Youth
Young people, students, minors and age limits.
78 entries, 1909–2026 · 8 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Youth 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.
🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago Tightening ✓ Article
Trinidad and Tobago's Senate votes to raise the cannabis age to 25
The Senate passed the Miscellaneous Provisions (Alcohol, Cannabis, Dangerous Drugs, Gambling and Tobacco) Bill by 15 votes to 12, with three abstentions and only government senators in favour. It raises the age for cannabis use and gambling to 25 and for alcohol and tobacco to 21. It still needed the President's assent.
20255 entries2 score changes
🇦🇼 Aruba Easing ✓ Article
Aruba raises the cannabis dismissal band from 5 to 30 grams
Aruba’s revised prosecution instruction raised the soft-drug surrender-and-dismissal band from 0–5 g to 0–30 g. Its possession/courier table replaced the earlier short prison request with fine requests of AWG 250 for 30–100 g, AWG 750 for 100–300 g and AWG 1,500 for 300–500 g. Exceptions remained for minors, repeat offending, another offence and specified settings, including carnival parades, workplaces and government buildings.
2124+3 points
🇩🇿 Algeria Death penalty ✓ Article
Algeria restores drug death penalties and expands maximum sentences
The amendment restored death sentences for specified aggravated supply offences, including transnational organised crime and use or threatened use of a firearm. It also required the maximum legal penalty when examinations established that an offender was under the influence of drugs when committing an offence. Pupils screened during periodic medical examinations, with consent from their legal representatives or the relevant juvenile judge, could be directed to treatment without prosecution based on those results.
86−2 points
20222 entries0 score changes
🇿🇦 South Africa Easing ✓
South Africa's top court bars criminal diversion of children
The Constitutional Court confirmed that criminalising a child's use or possession of cannabis is invalid. It suspended that finding for 24 months and, during the suspension, ordered that no child may be arrested, prosecuted or diverted for that contravention. A child who is apprehended may be referred to civil processes. Use or possession by a child is still not permitted. Dealing, and an adult who uses a child to possess or use cannabis, are outside the order. The 2024 Act that would replace this criminal rule has not come into force.
🇲🇭 Marshall Islands Culture & science ✓
Marshall Islands survey finds recent cannabis use among high school students
A 2022 survey found that 13.8% of participating high school students reported using marijuana in the previous thirty days. Researchers surveyed pupils in grades 9–12 at public and private high schools between March and May, with substance-use answers completed confidentially and submitted anonymously.
20213 entries1 score change
🇧🇴 Bolivia Medical ✓ Article
Bolivia authorises a child’s compassionate cannabis import
Bolivia’s ombudsman reported that the medicines agency had authorised cannabis imports exclusively for the compassionate treatment of one child, under a doctor’s supervision. The family had applied in September 2020, but changing requirements complicated the process until the ombudsman helped clarify them. The approval used the medicines-law procedure, following the 2017 law’s controls on medicinal substances.
🇧🇧 Barbados Easing ✓ Article
Barbados decriminalises 14 g
Possession of up to 14 g became a fixed-penalty matter: a $200 penalty payable within 30 days, which discharges any liability to conviction. Not paying is an offence with a $1,000 fine. People under 18 must also attend the National Council on Substance Abuse, and earlier convictions for up to 14 g are deemed expunged.
1222+10 points
🇦🇼 Aruba Other law ✓ Article
Aruba tells prosecutors to drop many cannabis cases up to 5 grams
Aruba’s prosecution guideline set surrender and dismissal for the 0–5 g soft-drug band, subject to exceptions including minors, repeat offending, another offence and specified settings. For 5–250 g the possession/courier table set a sentencing request of up to one month, potentially partly suspended, with three years’ probation. The guideline drew on policies elsewhere in the Dutch Caribbean; a revised instruction later raised the dismissal band to 30 g.
