Imports and exports
Cannabis trade across borders: import bans, export licences and trade routes.
192 entries, 1841–2026 · 26 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Imports and exports 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.
20248 entries1 score change
🇳🇷 Nauru Tightening ✓ Article
Nauru makes prison mandatory for cannabis possession and raises other penalties
Cannabis possession without lawful authority now carried twelve months to three years in custody. Growing, supplying, acquiring or using illicit drugs, and importing or exporting them, exposed people to life imprisonment with at least ten years to be served before parole or probation. The government said the reform sought deterrence by replacing fines and suspended sentences with imprisonment, following earlier cannabis cases ending in fines and community service.
60−6 points
🇫🇯 Fiji Debate ✓
Fiji says a medicinal cannabis bill will come in 2025
Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica told Parliament the government aimed to table a medicinal cannabis bill in 2025, after delays in the legislative review. Cabinet had approved the initiative in August 2023 and a taskforce of 12 departments has worked on it since. Seventeen consultations held from 9 October to 28 November 2024 drew more than 500 people, 75 per cent of whom supported legalising cannabis for medicinal purposes. The industry is planned as export-only.
🇷🇴 Romania Medical ✓
Romanian prosecutors charge a couple carrying prescribed cannabis
A Romanian couple living in Britain were held for hours at Bucharest airport, charged with importing drugs and had their cannabis seized despite their medical papers. The Bucharest Court of Appeal later overturned the indictment and the seizure. The government had said that cannabis prescribed by doctors elsewhere in the European Union would be accepted.
🇨🇼 Curaçao Tightening ✓ Article
Curaçao keeps its cannabis ban and prohibits sales advertising
Curaçao’s replacement drug law kept the bans on cannabis growing, possession and use, and prohibited public messages promoting controlled-drug sales or supply, except purely medical or scientific information. It also gave the government a route to create exemptions by decree, subject to prior parliamentary approval and a 30-day period in which Parliament can request legislation to govern commencement. The law retained medical exceptions for licensed professionals and lawfully obtained personal treatment supplies, and took effect on 6 July, the day after publication.
🇸🇱 Sierra Leone Medical ✓ Article
Sierra Leone sets licensing rules for medical cannabis growers
Licensed companies, manufacturers and approved health organisations could apply to grow and process cannabis under Pharmacy Board guidelines focused on medical production for export. The rules required suitable staff, secure sites, traceable planting material and inspections, using permission powers already contained in the 2001 pharmacy law. The document gives 17 May 2024 as its effective date and focuses on cultivation, harvesting and processing for medicinal products.
🇨🇼 Curaçao Debate ✓
Curaçao’s advisers seek clearer rules for future drug exemptions
Curaçao’s Advisory Council asked the government to explain why its replacement drug bill would let it exempt substances, activities or circumstances from existing prohibitions. The council wanted a reasoned explanation with examples, alongside clearer procedures for individual permissions. The final July law kept an exemption power covering cannabis but required the government to seek Parliament’s approval before making such a decree.
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🇲🇦 Morocco Other law ✓
Morocco receives its first legal cannabis seed
The first shipment of imported seed for the legal programme landed at Casablanca airport, with a larger one due days later. The seed came from countries including Switzerland, Uruguay, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy and the United States, was enough for about a hundred hectares, and went to cooperatives in Al Hoceima and Chefchaouen.
🇨🇼 Curaçao Debate ✓
Curaçao opposition presses for the stalled medical cannabis bill
MAN and KEM lawmakers called for approval of Curaçao’s medical-cannabis export bill, according to reporting published on 7 April. KEM’s Michelangelo Martines and MAN’s Giselle McWilliam wanted answers after the proposal had been discussed twice and then stalled following a change of government. The campaign renewed the argument for a cannabis industry first advanced by former minister Suzanne Camelia-Römer in 2018.
🇲🇰 North Macedonia Tightening ✓
North Macedonia seizes tonnes of cannabis from licensed medical growers
Police actions against licensed medical cannabis companies seized 561 kilograms and 8,723 stems in 2022 and 4.6 tonnes and 3,799 plants in 2023, and the government revoked seven licences in 2022 and eight in 2023. Cannabis grown in the country cannot be exported unless it is used for medical purposes. By March 2024 nearly 70 private companies were registered to grow.
🇯🇴 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.
20229 entries0 score changes
🇮🇲 Isle of Man Medical ✓
Isle of Man announces its first conditional medical cannabis export approval
The Department for Enterprise announced that GrowLab Organics had received the first letter of approval in principle for medicinal cannabis cultivation, extraction, manufacture, import and export. The announcement described a conditional licence offer; it does not prove completion of conditions, a first harvest or a first export.
