Trafficking
Trafficking and smuggling: the laws against it, its penalties and its cases.
178 entries, 1924–2026 · 20 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Trafficking 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.
🇨🇱 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.
🇫🇲 Micronesia Debate ✓ Article
A bill in Micronesia's Congress would set minimum fines for trafficking
Congressional Bill 24-153 would amend the trafficking section of the national code to add a minimum fine of 5,000 dollars for Schedule I and II narcotics, alongside up to ten years in prison. It keeps the rule that giving away an ounce or less of marihuana for no payment is treated as simple possession.
🇹🇬 Togo Enforcement ✓
Togo burns over five tonnes of cannabis seized in 2024
Togo reported burning more than 5,291 kg of cannabis seized across the country in 2024, within a total of 5,729.05 kg of drugs destroyed at Agoè in Lomé. The anti-drug office and national anti-drug committee supervised the operation. Security minister Calixte Batossie Madjoulba presented the destruction as part of the government’s effort to protect public health and young people.
🇬🇦 Gabon Enforcement ✓
Gabon's police say cannabis seizures more than doubled in 2025
The commander of the National Police Forces, General Serge Hervé Ngoma, reported that cannabis was the drug most often intercepted by the police: seizures rose from 433 kg in 2024 to 975 kg in 2025. The anti-drug office OCLAD took part in operations that seized nearly one tonne. He presented the rise as a sign of growing use and trafficking.
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🇲🇪 Montenegro Enforcement ✓
Montenegro police arrest a third suspect in the Trnovo cannabis case
Police arrested a 31-year-old man from Bar, identified as N.D., on suspicion of drug production and supply in the Trnovo investigation. The August operation had uncovered about 13,100 cannabis plants and led to two arrests. Investigators said they were continuing to identify people involved in cultivation and distribution; further complaints followed in March 2026.
🏳️ Abkhazia Other law ✓ Article
Abkhazia’s top court treats cannabis gifts as supply and limits death sentences
Abkhazia’s Supreme Court told judges that drug supply included gifts, exchanges, loans and payment of debts, and that ordinary supply liability applied even below large-quantity thresholds. The same guidance required evidence of the substance and quantity, protected access to a lawyer when questioning became accusatory, and barred life or death sentences where mitigating circumstances existed. It replaced earlier drug-case guidance from 2011 and 2012.
🇲🇪 Montenegro Enforcement ✓ Article
Montenegro police find about 13,100 cannabis plants near Bar
Police reported finding eight connected cannabis plots with about 13,100 plants in Trnovo, in Bar municipality, and arresting two men aged 40 and 65 on suspicion of drug production and supply. The site had irrigation and security equipment, and officers collected evidence and cut down plants. Police described it as the country’s largest discovered marijuana plantation; the investigation brought a third arrest in October and complaints against two further suspects in March 2026.
🇨🇬 Congo Other law ✓ Article
Congo separates small personal quantities from wider drug trafficking
Small personal possession, purchase or growing carried one to six months for a cannabis derivative other than oil, and two months to one year for high-risk drugs including cannabis oil; a fine alone was possible in either tier. Wider high-risk trafficking carried two to ten years, a fine, or both. President Denis Sassou-N'Guesso signed the law after parliament debated the need to replace an outdated drug-control system.
🇬🇳 Guinea Enforcement ✓
Guinea's gendarmes seize 1,725 kg of cannabis in a minibus
The gendarmerie's research brigade in Kindia intercepted a minibus on the road from Bambaya carrying 1,725 kg of cannabis; the driver abandoned it and was arrested four days later. The operation was part of an anti-drug campaign launched by the prosecutor general at the Conakry court of appeal, and the Kindia prosecutor was informed.
🇺🇬 Uganda Tightening ✓
Uganda's narcotics law comes into force
Statutory Instrument 42 of 2025 brought the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act, 2024 into force on 14 April 2025. The President had assented on 2 February 2024, and section 1 left the start to the internal affairs minister. From 14 April 2025, possession of a narcotic drug can bring up to twenty years in prison, with no lesser tier for a small amount; use can bring up to ten years; growing without a licence up to five; and trafficking, which the Act defines to include giving, up to life. The health minister may still license cultivation of a prohibited plant. The Constitutional Court had said in 2023 that annulling the previous Act did not legalise cannabis, so the score stays on the earlier ban until this commencement.
96−3 points
🇨🇬 Congo Debate ✓
Congo's senators back a new law against illicit drug trafficking
Senators approved a drug-control proposal intended to combat trafficking and strengthen public security. Its sponsor, Yves Fortuné Moundele-Ngollo Ehourossia, linked illicit drugs to organised crime, money laundering, corruption and violence. The debate came more than twenty years after Congo approved accession to the UN drug conventions; President Denis Sassou-N'Guesso signed the new drug law in August.
