Treatment
Forced or offered treatment for drug users.
124 entries, 1934–2026 · 24 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Treatment 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.
🇸🇽 Sint Maarten Debate ✓
Sint Maarten’s health minister seeks regional advice on cannabis reform
Health minister Claret Connor said he had sought help from the Pan American Health Organization to assess cannabis policy and comparable Caribbean experiences. He stressed mental health, treatment capacity and protection of vulnerable residents alongside possible economic benefits. He called for a comprehensive review of advantages and disadvantages before decisions on legislation.
🇫🇯 Fiji Other law ✓ Article
Fiji signs a drug rewrite separating personal use from supply
Fiji signed a new drug law with a separate personal-use offence and diversion into support programmes. For cannabis plant material it sets a maximum FJ$500 fine or three months in prison, or both, with custody restricted to prior-conviction or exceptional cases; at 28 g a rebuttable presumption of supply begins. The law also creates a Counter Narcotics Bureau and replaces the older drug Acts, with commencement dependent on a ministerial Gazette notice.
20256 entries1 score change
🇲🇲 Myanmar Other law ✓
Myanmar sets three months' rehabilitation for a broken drug bond
The National Defence and Security Council enacted the second amendment to the narcotics law on 31 December 2025. The English text, published on 7 January 2026, contains no separate commencement date. A court must send a drug user to a rehabilitation centre for three months when the user does not enter the required bond or breaches its conditions. A user sent there who flagrantly breaks the centre's rules must do unpaid manual work for 45 to 90 hours a week. Life imprisonment, the upper term in the sale provisions, is defined as incarceration until death. More than 100 grams of marijuana, marijuana extract, or both is deemed possession for sale.
🇰🇼 Kuwait Death penalty ✓ Article
Kuwait combines its drug laws and keeps death for trafficking
Decree-Law No. 159 of 2025, a combined drug law, replaced the 1983 narcotics law and 1987 psychotropic-substances law, with commencement reported as 15 December. Ordinary personal consumption or possession carries up to five years and a fine up to KD5,000, while specified trafficking offences carry death or life imprisonment. The law also lets prosecutors send an eligible personal-use accused person to rehabilitation for up to three months instead of starting a prosecution. It was published in the gazette on 30 November after signature on 24 November.
20242 entries0 score changes
🇬🇱 Greenland Debate ✓
Greenland’s cannabis review compares prohibition and reform options
An independent review prepared for Greenland compared prohibition, decriminalisation, limited legal access and commercial cannabis sales. It examined health, criminal-justice and economic trade-offs, with a strong focus on young people, prevention and treatment. The health department commissioned the work after a parliamentary proposal seeking a balanced assessment.
🇸🇱 Sierra Leone Debate ✓ Article
Sierra Leone declares a national emergency over drug abuse
President Julius Maada Bio declared a national emergency on drug and substance abuse, focusing on the synthetic drug sold as kush. He promised treatment centres in every district and a task force combining prevention, recovery support, community work and stronger enforcement against suppliers. Preliminary testing published in June detected synthetic cannabinoids and nitazenes, a group of synthetic opioids, in kush samples from Freetown; it challenged earlier rumours about the drug's ingredients.
🇷🇴 Romania Debate ✓
Romanian deputies propose fines instead of criminal charges for three grams
Deputies introduced a bill to replace criminal penalties for possessing up to three grams of cannabis for personal use with fines of 1,000–3,000 lei. It proposed using the revenue for prevention and support services and exempting medically prescribed cannabis possession from the personal-use penalties. REPER’s sponsors argued that prosecution damaged users’ records and obstructed treatment; the Senate later rejected the proposal.
🇩🇿 Algeria Other law ✓ Article
Algeria lowers personal growing penalties while raising drug fines
Algeria added a two-to-five-year prison term and a 200,000–500,000-dinar fine for growing cannabis for personal consumption; the original law had imposed life imprisonment without that exception. For personal use, buying or possession, the prison range stayed at two months to two years, while the fine floor rose to 20,000 dinars, with a fine alone still possible. The amendment also strengthened treatment protections for minors and increased penalties for certain suppliers.