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Enforcement ✓
Timor-Leste police seize a suspected marijuana parcel from Ireland
Police and customs seized a suspected marijuana parcel during maritime cargo checks on 1 June, the national police reported. Officers detained a 43-year-old who came to collect it; police said relatives had sent the parcel from Ireland and that examination of its quantity was continuing. The suspect was referred for an initial court hearing on 3 June.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Medical ✓ Article
Vanuatu starts licensing medical cannabis for export and industrial hemp
A new licensing law took effect on 17 January 2022, allowing licensed medical-cannabis cultivation for export and industrial-hemp production. The original Act required applicants to show ten years’ relevant experience, VT10 million in a local bank, an agricultural lease and an export market or buyer; licences ran for ten years. Hemp was defined at no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry-weight basis, and implementing rules followed in February 2023.
🇻🇨 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Medical ✓
Saint Vincent approves its first cannabis export
The government approved its first export certificate, for a shipment to Germany by Caribbean Cannabis Company, after Germany's medicines institute issued an import certificate. Saint Vincent was the first Eastern Caribbean state allowed to export medicinal cannabis.
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🇬🇬 Guernsey Medical ✓
Guernsey lets islanders import prescribed medical cannabis and GPs prescribe it
Amendments approved by the Committee for Health & Social Care came into force on 28 September. Islanders could now use off-island clinics privately and import prescribed cannabis products under a licensing process, and prescribing was extended from specialists to general practitioners. The patient bears the cost; there is no adult-use source.
1113+2 points
🇿🇼 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.
🇹🇬 Togo Enforcement ✓ Article
Togo seizes 1.5 tonnes of cannabis hidden in a bus
Security officials in Lomé presented 1,541.60 kg of cannabis and three arrested suspects after stopping a bus arriving from Ghana during the night of 14–15 September. According to the authorities, the cannabis was hidden among second-hand clothing and was being taken to Benin through Togo. The national press agency described the operation as part of the anti-drug office’s campaign against cross-border trafficking.
🇻🇬 British Virgin Islands Debate ✓ Article
BVI lawmakers approve a medical cannabis licensing bill
The BVI House of Assembly passed a bill to create a cannabis licensing authority and a regulated cultivation, processing and distribution system. The published proposal included dispensaries and different routes for medical documents and declarations of therapeutic use. Assent then depended on further BVI–UK work over licensing responsibilities and international obligations.
🇹🇼 Taiwan Hemp ✓
Taiwan allows CBD with almost no THC, on prescription
The health ministry said cannabidiol is legal for medical and personal use if it contains no more than 10 parts per million of THC. It is classed as a pharmaceutical, so a prescription is needed, and since no Taiwanese company sells it, buyers must apply to import it; a seller said nine in ten applications without a prescription were refused.
🇲🇭 Marshall Islands Tightening ✓
Marshall Islands expands drug-seizure powers to include cash
Cash used in drug transportation, import or export was added to property liable to seizure and forfeiture under a drug-law amendment effective on 4 June 2020. The law also renamed the narcotics act and added express controls on methamphetamine, MDMA and synthetic cathinones. It republished the separate marijuana penalty ladder and the extra penalties for supplying minors.
🇦🇼 Aruba Other law ✓ Article
Aruba creates an agency to oversee medicinal cannabis production
Aruba created a medicinal-cannabis agency within the health ministry, with effect from 1 June 2020, to oversee a controlled cultivation, manufacturing and trading system. Its tasks included permits, quality controls, records and coordination of stocks and exports to meet international treaty requirements. A later government call invited cultivation and processing proposals, with awards contingent on legislative changes and agreements.
🇺🇬 Uganda Medical ✓
Uganda approves cannabis exports for medicine
The health ministry approved exports of medicinal cannabis, requiring exporters to hold at least $1 million in capital and a $5 million reserve.
🇲🇭 Marshall Islands Enforcement ✓
Marshall Islands reports suspended jail term for a personal cannabis import
A January newspaper report described a six-month suspended sentence and a $1,000 fine for Gandhi Heine after he pleaded guilty to importing marijuana. His lawyer said the cannabis was for personal use to relieve back pain. Chief Justice Carl Ingram approved the plea agreement, which included probation conditions restricting travel outside Majuro.
20199 entries1 score change
🇿🇲 Zambia Medical ✓
Zambia legalises cannabis for export and medicine
The cabinet approved growing cannabis under licence for export and medical purposes only.
🇧🇷 Brazil Medical ✓ Article
Brazil allows cannabis products in pharmacies
The health regulator approved rules for selling cannabis-based products in pharmacies on prescription. Growing the plant in Brazil stayed prohibited, so everything was imported.
1415+1 point
🇫🇴 Faroe Islands Medical ✓
The Faroese pharmacy service orders cannabis flower for a patient
The Faroese Pharmacy Service placed an order for cannabis buds from a Dutch supplier after a doctor requested them. Existing cannabis drops were already prescribed to 61 patients, but this order concerned flower. The order followed the April 2019 opening of the medical trial scheme, which the Chief Medical Officer later confirmed.