20193 entries1 score change
🇷🇸 Serbia Tightening ✓ Article
Serbia raises cannabis-growing sentences and punishes large drug stocks
Unauthorised cannabis cultivation now carried two to eight years in prison, up from six months to five years. The amendment also created a three-to-ten-year offence for possessing a large quantity, while keeping a fine or up to three years for a small personal amount. It added aggravated supply cases involving minors and specified locations or abuse of professional roles; the large-quantity offence later upheld a three-year sentence for personal cannabis possession.
119−2 points
🇬🇲 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.
🇻🇺 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.
20183 entries0 score changes
🇸🇽 Sint Maarten Other law ✓ Article
Sint Maarten tells prosecutors to drop many cannabis cases up to 25 g
Sint Maarten’s prosecutors applied a cannabis policy providing for confiscation and dismissal, potentially conditional, in the 0–25 g band. Exceptions include minors, repeat offending, indications of dealing, other offences and places such as carnival parades, workplaces or government buildings. The next 25–50 g band carries a proposed fine of up to NAf 500, while cultivation cases require an individual sentencing assessment. The guideline replaced the 2015 version.
🇬🇪 Georgia Tightening ✓
Georgia limits the cannabis use its court had freed
Four months after the Constitutional Court ruled out any punishment for consuming cannabis, parliament restricted it to people aged 21 or over, at home. Use in public, at work, in schools or in front of children brings a fine of 800 to 1,500 lari, and doctors, teachers and public servants can be barred from their professions. A plan in the same package to license cannabis production for export was withdrawn after opposition from the Orthodox Church.
🇧🇾 Belarus Debate ✓ Article
Belarus’s drug prisoners’ mothers go on hunger strike for shorter sentences
Twenty-four women joined hunger strikes seeking shorter drug sentences, case reviews and a meeting with President Lukashenko. Most ended their protest on 11 May after the government forwarded proposed amendments to parliament. The campaign continued, and lower minimum sentences took effect in October 2019.
20172 entries0 score changes
🇧🇹 Bhutan Easing ✓
Bhutan softens its drug law for small amounts of cannabis
The National Assembly adopted an amendment to the 2015 narcotics act by 40 votes. A person holding up to twice the scheduled quantity of cannabis, who tests positive and has no trafficking record, is treated as a case of substance abuse and sent for treatment, not charged with trafficking. Minors get counselling first and compulsory treatment on later offences.
🇵🇷 Puerto Rico Medical ✓ Article
Puerto Rico gives its medical cannabis programme a statutory base
Patients using cannabis within the regulated programme gained statutory protection from Puerto Rico criminal and municipal sanctions. The law created a regulatory board, required medical recommendations and patient identification, prohibited smoking and public consumption, and kept sales within authorised dispensaries. It followed the 2015 executive order and dispensary openings in 2016, with transitional licences for businesses adjusting to the new rules.
20162 entries0 score changes
🇬🇱 Greenland Debate ✓
Greenland proposes a joint plan to curb hash supply and dependence
Greenland’s health department proposed a national hash action plan combining action against supply with prevention and treatment. A later independent review says the full plan remained a proposal, while some activities proceeded through the public-health programme. In 2026 the government again emphasised prevention and customs controls.
🇧🇷 Brazil Medical ✓ Article
Brazilian families win the right to grow cannabis for their children
Margarete Brito and Marcos Langenbach, whose daughter Sofia has a severe genetic epilepsy, obtained what Ribeiro calls the first habeas corpus in Brazil to grow marijuana, using high-CBD seedlings donated by growers. The same year the family of Clárian Carvalho, a girl with Dravet syndrome, won a similar order with the help of the Rede Reforma lawyers' collective. Both families went on to found patients' associations, Apepi and Cultive.