58+3 points
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🇲🇺 Mauritius Medical ✓ Article
Mauritius allows medical cannabis and diverts users to treatment
Amendments to the Dangerous Drugs Act passed in November 2022 let a Medicinal Cannabis Therapeutic Committee in each regional hospital approve medicinal cannabis patient by patient. They also created a Drug Users Administrative Panel, to which people caught with drugs for personal use can be referred for rehabilitation in place of prosecution. The changes had not yet been proclaimed in January 2023.
69+3 points
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Debate ✓ Article
Timor-Leste’s president urges a different approach to cannabis
President José Ramos-Horta urged Timor-Leste to distinguish cannabis from methamphetamine and heroin, and to reconsider the costs of punitive prohibition. Speaking to Parliament after cannabis investigations in Dili, he criticised procedural failures that could undermine the presumption of innocence and argued for considering medical and economic uses. His intervention followed the justice minister’s call for tougher penalties; in November he again advocated medical cannabis in his independence-anniversary address.
🇱🇷 Liberia Debate ✓
Liberia’s senators clash over denying bail in drug cases
A Senate committee objected to a proposed ban on bail for drug trafficking and recommended an immediately payable bond worth twice the value of the seized drugs. Another senator argued that wealthy dealers could pay and escape prosecution. The West Africa Drug Policy Network, which worked on the amendment with Representative Thomas Goshua and the drug agency, urged a compromise protecting people who use drugs; the final law was signed in July 2023.
20212 entries0 score changes
🇯🇴 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.
🇯🇴 Jordan Debate ✓
Jordan’s Lower House backs broader first-offence record protection
The Lower House backed extending first-offence record protection to a longer list of personal-use acts, including importing, transporting and storing drugs. Its proposal also expanded drug-control offences, including distribution without payment. The amendment was published later in September and took effect in October, while personal-use prosecution remained possible.
20202 entries0 score changes
🇬🇦 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.
🇰🇭 Cambodia Debate ✓ Article
Amnesty calls for Cambodia to end punishment for personal drug use
Amnesty International called for decriminalising personal drug use, possession and growing after investigating Cambodia's anti-drug campaign. Its research, based on 51 interviews, documented allegations of arbitrary detention, torture and abuses in prisons and detention centres, with poor communities especially exposed. It urged the government to replace compulsory detention with voluntary, evidence-based health services; its findings concerned the wider drug campaign rather than a cannabis-only sample.
20194 entries1 score change
🏳️ Northern Cyprus Enforcement ✓
Northern Cyprus reports counselling 98 people on supervised release
The Social Services Department reported regular interviews and psychosocial support for 98 people benefiting from the supervised-release law. The figure covered drug users together; the report gave no separate cannabis count. It documented the support work following the 2016 law’s treatment alternative to sentencing.
🇬🇲 Gambia Debate ✓
Gambia’s drug agency calls for treatment and alternatives to prison
The drug agency’s five-year plan called for rehabilitation facilities, counselling, skills training and alternatives such as community service for young and first-time offenders. It described a system dominated by punishment, with burdensome fines and limited help during and after imprisonment. The plan proposed a review of drug laws after the 2014 first-offender reform.
20187 entries0 score changes
🇲🇲 Myanmar Debate ✓
Myanmar's new drug policy calls for voluntary treatment
Myanmar's first national drug-control policy proposed replacing compulsory treatment with voluntary services, expanding harm reduction and treating drug users as patients. Developed by the drug-control committee with UNODC support and civil-society consultation, it also recommended considering repeal of drug-related death sentences. The policy followed a legal amendment that still allowed compulsory treatment and kept prison penalties for unauthorised possession.
🇲🇲 Myanmar Easing ✓ Article
Myanmar replaces drug-registration prison terms with a treatment process
Myanmar removed the three-to-five-year prison penalty for failing to register for drug treatment or follow treatment directions. Police could still send suspected users for assessment, and a court could order six months in treatment after refusal or breach of a treatment bond. The amendment raised the cannabis quantity presumed to be for sale from 75 to 100 grams; unauthorised possession below it still carried five to ten years.
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan Debate ✓
Kyrgyzstan’s harm-reduction workers warn against unaffordable drug fines
Harm-reduction workers warned that the fines planned for the 2019 justice reform could push people who use drugs further into debt and prison. Ranar Foundation lawyer Denis Kucheryaviy described a man who had served three years after a case involving 3.5 grams of hashish and was struggling with an unpaid fine and missing identity documents. Harm Reduction Network head Sergey Bessonov called for alternative penalties and effective treatment.