🇨🇼 Curaçao Debate ✓ Article
Curaçao’s advisers question financing of a medical cannabis industry
Curaçao’s Advisory Council asked the government to strengthen its medical-cannabis production bill before sending it to Parliament. It found insufficient support for the economic case and asked how the proposed cannabis bureau would finance harvest purchases and recover its money from buyers. By September, local reporting said a bill for that bureau had reached Parliament.
20187 entries2 score changes
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Medical ✓ Article
Zimbabwe lets licensed producers grow cannabis for medicine and research
Licensed producers could grow and process cannabis for medicinal and scientific purposes under five-year licences. Applications required site plans, security clearances and production records, with a published US$50,000 production-licence application fee. The medicines regulator later reported that the first licence was issued in 2019 and that production was directed towards exports, with local use limited to research.
🇮🇱 Israel Medical ✓
Israeli pharmacies begin selling cannabis oil
Under a pilot programme pharmacies were permitted to dispense cannabis oil to licensed patients. In January 2020 imports were allowed from countries with comparable rules, and in 2022 Israel brought in more than 33,000 kilograms, the largest importer of medical cannabis in the world.
20175 entries0 score changes
🇧🇴 Bolivia Other law ✓ Article
Bolivia rewrites drug controls and requires medical-use authorisations
People and businesses handling medicinal controlled substances had to register and obtain prior health-ministry authorisation under a law that also reorganised drug investigations, treatment and asset forfeiture. Scientific and medical research required limited, exceptional permissions, and authorised medicines could be supplied through approved pharmacies on prescription. Cannabis and resin remained in the controlled list, while the 1988 law’s personal-possession and trafficking penalties continued.
🇿🇲 Zambia Medical ✓
Zambian ministers disagree over medical cannabis licences
The home affairs minister, Steven Kampyongo, said that growing cannabis for medical use was already legal for anyone holding a licence from the health minister. The health minister, Chitalu Chilufya, then said he had no intention of issuing any. Cabinet approved licensed growing for export and medicine in December 2019.
20151 entry0 score changes
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🇦🇼 Aruba Tightening ✓
Aruba extends cannabis controls and gives police wider search powers
Aruba expanded its cannabis controls to include seeds and leaves without flowering tops, alongside growing, sale, transport and possession offences. Uniformed police gained powers to search people and their belongings on specified grounds, and prosecutors could authorise area-wide clothing searches for up to twelve hours after consultation. The government cited rising drug sales and use as its reason for expanding enforcement powers.
🇷🇼 Rwanda Other law ✓
Rwanda sets authorisation rules for medical and research drugs
Rwanda required authorisation for producing, distributing and using controlled drugs for medical or research purposes, with record keeping and controls on cross-border trade. The law took effect on 9 April 2012 and directed the health minister to set security and authorisation rules. That power later supported the cannabis licensing order issued in 2021.
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🇳🇷 Nauru Other law ✓
Nauru keeps medicinal drug imports under annual Cabinet licences
Medicinal drug importers could obtain a one-year licence from Cabinet on the minister’s recommendation, with renewal and record-keeping conditions, under the 2008 revision. Travellers could carry lawfully prescribed drugs for up to one month of treatment. This continued the earlier medicinal import-licensing approach, which had expressly covered Indian-hemp preparations in 1952.
🇲🇷 Mauritania Debate ✓
Mauritania's deputies back prescription controls on narcotic medicines
Deputies approved a bill requiring strict control of the manufacture, import, export and distribution of narcotic medicines, with prescribing doctors and dispensing pharmacists overseeing medical use. Health Minister Mohamed Lemine Ould Raghani said the government would enforce the controls rigorously. After the Senate's January vote, deputies stressed the need to curb uncontrolled medicines while protecting pharmacy outlets.
🇲🇷 Mauritania Debate ✓ Article
Mauritania's senators back drug controls despite fears about cultivation
Senators voted 23 to five for a bill controlling the legal market in narcotics and psychotropic drugs, including their medical and scientific uses. Some opposition senators feared it would authorise cultivation and drug imports and exports, and asked for a delay. Health Minister Mohamed Lemine Ould Raghani said failure to implement UN drug treaties had nearly caused a rupture with the international drug-control board.
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🇹🇲 Turkmenistan Other law ✓
Turkmenistan adopts a national drug-control law
Turkmenistan adopted a law covering narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, precursors and measures against their illegal trade on 9 October 2004. It remained the principal drug law until its replacement took effect on 1 January 2018, retaining enterprise permits and state quotas for controlled cultivation.
🇫🇯 Fiji Other law ✓ Article
Fiji adopts shared penalties for cannabis use, growing and supply
Fiji signed a drug law placing unauthorised cannabis possession, use, cultivation and supply under the same maximum: a FJ$1 million fine, life imprisonment, or both. It also covered imports and exports and gave police and customs powers to investigate drug offences. Corresponding parts of the older drug law would be replaced when the new Act commenced by ministerial notice; courts later developed separate sentencing guidelines.