🇽🇰 Kosovo Enforcement ✓ Article
Kosovo police seize 25 kg of suspected marijuana in Pristina
Police searched four Pristina locations during operation Starti and seized 27 packages containing 25.2 kg of suspected marijuana, which they believed was intended for the local market, along with two rifles and two revolvers. Four men were arrested over suspected drug and weapons offences, interviewed with defence lawyers present and sent into detention for up to 48 hours by the prosecutor. Kosovo’s criminal code punishes unauthorised distribution and sale with a fine and two to twelve years in prison.
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia Death penalty ✓
Saudi Arabia announces six executions for hashish smuggling
The Interior Ministry announced that six Iranian men had been executed after convictions for smuggling hashish and the rejection of their appeals. It did not disclose when the executions had taken place.
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🇱🇦 Laos Enforcement ✓
Laos reports 3.6 tonnes of marijuana seized in eleven months
Authorities reported 5,168 arrests across 3,395 drug cases over eleven months, including 199 foreigners, in a report to parliament on 20 November. Seizures included 3,583 kilograms of marijuana alongside large quantities of methamphetamine and other drugs. Public Security Minister Vilay Lakhamphong also reported 5,132 people receiving support through drug-treatment and rehabilitation centres, of whom 2,513 had completed treatment and returned home.
🇨🇬 Congo Enforcement ✓
Congo gendarmes link a cannabis seizure to an agriculture official
An official report described the arrest in Owando of a young adult carrying 52 wrapped cannabis portions, followed by a search of an agriculture official's home where more cannabis and an elephant tusk were found. The suspects were presented to the prosecutor. The report, dated 20 November, still cited the colonial-era 1916 poisonous-substances law as a basis for cannabis enforcement.
🇳🇬 Nigeria Debate ✓
Nigeria's Senate votes for the death penalty for drug trafficking
Passing a bill to amend the NDLEA Act, the Senate adopted a floor amendment replacing life imprisonment with death as the penalty for drug traffickers. A first voice vote seemed to go against it; the Deputy Senate President called a second and ruled it carried, over protests from some senators. The bill still needed agreement with the House of Representatives.
🇲🇴 Macau Easing ✓ Article
Macau’s top court keeps one drug conviction for linked growing and selling
A cannabis grower’s combined sentence stayed at nine years three months after Macau’s top court rejected prosecutors’ demand for separate production and trafficking convictions. His growing, keeping, giving and selling cannabis formed one continuous operation under a single plan; the appeal court had reduced an earlier twelve-year combined sentence. The top court also refused the grower’s request for a further reduction, citing the operation’s duration and scale.
🇲🇿 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.
🇭🇰 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.
🇹🇲 Turkmenistan Other law ✓ Article
Turkmenistan sets five-to-twelve-year prison terms for drug supply
Turkmenistan’s replacement criminal code set five to twelve years in prison for unauthorised drug supply and possession with intent to supply, rising to fifteen to twenty-five years in the most serious tier. The ordinary offence of possessing drugs without intent to supply allowed a fine or up to five years, while unauthorised cannabis growing allowed corrective labour or two to five years in prison. President Serdar Berdimuhamedow signed the new edition in April 2022 for commencement on 1 January 2023.
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🇯🇴 Jordan Other law ✓ Article
Jordan grades drug penalties and widens first-offence record protection
Jordan divided personal-use drug offences into four penalty bands, ranging from one to three years plus a fine to one to six months, a fine, or both, depending on the controlled-drug schedule. It broadened the acts covered by first-offence record protection and expressly allowed plant and seed licences under future regulations. The same amendment expanded the distribution offence to include gifts and retained prison as a possible personal-use punishment.
🇹🇿 Tanzania Other law ✓ Article
Tanzania moves the cannabis trafficking boundary to one hundred kilograms
Tanzania moved the boundary between lower-quantity cannabis trafficking and the life-imprisonment tier from 50 kg to 100 kg. The same amendment made thirty years the minimum for the lower tier, replacing the earlier fixed thirty-year wording. It changed the trafficking rules introduced in 2017; the personal-use small-quantity rules remained separate.
🇹🇯 Tajikistan Tightening ✓
Tajikistan extends drug offences to chemical analogues
A Criminal Code amendment extended drug offences to analogues of controlled drugs, according to the code’s amendment notes. The updated offences covered possession without intent to supply, supply and premises for consumption; analogue quantities were linked to the corresponding controlled substance’s bands. The separate quantity annex was replaced in 2023.