🇮🇶 Iraq Other law ✓ Article
Iraq corrects its drug law so courts can treat personal-use offenders
A published correction linked the drug law's court-ordered treatment alternative to personal-use offences, replacing a reference to the separate offence of allowing drug use on premises. The corrected rule allowed hospital treatment for proven dependence or outpatient visits for people who used drugs, subject to medical reports and court decisions. The same notice corrected pharmacists' authority over psychotropic-drug schedules and replaced an earlier correction.
🇹🇲 Turkmenistan Other law ✓ Article
Turkmenistan reserves controlled cannabis growing for permitted enterprises
Turkmenistan’s replacement drug law restricted growing controlled plants to permitted enterprises and institutions within state quotas, with use confined to industrial, medical and scientific purposes. It prohibited consuming narcotic drugs without a doctor’s order and provided for court-ordered treatment for diagnosed dependent users who avoided treatment and continued using. Adopted in November 2017, it replaced the 2004 law on 1 January 2018.
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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.
🇧🇲 Bermuda Easing ✓ Article
Bermuda decriminalises possession of up to 7 g
Bermuda removed criminal liability for simple possession of seven grams of cannabis or less, while police retained power to seize it and prosecutors could still pursue evidence of intent to supply. Cultivation, supply, importation and unauthorised consumption remained offences. The change followed a proposed caution system for amounts under three grams; a later law created an application route to clear qualifying older convictions.
1219+7 points
🇹🇿 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.
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Other law ✓ Article
Timor-Leste sets separate penalties for personal cannabis use
Timor-Leste’s drug law made illicit use, possession and growing solely for personal consumption punishable by up to one year in prison or a 120-day fine, rising to two years or a 240-day fine above five daily reference quantities. Courts may waive punishment for an occasional user in the lower band, and people seeking treatment have confidentiality protections. The law replaced reliance on inherited Indonesian legislation, kept trafficking penalties of five to fifteen years, and took effect the day after its 25 January publication.
🏳️ Northern Cyprus Debate ✓ Article
Northern Cyprus lawyer warns that drug treatment lacks staff and tests
Lawyer Ramadan Sanıvar warned that shortages of psychiatric and rehabilitation services, a laboratory fire and delayed paperwork were obstructing the new treatment route for drug users. He called for staffing and procedural changes so people could meet its obligations.
🇰🇭 Cambodia Tightening ✓ Article
Cambodia launches an anti-drug campaign
Cambodia began a six-month anti-drug campaign in January 2017 and repeatedly extended it, with at least 55,770 arrests on suspicion of using or selling drugs by March 2020. People were sent through criminal courts or administrative detention centres; Amnesty International later documented arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and failures to provide proper care. The arrest total covers drugs generally, during a regional rise in methamphetamine supply, and is not a cannabis-only count.
🇬🇳 Guinea Other law ✓ Article
Guinea sets a separate penalty for small personal possession and growing
Small personal buying, possession and growing carried one to three years, a fine equal to three times the value seized, or both under the new Penal Code. The 1998 code had punished personal possession and use with six months to two years, a fine, or both, while ordinary cultivation carried ten to twenty years, a fine, or both. The replacement code took effect on promulgation and also allowed compulsory treatment, with two to five years for refusal.
79+2 points
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Debate ✓
Timor-Leste lawmakers approve a drug bill with a treatment route
Timor-Leste’s Parliament approved a drug bill that retained punishment for consumption while emphasising treatment and support. The government linked it to public safety and promised regulations and a coordinating body for drug policy. The final law records the vote on 18 October; it was promulgated and published in January 2017, with commencement on the day after publication.
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🇱🇷 Liberia Other law ✓ Article
Liberia makes personal possession a felony and offers users treatment
People holding Schedule I drugs for themselves faced a second-degree felony under the new law, replacing the public-health law’s misdemeanor for unauthorised possession. Growing for personal use became a lower-grade felony than growing for trafficking. Use was a separate offence, and courts could order treatment, education or rehabilitation instead of conviction or punishment. The law took effect on publication on 21 October 2014.