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🇲🇵 Northern Mariana Islands Enforcement ✓
Northern Mariana Islands’ crop raids shift cannabis supply toward imports
A federal drug assessment linked the decline of local cannabis growing in 2000–2001 to eradication campaigns and a greater reliance on supplies from the Philippines and Palau. It reported a sharp rise in retail prices and said local cultivation was largely confined to small amounts for personal use. Officers were focusing on undercover purchases and border interception; adult use remained prohibited until 2018.
🇩🇯 Djibouti Other law ✓
Djibouti keeps cannabis and khat outside its free-trade zones
Cannabis, hashish, cannabis resin and khat leaves were expressly barred from entering Djibouti's free zones. The decree otherwise opened those zones to goods of any origin, broad commercial activity and extensive tax and customs exemptions. The drug exclusion kept these substances outside the commercial privileges offered to zone businesses.
19992 entries0 score changes
🇦🇴 Angola Other law ✓ Article
Angola requires licences for controlled-drug growers and suppliers
Angola put cultivation, manufacture and trade in controlled drugs under authorisation from the national medicines directorate, including cannabis in its controlled list. Medical, veterinary and scientific growers had to identify their plots, expected harvest and secure storage; pharmacists had to reject special prescriptions more than ten days old or already filled. The rules accompanied the replacement criminal drug law and aimed to prevent lawful supplies from reaching the illicit market.
🇲🇴 Macau Other law ✓
Macau sets licensing and prescription rules for controlled medicines
Macau’s new rules allowed licensed chemical and pharmaceutical businesses to seek authorisation to manufacture controlled medicines, including substances in the cannabis table, while prohibiting cultivation of scheduled plants. Supply to patients went through pharmacies or hospitals and special prescriptions. The law completed the lawful-supply side of the 1991 drug reforms and took effect on 1 August 1999.
19972 entries0 score changes
🇲🇱 Mali Other law ✓
Mali limits controlled-drug prescriptions to seven days
Mali required special prescription forms for narcotics on its controlled list, including cannabis and resin, and limited each prescription to seven days of treatment, with a fresh prescription needed to continue. Pharmacists had to keep stocks locked up and report theft or diversion, while imports needed a special ministerial certificate. These handling rules operated under the earlier criminal drug law and its scheduled list of narcotics.
🇳🇪 Niger Other law ✓ Article
Niger keeps narcotic medicines behind prescriptions in its pharmacy law
Medicines on Niger's narcotics list could be dispensed only on prescription under the new pharmacy law. It carried forward the 1977 schedules, adopted the controlled-drug lists of ratified international conventions and required marketing authorisation before medicines could be supplied free or sold. Two years later, the separate drug ordinance rewrote the controls on illicit possession, supply and personal growing.
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🇺🇬 Uganda Other law ✓ Article
Uganda places cannabis controls under its new drug authority
Uganda's new national drug law prohibited cannabis smoking, hosting smoking and holding pipes for it, while cultivation required the health minister's written consent after consultation with the drug authority. Cannabis and resin were Class A drugs, for which a first offence without a separate penalty could bring up to five years in prison, a fine of up to two million shillings, or both. The statute created the National Drug Authority to regulate drug supply and carry out a policy that included treaty compliance and action against drug abuse; its main narcotics offences were replaced in 2016.
🇲🇷 Mauritania Death penalty ✓ Article
Mauritania sets death penalties for repeat and aggravated drug offences
Producing, growing or trafficking high-risk drugs carried fifteen to thirty years in prison and a fine, with death for repeat offences; organised crime, violence, weapons or a death caused by the drugs could also bring capital punishment. Simple illicit use carried up to two years, a fine alone, or both, with treatment routes that could prevent prosecution. President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya signed the law nineteen days after Mauritania joined the UN convention against drug trafficking.
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🇬🇮 Gibraltar Tightening ✓
Gibraltar extends drug-supply wording to recipients abroad
Gibraltar amended its drug law to say that supply included supplying a person who was outside Gibraltar. The change followed a cannabis case involving drugs intended for England, according to the later appeal court’s account. In 1995 that court ruled that the amendment still required the intended act of supply to take place in Gibraltar.
🇧🇿 Belize Tightening ✓
Belize uproots its export crop
Until the 1980s Belize was the fourth-largest supplier of cannabis to the United States, after Colombia, Mexico and Jamaica. From the middle of the decade eradication campaigns backed by the United States cut production sharply, and by 1994 it was negligible.
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🇳🇪 Niger Other law ✓
Niger adopts national rules on narcotic sales, possession and use
A national ordinance placed the import, export, purchase, sale, possession and use of poisonous substances and narcotics under rules to be set by decree. It was issued under the Supreme Military Council and was followed by implementing schedules in 1977. The 1999 drug ordinance later expressly repealed both texts.