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🇬🇦 Gabon Other law ✓
Gabon keeps the previous year's drug penalties in its replacement code
Gabon's replacement Penal Code retained the 2019 distinction between illicit use, general possession and direct supply for another person's consumption. It kept up to a year for use, the ten-year general possession term and the option of treatment instead of the use penalty. The law replaced the previous code and renumbered the drug provisions.
🇲🇭 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.
🏳️ Abkhazia Death penalty ✓
Abkhazia limits life and death sentences where drug cases have mitigation
A March 2020 amendment recast the highest drug-supply and import tiers with a fifteen-year prison term and a fine, reserving life imprisonment or death for cases without mitigating circumstances. The Supreme Court’s 2025 guidance expressly barred life or death where mitigation existed and explained further sentencing reductions for specified cooperation circumstances.
🏳️ Abkhazia Death penalty ✓ Article
Abkhazia allows life or death for the most serious drug dealing
Abkhazia’s highest drug-supply and import penalty tiers took effect on 1 March 2020, allowing life imprisonment or death for the most serious cases. Deputy Dmitry Dbar had promoted the legislation as a response to overdose deaths and drug couriers. An amendment later that March reserved life or death for cases without mitigating circumstances, a limit reinforced by the Supreme Court in 2025.
51−4 points
🇷🇼 Rwanda Other law ✓
Rwanda places cannabis in its highest drug category
Rwanda’s health ministry expressly listed cannabis with cocaine, heroin and opium in the highest narcotics category when its classification order took effect on 11 March 2019. The 2018 criminal law tied that category to a statutory life sentence and a fine for unlawful production and supply activities. The order also allowed controlled medical and research use under the drug-control law.
🇻🇺 Vanuatu Enforcement ✓
Vanuatu suspends a young cannabis seller’s ten-month prison sentence
Kaston Niawiye received concurrent ten-month sentences, suspended for two years, for possession, cultivation and sale of cannabis, plus twelve months’ supervision. He had been eighteen when he sold rolls for an older relative; the court found no evidence that he grew his ten plants commercially or personally shared the sale proceeds. The judgment applied the personal-growing guidance and distinguished low-level sellers from people cultivating cannabis for profit.
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🇸🇩 Sudan Enforcement ✓
Sudan’s Supreme Court upholds a life sentence for hashish trafficking
In Sudan Government v. Z. A. A. J., the National Supreme Court confirms an article 15 conviction involving 657.3 grams of hashish found in the accused’s locked bag. It treats the quantity as evidence of trafficking intent, upholds life imprisonment and reduces the fine to 10,000 pounds. The final order is dated 16 November 2018, although the judiciary publishes the case in its 2019 collection with a 2019 docket reference. The judgment does not establish a universal quantity threshold or typical sentences for personal use.
🇷🇼 Rwanda Other law ✓ Article
Rwanda allows community service for drug use and raises supply penalties
Rwanda offered one to two years in prison or community service for drug use when its rewritten criminal law took effect on 27 September 2018, replacing the earlier one-to-three-year term and fine. It also introduced much heavier production and supply tariffs, including life imprisonment for the highest drug category. A March 2019 health-ministry order expressly placed cannabis in that category.
🇧🇫 Burkina Faso Other law ✓ Article
Burkina Faso keeps small-quantity tiers but raises drug fines
The new Penal Code retained shorter sentences for small personal possession and growing, raised the fines and removed the drug clauses' explicit fine-only alternatives. Cannabis derivatives other than oil carried one to six months and a fine; high-risk plants and substances, including cannabis oil, carried one month to a year and a fine, lowering that tier's previous two-month minimum. Parliament adopted the code to replace the 1996 code and the 1999 drug law's penalty provisions.
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🇧🇮 Burundi Other law ✓ Article
Burundi keeps prison or a fine for drug possession and use
Burundi kept illicit drug possession and use punishable by one to five years in prison, a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 Burundian francs, or both, when its revised criminal code took effect on 29 December 2017. These penalties continued the 2009 rules, including compulsory court supervision for consumption offences. Illicit production, import, manufacture or export carried ten to fifteen years and a fine up to one million francs, with doubled penalties for organised groups.
🇹🇿 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.
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🇧🇭 Bahrain Tightening ✓
Bahrain adds synthetic cannabinoids to its controlled-drug list
Bahrain added synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinone to its controlled narcotics list through a cabinet decision taking effect the day after publication. The decision also added tramadol, ketamine and a drug precursor to other tables. Natural cannabis was already controlled under the 2007 law’s plant rules.
🇯🇴 Jordan Death penalty ✓ Article
Jordan retains death for international drug-gang trafficking
The new drug law retained mandatory death for aggravated trafficking involving international drug gangs or specified links to other international crimes. Ordinary personal use had a separate prison-and-fine offence with possible treatment. The earlier drug law already contained the international-gang death clause, which the 2016 replacement carried forward.