20152 entries1 score change
🇵🇱 Poland Medical ✓
A Warsaw children's hospital dismisses the doctor treating epilepsy with cannabis
Neurologist Marek Bachański had been treating children with drug-resistant epilepsy with cannabis preparations at the Children's Memorial Health Institute. In July 2015 the hospital suspended the therapy, saying it had not been approved by its bioethics committee, and on 7 August it notified prosecutors; the health ministry called the treatment illegal. He was dismissed in late October. Parents had protested outside the hospital on 7 October demanding his return, and the case became the centre of the campaign for a medical cannabis law.
🇧🇾 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
20143 entries1 score change
🇫🇴 Faroe Islands Tightening ✓ Article
The Faroe Islands toughen sentencing for drug sales at youth events
Courts in the Faroe Islands must treat drug sales, or free transfers intended for later sale, at clubs, concerts, festivals and other youth events as a significant aggravating factor. The update also requires sentences and fines to reflect the harmfulness of the drug and allows controls over groups of substances. Faroese police and customs had sought an update because newer drugs were falling outside the islands’ rules. The order took effect on 20 December 2014.
🇺🇾 Uruguay Other law ✓
Uruguay starts registering cannabis clubs
The regulator announced it would register membership clubs of 15 to 45 members growing up to 99 plants. A club must first be a civil association, keep all activity on its own premises and stand at least 150 metres from schools and rehabilitation centres.
🇬🇲 Gambia Easing ✓ Article
Gambia gives first-time cannabis offenders a lower penalty scale
First-time cannabis possession gained a separate penalty scale: 0.1–150 grams carried a 50,000–100,000-dalasi fine, one to two years in prison, or both. The prison ranges rose to two to five years for 151–500 grams and three to ten years from 501 grams, each with a fine alternative. Interior Minister Ousman Sonko argued that lighter penalties would reduce the imprisonment of young people unable to pay large fines and ease pressure on prisons.
79+2 points
20123 entries0 score changes
🇬🇮 Gibraltar Other law ✓ Article
Gibraltar drops a supply presumption and raises the possession prison limit
Gibraltar’s replacement criminal code omitted the old presumption that 20 grams of cannabis or resin was held for supply, while keeping possession and supply as separate crimes. The lower-court prison maximum for Class B possession rose from six months to twelve months, with a fine available; the maximum on indictment remained five years. The code also required courts to treat adult drug supply near schools at relevant times, or using couriers under eighteen, as more serious.
🇷🇼 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.
🇹🇻 Tuvalu Other law ✓
Tuvalu reports youth cannabis use and calls for updated drug laws
Tuvalu’s report to the UN child-rights committee cited a 2006 Funafuti survey in which 5% of respondents aged 15–24 reported having used marijuana. It also reported marijuana imports from Fiji and concerns about border controls, while describing youth programmes addressing alcohol and drugs. Updating drug laws and coordinating prevention work were among its stated priorities.
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🇹🇩 Chad Other law ✓ Article
Chad's pharmacy law punishes group drug use and doubles grower penalties
Chad's replacement pharmacy law set one to six years in prison, a fine, or both for breaches of narcotics rules, possessing narcotics without a legitimate reason, group use and helping someone else use drugs, including free help. It doubled the penalties for illicit cultivation or manufacture and for supplying or helping a minor use drugs. The law adopted the drug lists in Chad's ratified international conventions and allowed judges to order people prosecuted for the listed drug offences into compulsory treatment.
🇩🇯 Djibouti Other law ✓
Djibouti puts the prime minister in charge of a national drug committee
A national committee chaired by the prime minister was tasked with coordinating drug policy, prevention, public information and monitoring supply and demand. President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh created it after recommendations from a 1999 youth conference. Health, education, justice, police and gendarmerie representatives were brought together, with a secretariat charged with collecting and publishing drug-policy information.
19981 entry0 score changes
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🇨🇭 Switzerland Debate ✓
Swiss voters reject the initiative "Youth without drugs"
A committee of right-of-centre politicians and figures from sport and entertainment had collected 140,949 signatures. Government and parliament opposed the initiative, and only 29.3% of voters and not a single canton said yes, on a turnout of 40.8%. The Swiss vote archive sums the result up as a clear no to pure repression and support for a broad drug policy.