🇯🇲 Jamaica Debate ✓
Jamaica proposes heavy penalties for ganja trafficking
Amid reports of large-scale organised export of ganja, apparently partly in exchange for guns, Michael Manley told the House that the people behind the trade came from the best residential areas, not the ghettos. A bill introduced in April 1974 proposed life imprisonment for trafficking in opium and cocaine and much harsher penalties for ganja trafficking.
19732 entries0 score changes
🇨🇴 Colombia Culture & science ✓ Article
A field study finds marijuana farming in Colombia's Sierra Nevada
Partridge's fieldwork from 1972 in a municipality below the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta found highland peasants, many of them families who had fled la Violencia, growing cannabis as a cash crop. A pound brought 100 to 300 pesos, against 12.50 for a kilo of coffee. Wealthy buyers moved large quantities to the coastal cities, often for export to the United States. No local grower had yet been arrested; the police commissioner grew cannabis himself, but farmers knew that American pressure had led to arrests elsewhere.
🇧🇭 Bahrain Tightening ✓
Bahrain raises the maximum prison term for drug supply to ten years
Bahrain’s replacement drug decree raised the maximum prison sentence for supply from three years to ten, with a fine up to 10,000 dinars available instead or alongside imprisonment. Personal possession carried up to three years, a fine up to 3,000 dinars, or both, with hospital treatment available instead. The decree expressly listed cannabis and resin, replaced the 1959 ordinance and took effect on publication on 8 March 1973.
19711 entry0 score changes
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🏳️ Somaliland Other law ✓
Somalia expressly lists cannabis and hashish in its northern drug controls
A health decree expressly listed cannabis, with hashish as a synonym, and Indian hemp in the Somali Republic’s narcotics schedule. The list supplied the controlled substances for the health-ministry licensing law, which covered the territory now administered as Somaliland. The decree was dated 26 September 1970 and appeared in the gazette the following month.
🏳️ Somaliland Other law ✓ Article
Somalia places northern drug possession and growing under health licences
The Somali Republic’s new narcotics law, covering the territory now administered as Somaliland, set two to seven years in prison plus a fine for unauthorised possession and supply, and six months to two years plus a fine for unauthorised cultivation. It put control under the health ministry, with prescription and record-keeping rules for pharmacies and medical institutions. A subsequent schedule expressly named cannabis, hashish and Indian hemp.
🇸🇴 Somalia Other law ✓ Article
Somalia places narcotics under a health-ministry licensing system
Somalia put narcotics possession and trade under health-ministry authorisation, with two to seven years in prison and a fine for unauthorised possession or supply. Growing controlled plants required a separate permit, with six months to two years and a fine for a breach. The law also regulated prescription dispensing and transfers without payment; a subsequent schedule expressly listed cannabis and hashish.
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19602 entries1 score change
🇰🇼 Kuwait Other law ✓
Kuwait authorises fees for controlled-drug permits
An amendment effective on publication authorised the head of the Health Department to set fees for procedures under the drug-control law. The earlier law covered Indian hemp alongside other drugs and required permits for imports and exports by eligible pharmacies, laboratories and institutions.
🇰🇼 Kuwait Ban ✓ Article
Kuwait places Indian hemp under licensed drug controls
A drug-control law took effect on gazette publication, expressly listing Indian hemp and all its preparations and derivatives. Unauthorised possession, purchase, sale and transfer were prohibited, while patients could hold prescribed quantities for medical reasons and licensed institutions could handle drugs under permit. Violations carried up to three years in prison and a fine of up to 3,000 rupees, subject to any stronger criminal-law penalty.
1002−98 points
19592 entries0 score changes
🇧🇭 Bahrain Other law ✓
Bahrain renews cannabis possession and supply controls
Bahrain’s replacement dangerous-drug ordinance restricted cannabis and resin to authorised handlers and genuine medical prescriptions, with up to three years in prison, a fine up to 5,000 rupees, or both for offences. It also expressly listed cannabis extracts and tinctures, with an exception in that listing for preparations capable only of external use. It replaced the 1954 rules on 2 July 1959 and was later repealed by the 1973 decree.
🇵🇰 Pakistan Tightening ✓ Article
West Pakistan lets druggists sell medicinal hemp only as medicine
The Governor of West Pakistan made rules on 21 March 1959, published in the gazette on 17 April 1959, for medicinal hemp under the Dangerous Drugs Act. A licensed druggist could sell it only as medicine, and only up to the quantity on the licence. Import needed a permit, and export or transport needed a pass. A doctor could keep three ounces for use in the practice and not for sale, and a patient could keep what a licensed druggist had sold for medicine. Licensed sale of charas and bhang continued until 1979.