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🇹🇬 Togo Tightening ✓ Article
Togo raises personal-use prison terms from months to years
Togo raised the prison range for a small amount of cannabis held, bought or grown for personal consumption to one to three years, with a fine of 500,000–3 million CFA francs or either penalty alone. The earlier law had specified one to six months for cannabis derivatives other than oil. The wider criminal-code rewrite also allowed judges to waive qualifying sentences and substitute treatment for a person with drug dependence.
🇹🇿 Tanzania Tightening ✓ Article
Tanzania sets at least thirty years for growing cannabis
Mainland Tanzania made unlawful cultivation and other prohibited-plant offences punishable by at least thirty years in prison and set life imprisonment for trafficking. Its separate small-personal-use tier allowed a fine of at least 500,000 shillings, a three-year prison term, or both for drugs outside a specially listed group, with personal purpose to be proved by the holder. The law replaced the 1995 Act and left the minister to define small quantities in regulations.
138−5 points
🇧🇾 Belarus Tightening ✓ Article
Belarus toughens drug-supply penalties and lowers the prosecution age
Belarus’s drug crackdown took effect on 1 January 2015, allowing prosecution for drug supply from age fourteen. The tougher regime included twelve to twenty-five years where unlawful supply caused a person’s death through drug consumption. A later state-linked study traced the crackdown to a surge in synthetic-drug poisonings; families subsequently campaigned against long sentences.
83−5 points
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🇲🇱 Mali Other law ✓
Mali gives its central drug office a statutory role in investigations
Mali put operational coordination of drug investigations in the hands of a central office with criminal-investigation powers. Its director or delegate could authorise controlled deliveries and undercover requests to sell drugs, with immediate notice to the relevant prosecutor or judge. The amendment updated the 2001 law's enforcement machinery; international trafficking cases could be transferred to the office at the specialised prosecutor's request.
🇱🇦 Laos Tightening ✓ Article
Laos adds hashish and THC penalties reaching life imprisonment
Laos added separate penalties for THC, hashish and their derivatives: two to four years in prison for more than 0.3 grams and up to 50 grams, rising to life above 500 grams, with fines. The amendment took effect 90 days after its January promulgation, in April 2013. It revised the earlier cannabis rules, which had specified dried-cannabis trading penalties and treatment for people addicted to smoking it.
🇶🇦 Qatar Death penalty ✓ Article
Qatar sentences a smuggler to death for a boatload of hashish and opium
The Criminal Court unanimously sentenced a man to death and a fine of 500,000 riyals for bringing about 600 kilograms of hashish and opium into Qatar by speedboat; the coast guard caught him unloading what looked like sacks of flour on an island. A second man, who may have acted under threat of a gun, got life imprisonment. Qatar had reported no execution in more than a decade, and at least 19 people were on death row at the end of 2011.
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🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe Other law ✓
São Tomé and Príncipe signs a drug law alongside its new Penal Code
A separate law covering drug trafficking, consumption and possession was promulgated on 2 October 2012, almost a year after parliament approved it. In the meantime, parliament had passed a new Penal Code covering many of the same offences with partly different rules. A later judicial training manual argued that criminal penalties should follow the code, while the separate law continued to govern matters such as special procedures.
🇬🇭 Ghana Tightening ✓
Ghana sets fifteen years to life for drug trafficking
The Criminal Offences (Amendment) Act, Act 849, classed drug trafficking as a narcotic crime carrying between fifteen years and life imprisonment. It did not distinguish the type, category or quantity of the drug.
🇷🇼 Rwanda Other law ✓ Article
Rwanda sets prison plus a fine for illicit drug use
Rwanda’s replacement criminal code specified one to three years in prison and a fine of 50,000 to 500,000 francs for illicit drug use from 14 June 2012. The 1977 code had allowed a fine alone, with a wider prison range of three months to five years. Making, transforming, importing or selling drugs unlawfully carried three to five years and a fine, with doubled penalties for international acts.
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🇱🇷 Liberia Enforcement ✓
Liberia’s drug cases mostly end with on-the-spot fines, assessors report
A regional evaluation reported that most investigated drug-possession and trafficking cases ended with on-the-spot fines, and that only one drug conviction had been recorded in 2010. Officers lacked a forensic laboratory and relied on old UN-donated testing kits. The report called for a stronger anti-trafficking law; Liberia adopted a new drug statute in 2014.
🇬🇲 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.