🇮🇩 Indonesia Other law ✓
Indonesian agencies sign a joint regulation on rehabilitating drug users
The head of the Supreme Court, the ministers of justice, health and social affairs, the attorney general and the heads of the police and the National Narcotics Board signed a joint regulation on sending drug users, including suspects and convicts, to rehabilitation. Like the Supreme Court circular before it, which treats a person with no more than 5 g of cannabis as a user, it works inside the framework of punishment; the Transnational Institute describes both as de-penalisation, with a judge's decision resting on an assessment team whose advice police investigators often ignore.
🇷🇴 Romania Easing ✓ Article
Romania lowers the cannabis prison minimum and opens a treatment route
From 1 February 2014, personal possession, buying and growing of cannabis carried three months to two years in prison or a fine; the previous minimum was six months. People charged with personal-use offences could be assessed for an assistance programme and, with their agreement, enter it; following the programme could let a court waive or postpone punishment. The changes accompanied the new Penal Code.
911+2 points
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🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe Other law ✓ Article
São Tomé and Príncipe cuts user penalties and raises trafficking terms
A new Penal Code took effect on 6 November 2012, allowing up to three months in prison or a fine for consuming cannabis and for acquiring, holding or growing a personal quantity within a three-day threshold. An occasional consumer within that limit could be excused from punishment, but ordinary trafficking now carried two to twelve years, compared with the former two-to-eight-year range. A separate drug law signed in the same year created overlapping rules.
79+2 points
🇫🇯 Fiji Easing ✓ Article
Fiji’s appeal court favours sentences outside prison for up to 100 g
The Court of Appeal directed judges towards fines, community service, counselling or a discharge with a warning for possession of up to 100 g of cannabis, reserving suspended or short prison terms for the worst cases. Its four weight bands rose to seven to fourteen years for 4 kg or more under a law whose maximum was life imprisonment. Applying the same weight-based approach to growing later produced conflicting sentences, prompting new cultivation guidelines in 2023.
🇰🇭 Cambodia Tightening ✓ Article
Cambodia raises drug-possession penalties and sets treatment rules
Unlawful drug possession, transport and trafficking carried a basic two-to-five-year prison term under Cambodia's new drug law, while ordinary unlawful cultivation carried six months to two years. The law replaced the 1997 legislation and its 2005 amendments, which had dealt separately with personal-use possession and growing. It set out voluntary and compulsory treatment procedures, including medical assessment and appeal rights, while retaining discretion for limited quantities consumed as a non-addictive ancestral practice.
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🇰🇭 Cambodia Debate ✓
Cambodian drug-law critics warn of two years in compulsory treatment
Critics warned that a draft drug law approved by Prime Minister Hun Sen could put people who use drugs into involuntary treatment for up to two years. They pointed to reports of abuse in detention centres and argued that the draft's broad definition of addiction could sweep in people simply under the influence. The final law promulgated in January 2012 included voluntary-treatment rules, medical conditions for compulsory treatment and a six-month-to-two-year period for state-centre treatment.
🇲🇪 Montenegro Other law ✓
Montenegro publishes a drug law covering possession and hemp
Montenegro published its drug law after President Filip Vujanović promulgated it on 3 June. The law brought prevention, treatment and controlled production and trade into one statute; by its 2013 consolidation, personal possession carried a €100–€2,000 misdemeanour fine and food or industrial hemp required a permit and a buyer for the whole harvest. Detailed hemp-permit rules followed in 2014.
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🇹🇯 Tajikistan Debate ✓ Article
Tajikistan’s drug-policy reviewers urge treatment and stronger patient privacy
A review involving health officials, the Drug Control Agency and civil society urged changes to policing, treatment and patient confidentiality. It criticised reliance on arrest and conviction targets, discrimination against people who use drugs and weaknesses in privacy protections. The reviewers recommended shifting enforcement toward dealers and larger supply networks while supporting harm reduction and voluntary treatment.
🇦🇫 Afghanistan Easing ✓ Article
Afghanistan lowers prison terms for hashish trafficking
Afghanistan's replacement drug law gave hashish its own trafficking penalty scale: more than one and up to five kilograms carried over six months to one year in prison, compared with one to three years and a fine under the earlier law. Larger quantities added prison time up to a ten-year ceiling for the ordinary offence. A person using or holding up to fifty grams for personal consumption was exempt from prosecution and referred to treatment if a medical examiner certified drug dependence.
