 Italy Tightening ✓ Article
Italy makes personal use punishable
A new drug law ended the earlier rule that a modest quantity for personal use was not punishable. Holding more than a fixed "average daily dose" became a crime, and smaller amounts brought administrative sanctions.
2111−10 points
🇧🇩 Bangladesh Death penalty ✓ Article
Bangladesh sets prison terms for ganja and death for cannabis resin
From 2 January 1990, ganja or any herbal cannabis drew six months to three years in prison up to 5 kilograms, and three to fifteen years above that. A cannabis plant of any species drew six months to three years for up to 25 plants, and three to fifteen years above that. Cannabis resin, in the same band as opium, drew two to ten years up to 2 kilograms and death or life imprisonment above that, and tetrahydrocannabinol drew death or life above 10 grams. The act, dated 1 February 1990, also banned cultivating, trading, keeping and using a narcotic other than alcohol, and it repealed the excise and dangerous-drugs laws carried over from colonial rule.
19891 entry0 score changes
19885 entries1 score change
19871 entry1 score change
19864 entries0 score changes
🇨🇴 Colombia Other law ✓
Colombia clarifies that small quantities held for sale remain trafficking
Article 4 of Decree 3788 directed that drugs held for distribution or sale be punished under Article 33 of Law 30 even when the quantity did not exceed the personal-dose threshold. This implemented the statute's existing distinction between personal consumption and supply; it did not create a new cannabis quantity limit or exempt small sales. Article 60 made the decree effective on publication, recorded as 31 December 1986 in Official Gazette 37746.
🇵🇦 Panama Other law ✓
Panama revises drug penalties and creates a national prevention commission
Law 23 revised the Penal and Judicial Codes and took effect on promulgation on 30 December. It prescribed five to ten years for illicit drug cultivation or supply and one to three years plus day-fines for the general illicit-possession offence. A new provision required only security measures for medically assessed dependent users with a small personal dose. The law restricted bail in drug cases but included exceptions for marijuana possession and use, and for proven small personal-use quantities. It also created the national commission for studying and preventing drug-related offences. These were revisions within an existing drug-control system.
19852 entries1 score change
🇦🇹 Austria Easing ✓
Austria revises small-quantity diversion and adds treatment-based sentence deferral
The 1985 Narcotics Act amendment rewrote the offences and diversion rules. Under revised section 17, prosecutors had to provisionally shelve cases confined to acquiring or possessing a small quantity for personal use, for two years, subject to the statutory health-related conditions. New section 23a allowed qualifying prison sentences of up to two years to be deferred for necessary medical treatment, with later conditional remission considered after successful treatment. Possession remained criminal: revised section 16's basic offence carried up to six months or a fine. This revised an existing diversion framework.
🇮🇱 Israel Easing ✓
Israel's attorney general tells police not to arrest first-time users
Under attorney general's directives issued in 1985 and renewed in 2003, people caught with a small amount of cannabis were not supposed to be arrested for a first offence, and police had discretion over later ones. The law itself still allowed up to three years in prison for possessing up to 15 g.
1117+6 points