🇲🇽 Mexico Enforcement ✓
Smugglers fire cannabis over the US border with a catapult
National Guard troops watching a remote camera near Naco, Arizona, saw people beside the border fence on the Mexican side launching packages over it with an elastic-powered catapult brought in on a trailer. Alerted by the US Border Patrol, Mexican authorities broke up the operation and seized the catapult, an SUV and 45 pounds of marijuana; the smugglers escaped. A Border Patrol spokesman said he had never seen anything like it.
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🇱🇦 Laos Other law ✓
Laos adopts prison terms for cannabis trading in its revised penal law
People trading one to ten kilograms of dried cannabis faced three to seven years in prison under the penal-law revision adopted by parliament. Regular or organised trading, or more than ten kilograms, carried five to ten years; people addicted to smoking cannabis were directed to treatment. The revision preceded the 2007 narcotics law and the later amendment adding separate THC and hashish penalty bands.
🇪🇹 Ethiopia Other law ✓
Ethiopia's new criminal code separates personal use from trafficking
Ethiopia's new criminal code punished unauthorised drug possession, growing or supply for private use with up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to 50,000 birr. Trafficking carried at least five years, rising to at least ten for organised or professional dealing, repeat offences and other aggravated cases. It replaced the 1957 code while preserving the application of special criminal laws.
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🇬🇲 Gambia Other law ✓ Article
Gambia replaces its drug-control decree with a new law
Gambia replaced the 1996 drug-control decree with a law regulating prohibited and controlled drugs, including cannabis. It prohibited unauthorised growing, supply, use and possession, while reserving tightly limited medical and scientific authorisations to approved establishments. Later amendments reorganised the enforcement agency and changed penalties, including a separate first-offender cannabis scale in 2014.
🇮🇶 Iraq Death penalty ✓
Iraq's occupation authority suspends the death penalty
The Coalition Provisional Authority suspended capital punishment across Iraq, halting its availability under the drug law as well as other criminal laws. Its order allowed life imprisonment or a lesser lawful penalty where death had been the sole punishment and said the former government had used criminal law to repress people. Iraq's interim government restored death penalties for selected offences in August 2004, including drug trafficking aimed at funding or assisting the violent overthrow of the government.
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🇮🇶 Iraq Death penalty ✓
Iraq extends death or life sentences across its drug-trafficking offences
Iraq replaced lifelong imprisonment and a fine for the drug law's principal trafficking offences with death or life imprisonment and confiscation of movable and immovable property. The offences included supplying drugs and growing cannabis for trade; the death penalty had already applied to specified aggravated cases since 1968. The government described the confiscation rule as a way to remove unlawful drug proceeds; the occupation authority suspended capital punishment in June 2003.
🇨🇴 Colombia Other law ✓
Colombia's Constitutional Court distinguishes personal consumption from trafficking
In judgment C-689/02, the Constitutional Court upheld the challenged provisions of the 2000 Penal Code, including cannabis plantation and drug-trafficking offences. It rejected the argument that protection of personal consumption required decriminalising production and commercial supply. The judgment maintained the distinction between a personal dose and trafficking rather than withdrawing the earlier constitutional protection for personal use.
🇱🇾 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.
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🇲🇱 Mali Easing ✓ Article
Mali replaces long drug sentences with a lighter personal-use tier
Mali's replacement drug law set three months to one year, a fine, or both for a small personal supply of a high-risk plant or substance, including cannabis oil; cannabis derivatives other than oil carried two to six months, a fine, or both. The lighter tier covered possession, purchase and cultivation, replacing the earlier law's long forced-labour punishments. Ordinary high-risk drug cultivation and international trafficking still carried five to ten years and a fine, and landholders had to destroy cannabis plants growing on their land.
59+4 points
🇨🇫 Central African Republic Other law ✓ Article
Central African Republic gives small personal supplies a separate penalty
Small personal possession, purchase and growing received separate penalties under the drug law signed by President Ange-Félix Patassé: its cannabis-related prison ranges ran from one month to a year, with a fine alone also possible. Ordinary high-risk production and trafficking carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both, while courts could order treatment for a dependent person convicted of specified offences. The country joined two UN drug conventions later that year, and its 2010 Penal Code expressly kept this separate drug law in use.
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🇬🇳 Guinea Other law ✓
Guinea raises personal-use prison ranges but allows fines for trafficking
Personal drug possession and use carried six months to two years, a fine, or both under the new Penal Code, compared with two months to a year in the 1989 ordinance. Ordinary cultivation and trafficking carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both, adding an explicit fine-only alternative to the earlier combined punishment. Prosecutors could still withhold prosecution after a user completed prescribed treatment.