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🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article
Punjab prohibits a hemp-plant substitute for charas
From 14 July 1955 the Punjab Import and Possession of Charas Orders came into force at once. They prohibit bringing into Punjab, and possessing, any substance obtained from the Indian hemp plant and used as a substitute for charas, and any quantity of "classes" or any preparation or admixture of it. The order cancelled Punjab notifications of 13 November 1935, 16 October 1937, 13 January 1939 and 10 February 1950.
🇸🇿 Eswatini Culture & science ✓
A United Nations survey describes cannabis in Swaziland
The survey, compiled with the Swaziland government, reported 11,051 kg of cannabis seized in 1948 and 2,970 kg in 1952, and 1,065 people prosecuted in the five years to 1949. The crop was grown in the western highlands and on the Lubombo range, mainly for export to South Africa; the red dagga of the mist belt was in demand for its quality. Smokers had recently been fined ten shillings to £20, and traffickers given up to 24 months with hard labour.
🇧🇭 Bahrain Other law ✓ Article
Bahrain extends cannabis controls to people under British jurisdiction
A British regulation applied Bahrain’s existing dangerous-drug rules to people subject to the Bahrain Orders, except the medical services of Britain’s armed forces. The rules named Indian hemp and its resin, prohibited unauthorised possession and supply, and allowed up to three years in prison, a fine up to 5,000 rupees, or both. It replaced a British drug regulation dating from 1931; new local and British rules followed in 1959.
19542 entries0 score changes
🇮🇳 India Tightening ✓ Article
Punjab prohibits import and possession of ganja
A notification of 23 December 1954 prohibited the import of ganja into Punjab and the possession of any quantity of it, or of any preparation of admixture, within the state. The Governor made the order under sections 17(a) and 24(4) of the Punjab Excise Act, 1914, in place of earlier notifications on the same subject, which this reprint does not name. The reprint, issued on 9 August 1962, gives no separate day for the order to take effect.
🇧🇭 Bahrain Other law ✓
Bahrain restricts Indian hemp under its dangerous-drug rules
Bahrain’s regulations labelled 1374 (1954) prohibited possessing, obtaining or supplying dangerous drugs, with exceptions for named hospitals, licensed handlers and genuine medical prescriptions. Their schedule expressly named Indian hemp, its resin and resin-based preparations; offences carried up to three years in prison, a fine up to 5,000 rupees, or both. Britain extended these rules to people under its Bahrain jurisdiction in April 1955.
19522 entries1 score change
🇳🇷 Nauru Other law ✓
Nauru controls imports of Indian-hemp medicines
Importing Indian-hemp extracts, tinctures and preparations required a licence for medicinal purposes, while making or exporting dangerous drugs was prohibited. Import licences lasted one year and required records of quantities and recipients. The ordinance replaced the 1922 import law covering opium, morphine, cocaine and heroin.
🇨🇭 Switzerland Ban ✓ Article
Switzerland puts cannabis under federal narcotics controls
Switzerland brought cannabis under federal narcotics controls and extended its drug ban to hashish. The government cited the 1925 Geneva convention and feared cannabis arriving through neighbouring countries after the war. Parliament approved the law in 1951; it took effect on 1 June 1952, while a separate offence of consuming drugs followed through the 1975 revision.
10018−82 points
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🇰🇮 Kiribati Ban ✓ Article
The Gilbert Islands ban cannabis growing, possession and gifts
The colonial drug ordinance that commenced on 20 October 1948 supplied Kiribati’s inherited cannabis controls. Its revised text prohibited growing Indian hemp for private use or otherwise, possessing it, selling it or giving it to another person, and importing or exporting cannabis seeds. It also regulated cannabis extracts and tinctures through a separate controlled-drug schedule.
1009−91 points
🇹🇻 Tuvalu Ban ✓ Article
The Ellice Islands' Dangerous Drugs Ordinance takes effect
The drug law inherited by Tuvalu dates to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands ordinance that commenced on 20 October 1948. Its later consolidated text controls Indian hemp alongside opium and coca leaf, including possession, supply and cultivation. Tuvalu later increased a general fine and introduced cannabis-specific minimum prison terms.
1009−91 points
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🇨🇳 China Tightening ✓ Article
China ends the legal hashish trade from Xinjiang
Hashish had been exported legally from Xinjiang to British India under a tariff. Chinese authorities ended the trade in 1934, though smuggling continued.
🇵🇷 Puerto Rico Other law ✓
Puerto Rico re-enacts its cannabis ban with six months to two years in jail
Growing, importing, possessing, giving away or using cannabis was punishable by six months to two years in jail under the re-enacted cannabis law. The Supreme Court later quoted this rule while explaining that the 1934 statute re-enacted the original 1932 cannabis law. The 1959 narcotics law then replaced the misdemeanor regime with much heavier felony penalties.