🇮🇩 Indonesia Easing ✓
Indonesia's Supreme Court issues rehabilitation guidance
A Supreme Court circular told judges when drug users could be placed in medical and social rehabilitation. Its indicators included no evidence of dealing and no more than 5 g of cannabis at arrest, but the guidance did not decriminalise possession or guarantee diversion.
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🇧🇮 Burundi Other law ✓ Article
Burundi lowers the minimum for drug use but toughens production penalties
Burundi lowered the minimum prison term for illicit drug use from three years to one, while keeping the five-year maximum and allowing a fine instead of prison. Illicit production, import, manufacture or export now carried ten to fifteen years and a fine, with doubled penalties for organised groups. Judges also had to add supervision for consumption offences, which could include treatment or training backed by further imprisonment if refused. The revision replaced the 1981 code, and its core drug penalties continued in 2017.
🇮🇩 Indonesia Easing ✓
Indonesia's Supreme Court issues initial guidance on rehabilitation for drug users
Supreme Court Circular 7/2009 addressed placing drug users in therapy and rehabilitation facilities. The court's archive dates it to 17 March 2009. A later Transnational Institute review describes conditions and procedures distinguishing users from dealers by quantities found at arrest, and records that a 2010 circular revised the guidance. This introduced a route within the criminal-law framework, not decriminalisation or an automatic entitlement to rehabilitation. The account relies on the official catalogue and the retrospective review; the original scanned circular has not been successfully read.
🇻🇳 Vietnam Other law ✓
Vietnam adds harm reduction and mandatory post-treatment supervision
Law 16/2008/QH12 revised the drug-control framework. New Article 34a recognised harm-reduction interventions through programmes and projects. Revised Article 33 also required one to two years of supervision after compulsory institutional treatment, either at home or in a dedicated institution for people assessed as having a high risk of relapse. Revised Article 27 set family and community treatment at six to twelve months and allowed compulsory community treatment by local decision. The amendment was adopted on 3 June 2008 and took effect on 1 January 2009. These provisions concerned dependent drug users generally; they created no lawful cannabis-use exemption.
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🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Other law ✓
Sri Lanka certifies a law on voluntary and compulsory drug treatment
Act 54 of 2007 provided for designated and licensed treatment centres, voluntary admission, and compulsory admission following medical assessment and a magistrate's order. It also allowed convicted drug-dependent people to be transferred for treatment, which a court could count towards a sentence. Certification on 13 November was an enactment milestone: section 1 left commencement to a later ministerial Gazette order. The act concerned drug dependence generally, not permission to use cannabis.
🇧🇭 Bahrain Death penalty ✓ Article
Bahrain keeps capital drug penalties and offers users a treatment route
Bahrain’s new drug law retained death or life imprisonment for trafficking and required death in specified aggravated cases, while personal possession and growing carried imprisonment and a fine up to 3,000 dinars. It allowed treatment instead of punishment for proven addiction and protected some people seeking treatment before being caught using or prosecuted. Taking effect on 17 August 2007, it replaced the 1973 decree and its later penalty amendments; unpaid provision for use had a separate offence carrying up to seven years.
🇩🇿 Algeria Other law ✓ Article
Algeria sets a medical route for drug users to avoid prosecution
The implementing decree required medical assessment and reports to support treatment or medical supervision for people who used illicit drugs. Doctors had to notify the prosecutor of progress or interruption, and a completion certificate supported a decision not to prosecute. Seized drugs and plants still had to be confiscated; the decree was signed on 30 July and published on 5 August.
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🇩🇿 Algeria Death penalty ✓ Article
Algeria repeals its drug-law death clause but keeps life sentences
Algeria’s replacement drug law repealed the 1985 drug provisions, including their capital clause, while setting life imprisonment for unlawful cannabis cultivation and certain supply offences. Illicit use or possession for personal use carried two months to two years in prison, a 5,000–50,000-dinar fine, or either penalty alone. Qualifying users who followed treatment or medical supervision could avoid prosecution.