🇹🇬 Togo Other law ✓ Article
Togo sets a shorter personal-use penalty for cannabis
Togo set one to six months in prison and a fine of 25,000–500,000 CFA francs, or either penalty alone, for a small amount of cannabis derivatives other than oil kept, bought or grown for personal consumption. The law also banned cannabis cultivation nationwide and required landholders to destroy plants growing on their land. After joining the UN convention against trafficking in 1990, Togo placed personal use and commercial supply under separate penalties; a 2015 rewrite later raised the personal-use range.
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🇲🇬 Madagascar Other law ✓ Article
Madagascar distinguishes personal cannabis supplies from trafficking
Madagascar's replacement drug law gave small personal quantities of non-oil cannabis derivatives two to six months in prison, a fine, or both; cannabis oil fell under a three-month to one-year range with the same alternatives. Production and trafficking offences could bring forced labour or fines, while offering drugs directly for another person's consumption had a separate one-to-five-year range or a fine. The law replaced the 1960 rongony ordinance and required landholders to destroy cannabis crops.
39+6 points
🇨🇲 Cameroon Other law ✓ Article
Cameroon sets lighter penalties for small personal cannabis supplies
Cameroon set a separate penalty for possessing, buying or growing a small personal supply: two months to one year, a fine, or both for high-risk drugs, with a shorter range for cannabis derivatives other than oil. Judges could waive punishment after a promise not to reoffend, while the main cultivation and trafficking offences carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both. Landholders had to destroy cannabis growing on their land, and courts could require treatment for convicted people with drug dependence.
🇲🇿 Mozambique Other law ✓ Article
Mozambique raises trafficking penalties and gives growers shorter terms
Mozambique replaced its colonial drug law with ordinary trafficking penalties of sixteen to twenty years and a separate cannabis-growing offence carrying three days to one year. Using or possessing drugs for oneself carried up to two years plus a fine, with a one-year minimum above three days' supply and possible waivers for occasional users. The law sought to implement the 1988 UN trafficking convention and created a central drug-control office.
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🇹🇲 Turkmenistan Death penalty ✓
Turkmenistan reportedly executes 123 people for drug trafficking
Amnesty International reported that 123 people were executed for drug trafficking in Turkmenistan during 1996, while the authorities published no official execution statistics. The organisation called for complete abolition of the death penalty. A nationwide moratorium followed in January 1999, barring courts from imposing death sentences.
🇬🇲 Gambia Other law ✓
Gambia replaces its earlier drug law with a decree
A drug-control decree replaced the 1993 drug legislation, according to the enforcement agency’s institutional history. It governed the period before the 2003 replacement law, which expressly repealed it and set rules for handling prosecutions already under way.
🇭🇰 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.
🇬🇮 Gibraltar Easing ✓ Article
Gibraltar’s appeal court rejects a charge for intended cannabis supply abroad
A man who carried 737 grams of cannabis resin through Gibraltar for supply in England defeated the prosecution’s appeal against the removal of his possession-with-intent-to-supply charge. The court held that the intended act of supply had to take place in Gibraltar, even after the 1985 amendment concerning recipients abroad. He had admitted possession, importation and exportation; the ruling concerned the separate intent-to-supply count.
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🇲🇽 Mexico Other law ✓
Mexico raises trafficking sentences and stops prosecuting personal amounts
A reform of the Federal Penal Code set 10 to 25 years for producing, transporting, trading and supplying drugs, and lowered the penalty for sowing, growing and harvesting. A person who was not dependent and carried an amount presumably meant for personal use was not prosecuted; a dependent person in the same position received no penalty, and dependent defendants were subject to treatment.
🇧🇫 Burkina Faso Other law ✓
Burkina Faso punishes drug possession and group use in its health code
Holding narcotics without a legitimate reason carried six days to six months in prison, a fine, or both under the health code adopted by parliament. Group use and helping someone else use drugs carried one to five years, a fine, or both, with doubled penalties for illicit growing or manufacture. These national health-law offences preceded the 1996 Penal Code and the more detailed drug code adopted in 1999.
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🇬🇦 Gabon Other law ✓ Article
Gabon separates drug use from possession and supply in its Penal Code
Illicit drug use carried two months to a year and a fine under the amended Penal Code, while unauthorised possession, cultivation and supply carried two to ten years and a fine. Courts could order treatment and withhold the use penalty, but evading treatment carried six months to two years and a fine. The 2019 replacement code later kept separate use and possession offences while rewriting their penalties.
🇲🇷 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.
🇲🇲 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.
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🇬🇮 Gibraltar Tightening ✓ Article
Gibraltar presumes 20 grams of cannabis is held for supply
Possessing 20 grams of cannabis or cannabis resin triggered a presumption that the drug was intended for supply, unless the defendant proved otherwise. The 1989 amendment treated the listed weight as a commercial quantity and also covered drugs in mixtures or preparations. The presumption remained in the final consolidated old drug Act, but was omitted from its 2012 replacement.