🇲🇹 Malta Enforcement ✓
A Swiss teenager is jailed in Malta for a little hashish
Gisela Feuz, a 16-year-old Swiss student, was convicted of importing hashish with intent to traffic after admitting she carried a small amount, by her account to share with her boyfriend, and received a mandatory six months in prison. Accounts give the amount as under 8 g or under 1 g. The case was long cited in Malta as an example of the harshness of its drug laws.
19961 entry0 score changes
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🇺🇸 United States Other law ✓ Article
Supreme Court upholds random drug tests for student athletes
In Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, the Supreme Court upheld an Oregon public school's suspicionless urine-testing policy for student athletes. The panel tested for marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines; confirmed positives could lead to assistance or exclusion from athletics. The Court cautioned against extending its reasoning to other contexts. This records school-testing policy without changing adult cannabis scores.
🇩🇯 Djibouti Other law ✓ Article
Djibouti's new penal code sets separate penalties for use and supply
Illicit drug use carried up to one year and a fine, possession up to ten years, and production or import up to twenty under the penal code that took effect on 16 April. Courts could impose just one of the listed penalties under its general sentencing rules. The code followed French drug legislation used before independence and Djibouti's approval of accession to UN drug conventions in 1992.
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🏳️ Somaliland Tightening ✓ Article
Somalia raises northern drug-supply penalties to ten years in prison
A Somali decree covering the north set ten years in prison and a 50,000-shilling fine for unlawful drug manufacture, production, import, dealing or supplying another person. Allowing a place to be used for consumption carried five years and a fine; entering it to consume carried three years and a fine. The decree transferred drug cases to the National Security Court and its regional branches, and parliament converted it into statute in June.
🇸🇴 Somalia Tightening ✓
Somalia raises penalties for supplying drugs and hosting consumption
Somalia set ten years in prison and a 50,000-shilling fine for unlawful drug manufacture, production, import, dealing or supplying another person. Hosting a place for drug consumption carried five years and a fine; entering it to consume carried three years and a fine. Drug cases went to the National Security Court and its regional branches, while earlier offences kept their earlier penalties.
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🏳️ Somaliland Other law ✓ Article
A new Somali penal code punishes drug supply in what is now Somaliland
A new penal code brought one-to-three-year prison terms for unauthorised drug trading, possession for sale and supplying or obtaining drugs for others to the north as well as the rest of the Somali Republic. Hosting a place for drug consumption carried six months to two years; entering it to consume carried up to six months. The code replaced the Indian Penal Code previously used in Somaliland, and later special drug laws imposed heavier penalties.
🇸🇴 Somalia Other law ✓
Somalia’s new penal code sets prison terms for drug supply and use venues
Somalia’s new penal code prescribed one to three years in prison for unauthorised narcotics trade, possession for sale and supplying or obtaining drugs for someone else. Allowing premises to be used for drug consumption carried six months to two years; entering such premises to consume carried up to six months. The code took effect in April 1964, and special drug laws followed in 1970 and 1984.
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🇺🇸 United States Culture & science ✓ Article
Anslinger presents marijuana as an assassin of youth
The American Magazine published Marijuana, Assassin of Youth, associated with narcotics commissioner Harry J. Anslinger. Its sensational accounts portrayed cannabis as a cause of violence and the destruction of young people; the article is evidence of propaganda, not confirmation of its allegations.
🇺🇸 United States Culture & science ✓
A film takes its title from Anslinger's article
Assassin of Youth, directed by Elmer Clifton for BCM Roadshow Productions, borrowed its title from Anslinger's magazine article of the same year. A reporter goes undercover among teenage marijuana smokers while a young heiress is framed by a rival for her inheritance. It is often called a copy of Reefer Madness and shares one of its actresses, Dorothy Short.