19323 entries1 score change
🇩🇯 Djibouti Other law ✓ Article
Djibouti's colonial rules put cannabis behind permits and prescriptions
Cannabis, resin, resin preparations, extract and tincture were listed among drugs whose possession and trade required authorisation in the French Somali Coast. People without a permit could obtain them only on a therapeutic prescription, while imports and exports needed permission for each shipment. The local governor promulgated the revised rules on 16 June, replacing the controlled-drug chapter of the 1923 regulations.
🇵🇷 Puerto Rico Ban ✓
Puerto Rico approves a law banning cannabis growing and trade
Puerto Rico adopted a law to punish cannabis planting, importation, purchase and sale. The Supreme Court later identified it as the original cannabis statute and explained that a separate law in May 1934 re-enacted it. Cannabis remained criminalised through the harsher narcotics law introduced in 1959.
10011−89 points
🇩🇿 Algeria Other law ✓
France names cannabis and its extracts in Algeria’s drug controls
The colonial decree applied France’s updated narcotics controls to Algeria and required special authorisation for industrial and commercial drug operations. It replaced the disputed word “hashish” with cannabis, resin, preparations, extracts and tinctures. The League Secretariat questioned whether the French text expressly covered cultivation, despite the colonial administration’s claims that enforcement had reduced growing and use.
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🇵🇰 Pakistan Tightening ✓ Article
Pakistan keeps licensed ganja and requires a licence for hemp extract
From 1 February 1931 no one could bring hemp into British India or send it out, or make an extract or tincture of it, without a licence. Making that extract without a licence could mean up to two years in prison, a fine, or both. The Act rewrote the Punjab excise law so that bhang, siddhi, ganja and charas stayed intoxicating drugs under it. In Baluchistan it left the 1915 rule that a hemp plant could be grown only under licence, and kept bhang, ganja and charas in the definition of an intoxicating drug.
🇲🇲 Myanmar Tightening ✓ Article
Burma requires a licence to make hemp extract or to import it
From 1 February 1931 no one could make an extract or tincture of hemp, or bring it in or send it out, without a licence. Making the extract without a licence, or importing or exporting hemp without one, could mean up to two years in prison, a fine, or both. Hemp covered the leaves and flowering tops, including bhang, siddhi and ganja, and charas, the resin. The Burma code prints this as the Indian Act of 1930, in force on that date.
🇧🇩 Bangladesh Tightening ✓ Article
Bengal ganja stays under excise as hemp extract needs a licence
From 1 February 1931 no one could bring hemp into British India or send it out, or make an extract or tincture of it, without a licence. Making that extract without a licence could mean up to two years in prison, a fine, or both. The Act was passed to carry out the Geneva convention's measures on drugs made from opium, Indian hemp and coca, and it applied across British India. It rewrote the Bengal excise law so that bhang, siddhi, ganja and charas remained intoxicating drugs under that law, while extract and tincture were classed as manufactured drugs.
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🇳🇱 Netherlands Ban ✓
The Netherlands restricts the cannabis trade
To carry out the Geneva convention, a new Opium Act prohibited importing and exporting Indian hemp. Possession and use inside the country were not covered until 1953.
10098−2 points
🇪🇸 Spain Tightening ✓ Article
Spain reserves Indian hemp to the state and fines illicit holding
From 30 April 1928 only a state service could import and distribute Indian hemp, its resin and its extracts, and only to pharmacists, laboratories and research centres that showed they needed them. Someone caught holding or using them illicitly was fined 50 to 100 pesetas for each gram the first time, and as much as 500 pesetas a gram if it happened again. A fine that could not be paid could become a loss of liberty under the smuggling law. The decree said the aim was to stop these drugs being taken without a justified prescription, and it applied in Spain, the colonies and the North African possessions.
10011−89 points
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🇨🇲 Cameroon Other law ✓ Article
French Cameroon restricts hashish supplies and punishes group use
French Cameroon placed hashish and its preparations under pharmacy controls, restricting authorised handling mainly to pharmacists and allowing supplies on prescription. Violations, group use and helping others use the drug carried three months to two years in prison, a fine, or both; possession without a legitimate reason attracted the same penalties. France introduced the rules alongside a pharmacy decree to adapt its existing controls to the mandate territory.
🇦🇺 Australia Ban ✓ Article
Australia limits cannabis imports to medicine and research
Australia restricted cannabis imports to licensed doctors and drug businesses supplying medical or scientific needs, with separate approval for each shipment. The government extended existing drug controls after the 1925 Geneva convention brought cannabis into international restrictions. Exporters also needed permission, while state laws later prohibited unauthorised cannabis use.
10011−89 points
🇸🇱 Sierra Leone Ban ✓ Article
Sierra Leone bans cannabis growing and possession under colonial drug law
Growing and possessing cannabis and dealing in its resin became offences under Sierra Leone's colonial drug controls; medicinal extracts and tinctures followed licensing and pharmacy rules. The 1926 law implemented the Geneva drug convention across the Colony and Protectorate, and its surviving revised text includes amendments made in 1928 and 1932. Diamba had been described locally in 1851, decades before officials identified it as cannabis in their 1933 drug report.