🇹🇼 Taiwan Other law ✓
Taiwan revises compulsory treatment and repeat drug-use prosecution
The 2003 statutory revision took effect after a six-month delay. For use offences involving first- or second-category drugs, including cannabis in the second category, Article 20 allowed observation and detoxification for up to two months, followed where required by compulsory treatment lasting six to twelve months. Article 23 required release and non-prosecution after completion, but repeat use within five years of release went to prosecution. This revised an existing treatment system rather than legalising cannabis use.
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🇨🇫 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.
🇵🇹 Portugal Debate ✓
Portugal publishes a national framework for drug harm-reduction services
Decree-Law 183/2001 established a framework for outreach teams, contact and information points, shelters, needle exchange, low-threshold substitution and supervised-consumption programmes. Its supervised-use provisions targeted intravenous users and required separate authorisation, trained health support and evaluation. The framework complemented the separate decriminalisation reform and aimed to connect marginalised drug users with health care and treatment. Publication of the rules did not itself establish that the envisaged facilities had opened. The date is publication in the Official Gazette, following promulgation on 7 June 2001.
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🇨🇲 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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🇺🇦 Ukraine Easing ✓ Article
Ukraine removes penalties for drug use itself
A decree issued on 28 January 1991 removed drug use without a prescription from both the administrative offence and the repeat-offence crime introduced in 1987. It also narrowed compulsory treatment, set ordinary stays at six months to one year and ordered the release of people already confined for more than a year. People serving longer treatment orders were to have them shortened to one year, while courts could still extend confinement for specified misconduct up to a total of two years. Possession remained separately punishable, and parliament introduced a specific public-use crime in 1995.
1013+3 points
🇲🇴 Macau Easing ✓ Article
Macau gives personal possession a fine-only alternative to prison
Macau’s 1991 replacement drug law punished personal acquisition or possession with up to three months in prison or a 500–10,000 pataca fine, replacing the old six-month prison term accompanied by a fine. Possession for therapeutic purposes had a separate fine-only penalty, and people dependent on drugs could receive treatment-related measures. The law listed cannabis, resin and oil; its personal-use approach continued in the 2009 replacement before penalties rose in 2017.
911+2 points
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🇧🇴 Bolivia Other law ✓ Article
Bolivia defines personal possession as two days of consumption
Two medical experts were to assess how much counted as 48 hours of personal drug consumption under the implementing rules for the July drug law. Possession above that amount was presumed to be trafficking, exposing a cannabis user to ten to twenty-five years in prison plus a fine. People within the personal-use amount still faced compulsory treatment, with the quantity assessed individually.
🇧🇴 Bolivia Other law ✓ Article
Bolivia orders treatment for small cannabis possession
Dependent and occasional users found with a minimal amount of cannabis for immediate personal consumption were to be confined for treatment until considered rehabilitated. Two specialists assessed the quantity; possession above it fell under trafficking, carrying ten to twenty-five years in prison plus a fine. Compulsory treatment had appeared in the 1962 narcotics law, and December regulations defined the personal-use amount as 48 hours of consumption.
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🇧🇯 Benin Other law ✓
Benin promulgates narcotics penalties with a treatment route for drug users
Law 87-009 regulated offences involving substances and plants classified as poisonous or narcotic. Article 8 punished unlawful narcotic use with two months to one year in prison and a fine of 25,000–400,000 CFA francs, or either penalty alone. Article 9 provided non-prosecution for qualifying first offences when the user complied with prescribed treatment or medical supervision; repeat cases remained subject to prosecutorial discretion. Separate provisions punished supply and production. The date is presidential promulgation, not a verified first cannabis ban or the introduction of a legal market.
🇺🇦 Ukraine Tightening ✓ Article
Ukraine threatens repeat cannabis users with prison
A Soviet Ukrainian decree issued on 21 August 1987 set a fine, corrective labour or, exceptionally, up to fifteen days’ administrative arrest for small personal possession or drug use without a prescription. Repeating either offence within a year after an administrative penalty could bring up to two years in prison, corrective labour or a fine. Named prohibited hemp varieties carried criminal growing penalties directly, while other hemp growing brought a warning or fine before repetition could become a crime; voluntary surrender or seeking medical help could exempt people from specified offences. The decree followed the Soviet Union’s June crackdown and revised the drug offences introduced in Ukraine in 1974.