🇸🇩 Sudan Death penalty ✓ Article
Sudan allows death sentences for hashish trafficking after the coup
Sudan's military rulers amended the existing hashish and opium law to allow death or ten to twenty years in prison for trafficking and the other listed supply offences. Smoking, ordinary possession and possessing smoking equipment carried three to seven years. The amendment followed the June coup, and special courts began imposing drug-related death sentences within months.
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🇬🇳 Guinea Other law ✓ Article
Guinea separates personal drug use from trafficking in its drug ordinance
Personal drug use or possession carried two months to a year, a fine, or both under the ordinance signed by General Lansana Conté, while cultivation and trafficking carried five to twenty years and a fine. Prosecutors could direct users into treatment, with prosecution withheld after completion in the conditions stated by the law. The ordinance took effect immediately; the 1998 Penal Code later set a higher personal-use prison range.
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🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia Death penalty ✓
Saudi Arabia authorises death sentences for drug smuggling
A Council of Senior Scholars fatwa prescribed death for people who bring drugs into the kingdom or receive them from abroad, and for repeat drug dealers. Judges soon began applying the rule to trafficking cases, including hashish.
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🇸🇳 Senegal Tightening ✓
Senegal's parliament adopts stronger drug-trafficking penalties
Parliament adopted an amendment to the 1972 narcotics law setting two to ten years' imprisonment and fines of one to ten million CFA francs for the offences covered by revised Article 3. Imprisonment was mandatory and suspended sentences were generally excluded, with an exception for voluntary cooperation with the investigation. The explanatory memorandum identified traffickers, excluding simple users, as the target. Revised provisions also covered knowing financial assistance and confiscation. This date is parliamentary adoption; the government catalogue identifies the resulting Law 87-12 as dated 24 February 1987. Commencement is not established by the parliamentary file.
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🇧🇭 Bahrain Death penalty ✓ Article
Bahrain introduces death or life imprisonment for drug supply
Bahrain introduced death or life imprisonment, plus a fine of 5,000–50,000 dinars, for unauthorised drug import, export and supply, and growing drugs for trafficking. The rule covered providing drugs for payment or free of charge; the previous amendment had set life imprisonment or at least five years. Published on 12 July 1984, it retained at least six months’ imprisonment for personal possession.
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🇳🇬 Nigeria Death penalty ✓
Nigeria's second military government adds death for drug trafficking
During Nigeria's second military government the rulers issued Decree 20, which made the death penalty available for drug trafficking, and amended the Indian Hemp Decree to increase penalties and jail terms. The death penalty was used sparingly, was aimed at cocaine, and was removed in 1985. Cannabis use became popular among young Nigerians between 1980 and 1990.
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🇺🇦 Ukraine Tightening ✓ Article
Ukraine makes personal drug possession punishable by prison
People keeping narcotics for themselves faced up to three years in prison or one year of corrective labour under a decree issued by Soviet Ukraine on 17 June 1974; repeat offences could bring five years. The decree followed the Soviet Union’s April drug crackdown and also set up to ten years for supply, rising to six to fifteen years in aggravated cases. It expressly punished growing Indian, southern Manchurian and southern Chuy hemp, alongside other prohibited drug crops, with up to five years in prison. People diagnosed with drug addiction who avoided treatment could be sent to compulsory treatment-and-labour institutions for six months to two years.
🇯🇲 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.
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🇬🇹 Guatemala Other law ✓ Article
Guatemala sets prison terms for cannabis growing, supply and possession
Unauthorised growing of drug-producing plants and possession or supply of their seeds carried three to five years in prison plus a fine under the new penal code. The same prison range applied to unlawful drug import, delivery, sale and keeping drugs. The code took effect on 15 September 1973; a separate 1992 drug law later set higher cultivation and trafficking terms and a distinct personal-possession offence.
🇬🇮 Gibraltar Other law ✓
Gibraltar brings cannabis growing, possession and supply under a new drug law
Gibraltar’s new drug law took effect on 1 June 1973, providing separate offences for unauthorised possession, possession with intent to supply, production and cannabis cultivation. Its later amendments extended the supply wording to recipients abroad and introduced a quantity-based presumption of intent to supply. The Act remained the main drug statute until the Crimes Act replaced it in November 2012.
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🇵🇪 Peru Easing ✓ Article
Peru separates individual drug consumers from the earlier trafficking rule
Decree-Law 19505 replaced Article 12 of the 1949 law, removing its express treatment of clandestine individual consumers as authors or accomplices. It also removed purchase and use from Article 2's listed activities, while retaining narcotic-purpose cannabis cultivation. Article 8 established a separate judicial response to consumers, including possible institutional confinement or other measures. This was not an unrestricted right to possess, grow or supply cannabis.