1003−97 points
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🇸🇩 Sudan Other law ✓ Article
Sudan replaces its hashish law and keeps medical exceptions
Published on 25 August, Sudan’s replacement hashish law repealed the 1907 ordinance and prohibited unauthorised growing, sale, possession, transport and smoking. Contraventions could bring up to one year in prison, a fine, or both. It retained exceptions for recognised cannabis medicines handled by licensed professionals and used under the public-health rules, and allowed written permits for small scientific quantities.
1005−95 points
🇸🇸 South Sudan Other law ✓
Sudan’s replacement hashish law covers the south and keeps medical use
Published on 25 August, Sudan’s replacement hashish law repealed the 1907 ordinance and prohibited unauthorised growing, sale, possession, transport and smoking. Contraventions could bring up to one year in prison, a fine, or both. It retained exceptions for recognised cannabis medicines handled by licensed professionals and used under the public-health rules, and allowed written permits for small scientific quantities.
1002−98 points
🌐 International International ✓
Britain and India raise Indian hemp at the League's opium committee
At the League of Nations' Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium, the British delegate and the India Office's representative drew attention to South Africa's letter asking for Indian hemp to be treated as a habit-forming drug. They said their governments were already looking into it, and India was studying whether it could prohibit exports. The French and American delegates saw no need to discuss it. The committee agreed to ask governments for information, and a questionnaire went out on 17 November. The historian James Mills reads the move as a way to look constructive on a day spent defending India's position on opium.
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🇲🇦 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.
🌐 International Enforcement ✓
Ten tons of Indian cannabis vanish on the way to Abyssinia
A French adventurer, Henri de Monfreid, bought ten tons of cannabis in Bombay, probably charas, and had it licensed for export to Abyssinia as an insecticide, in 240 bags. The governor of the Seychelles held the cargo for almost four months before finding no ground to stop it. At Harar half the bags were found to hold fertiliser; the rest, sent on to Hamburg, turned out to be fertiliser too. British officials had watched the shipment from 1922 to 1924 and lost it. Their consulate in Abyssinia reported that his profits from the hashish trade in 1923 had bought him a controlling interest in a flour mill and an electricity works. He later admitted that the cargo was meant for Egypt, and that he had been dealing in hashish bound for that country since 1915.
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🇸🇩 Sudan Tightening ✓
Sudan puts cannabis growing and supply under a separate hashish law
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan prohibited unauthorised cannabis farming, processing, sales, possession, imports, exports and transport under a separate hashish ordinance. It covered herbal cannabis and resin, as well as unauthorised pharmaceutical use. Earlier contraband controls had already restricted cannabis imports and local manufacture.
🇸🇸 South Sudan Tightening ✓
Sudan brings growing and possession under a separate hashish law
The Anglo-Egyptian administration prohibited unauthorised cannabis growing, processing, sales, possession, imports, exports and transport under its hashish ordinance. The restrictions covered herbal cannabis and resin and unauthorised pharmaceutical use. The replacement ordinance published in 1924 expressly repealed the 1907 law.
🇫🇯 Fiji Ban ✓
Fiji bans the import of Indian hemp
Ordinance No. 21 prohibited importing Indian hemp or anything made from it. It was aimed at the Indian labourers brought to work the sugar plantations.
10013−87 points
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🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Tightening ✓ Article
Ceylon bans growing and possessing cannabis plants
Ceylon's colonial government enacted a ban on growing, possessing, importing or supplying cannabis plants and all their parts, punishable by up to 100 rupees, six months in prison, or both. A grower had won an appeal the previous year because the existing bhang and ganja prohibition did not cover growing plants. The new law also presumed occupiers responsible for cannabis on their land; officials proposed a medicinal exception in 1906 after finding that chemists had been left without permission to possess or sell it.
498−41 points
🇦🇹 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.
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🇸🇩 Sudan Tightening ✓ Article
Sudan restricts cannabis imports under its contraband law
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan restricted cannabis imports to qualified medical practitioners, licensed poison sellers and people specially permitted by the governor-general. Unlawful imports could bring up to seven years in prison, a fine of up to 500 Egyptian pounds, or both, and confiscation of the goods and their transport. The law was extended to local manufacture in 1906, before a separate hashish ordinance followed in 1907.
🇸🇸 South Sudan Tightening ✓
Sudan’s contraband law restricts cannabis imports into the south
Sudan, then including the territory of South Sudan, restricted Indian-hemp imports to qualified medical practitioners, licensed poison sellers and people specially permitted by the governor-general. Unlawful importation could bring forfeiture, transport confiscation and up to seven years in prison, a fine of up to 500 Egyptian pounds, or both. The revised edition marks the later extension to local manufacture in 1906.