1110−1 point
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🇦🇹 Austria Easing ✓
Austria revises small-quantity diversion and adds treatment-based sentence deferral
The 1985 Narcotics Act amendment rewrote the offences and diversion rules. Under revised section 17, prosecutors had to provisionally shelve cases confined to acquiring or possessing a small quantity for personal use, for two years, subject to the statutory health-related conditions. New section 23a allowed qualifying prison sentences of up to two years to be deferred for necessary medical treatment, with later conditional remission considered after successful treatment. Possession remained criminal: revised section 16's basic offence carried up to six months or a fine. This revised an existing diversion framework.
🇩🇿 Algeria Death penalty ✓ Article
Algeria offers treatment without prosecution and narrows drug death penalties
People who used illicit drugs faced two months to one year in prison, a 500–5,000-dinar fine, or both under the new health law. Unlike the repealed 1975 ordinance’s broad capital clause, the new death clause applied to specified trafficking and facilitation offences affecting the Algerian people’s moral health. People who followed prescribed treatment could avoid prosecution, and courts could order treatment and withhold punishment.
15+4 points
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🇧🇭 Bahrain Tightening ✓
Bahrain sets a six-month prison minimum for personal drug possession
Bahrain replaced the fine-or-prison rule for personal drug possession with at least six months in prison and a fine up to 10,000 dinars. The same amendment made supply punishable by life imprisonment or a term of at least five years, plus a fine; hospital treatment could count toward an addicted person’s sentence. It took effect on publication in November 1983, before the introduction of capital drug penalties the following July.
🇲🇱 Mali Tightening ✓ Article
Mali sets long forced-labour sentences for drug use and production
Mali punished illicit drug use with five to ten years of forced labour, a fine, or both, while illegal narcotic production, manufacture, import or export could bring life at forced labour and a fine. Courts could order medically assessed detoxification for defendants accused of attempted illicit use and withhold punishment; refusing treatment exposed them to the drug-use penalties. President Moussa Traoré signed the law, which also allowed special therapeutic or research authorisations and searches of drug production or storage premises at any hour.
145−9 points
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🇮🇹 Italy Other law ✓
Italy's Constitutional Court sends back a forced-treatment case after the 1975 reform
A Naples magistrate had asked whether the 1954 drug law was unconstitutional because people facing forced confinement in a clinic had no right to a defence. Before the court ruled, the 1975 reform repealed that law and brought in new treatment rules with safeguards for the people concerned. The court therefore sent the case back to Naples to reconsider whether the question still mattered, without answering it (Order 224/1976).
🇱🇷 Liberia Other law ✓ Article
Liberia punishes cannabis possession and orders plants destroyed
Liberia’s public-health law treated unauthorised cannabis possession as a second-degree misdemeanor, while growing it or allowing it on one’s property was a first-degree felony. Landholders had to destroy wild cannabis or report it to police or health officers. A separate court-ordered treatment system could keep a dependent person under inpatient care and supervision for up to seven years. These criminal rules were replaced in 2014.
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🇮🇹 Italy Easing ✓ Article
Italy stops punishing users for a "modest quantity" of drugs
Law 685 made buying or holding a "modest quantity" of drugs for personal use no longer a crime, though the drugs were still seized. It set no gram limit, so courts decided case by case what counted as modest. The law also brought in treatment and rehabilitation for drug users. Growing and sharing cannabis were still covered by other offences. It took effect on 30 December 1975, replacing the 1954 law that had punished possession like dealing.
1121+10 points
🇩🇿 Algeria Death penalty ✓ Article
Algeria allows capital punishment under a sweeping drug ordinance
Illicit drug use carried two months to one year in prison, a 500–5,000-dinar fine, or either penalty alone. A broad clause allowed capital punishment for offences under the ordinance when their character threatened the Algerian people’s moral health. Courts could order detoxification, and the law applied to acts after 1 October 1974 that had not received final judgment by publication.
51−4 points
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🇵🇷 Puerto Rico Easing ✓ Article
Puerto Rico cuts personal-possession penalties and offers probation
People possessing drugs for their own use faced one to three years in prison under the original new law, replacing the five-to-twenty-year cannabis penalty. Eligible first offenders could receive probation without a finding of guilt and later have the case dismissed once in their lifetime. The possession rule took effect on 23 June 1971 and benefited people convicted afterwards even when charged under earlier legislation; most other provisions followed after 180 days.
🇩🇯 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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🏳️ 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.