🇦🇫 Afghanistan Enforcement ✓ Article
Afghanistan begins arresting drug smugglers in earnest
Bradford describes the transfer of counternarcotics work to the interior ministry and new anti-smuggling units amid American pressure over the hashish trade. Reported smuggler arrests rose from 72 in 1971 to 221 in 1972 and 584 in 1973. A December 18 US memorandum records new prime minister Musa Shafiq's commitment to stronger action; the annual totals should not all be attributed to his late-year government or treated as cannabis-only convictions.
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🇧🇷 Brazil Tightening ✓
Brazil confirms that users are punished like traffickers
Law 5.726, passed under President Médici, reaffirmed the rule of the 1968 decree-law that a person holding a drug for their own use faced the same penalty as a dealer. The rule was reversed only in 1976, when the Lei dos Tóxicos separated the two: three to fifteen years for trafficking, six months to two years of detention for users.
🇦🇫 Afghanistan Debate ✓ Article
Afghanistan promises drug-control cooperation while describing weak enforcement
Afghan foreign minister Musa Shafiq told US secretary of state William Rogers that hashish and opium cultivation were prohibited under Islamic law but that enforcement was difficult, especially in remote mountain areas. He blamed growing demand from foreign tourists and promised cooperation on drug control. The discussion came as Washington worried that successful action elsewhere could push drug production towards Afghanistan.
🇩🇯 Djibouti Other law ✓ Article
Djibouti publishes French drug penalties and treatment rules
The local official journal published French rules punishing illicit drug use with two months to one year, a fine alone, or both, and providing treatment routes away from prosecution. Ordinary trafficking carried two to ten years, while production, import and export carried ten to twenty. The law expressly applied its criminal rules to overseas territories, with local assemblies setting treatment arrangements in the French Territory of the Afars and Issas.
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🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe Ban ✓ Article
São Tomé and Príncipe comes under Portugal’s wider drug ban
Portugal published an order extending its drug law to the overseas provinces, including São Tomé and Príncipe, with local publication directed to follow. Cannabis possession and cultivation for personal use, and supply without profit, carried up to two years in prison plus a fine; the ordinary trafficking range was two to eight years plus a fine. Authorised industrial, scientific and therapeutic activities were exempt, with overseas prescription rules adapted by the extension order.
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🇲🇿 Mozambique Tightening ✓ Article
Mozambique receives Portugal's prison terms for cannabis offences
Portugal extended its new drug law to Mozambique, exposing people who possessed or obtained cannabis for themselves, or supplied it without profit, to up to two years in prison plus a fine. Other unauthorised dealings, including cultivation and sales, carried two to eight years plus a fine; convicted foreigners faced expulsion after their sentence. The law followed earlier colonial cannabis bans and was explicitly repealed by Mozambique's 1997 drug law.
🇦🇴 Angola Other law ✓
Angola receives Portugal's prison terms for cannabis offences
Portugal extended its new drug law to Angola, with up to two years in prison plus a fine for personal possession or supply without profit, and two to eight years plus a fine for other unauthorised dealings. Convicted foreigners faced expulsion after their sentences, while authorised medical, scientific and industrial activities were exempt. Angola's 1999 drug law later explicitly repealed this colonial legislation.
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🇮🇶 Iraq Death penalty ✓ Article
Iraq adds death penalties for specified drug-trafficking cases
Repeat offenders convicted of specified supply offences, leaders of trafficking groups and customs or other officials with drug-related duties could now face death or lifelong hard labour. Ordinary trafficking, including cannabis growing for trade, carried lifelong hard labour, while unauthorised possession or growing for personal use rose from one to five years to three to ten years in prison, with higher fines. The government said the earlier penalties had failed to deter smugglers; further military penalties followed in 1970.
🇧🇷 Brazil Tightening ✓ Article
Brazil's military government punishes users like traffickers
A decree-law issued days after the regime suspended civil liberties gave possession for personal use the same sentence as dealing: one to five years of reclusion and a fine of ten to fifty times the highest minimum wage, against international guidance. Users kept facing prison until 2006.
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🇭🇰 Hong Kong Other law ✓ Article
Hong Kong replaces its drug law and keeps cannabis prohibition
Hong Kong’s replacement drug law received assent on 7 November 1968, separating possession for trafficking from ordinary possession and consumption. It retained cannabis controls and separately prohibited cultivation and dealing in cannabis plants; ordinary possession and use carried up to three years and HK$10,000 under the original text. The ordinance required a later gazette notice to appoint its start date.