Tanzania moves to make holding cannabis seeds a crime

In many countries a cannabis seed is the one part of the plant the law leaves alone. Tanzania’s government has proposed to end that, whatever the seed is for.

The law today

Cannabis has been controlled in Tanzania since the colonial Dangerous Drugs Ordinance of 1935. The current statute, the Drugs Control and Enforcement Act, took effect in 2015: life imprisonment for trafficking, at least thirty years for growing a prohibited plant, and a fine or up to three years for small amounts of up to 50 g.

Calls for change have come to nothing. In 2019 an MP argued in parliament for medical cannabis.

The bill

On 1 September 2026 the attorney general, Hamza Johari, presented the Miscellaneous Laws (Amendments) Bill in Dodoma. He said its aim was “closing loopholes in the law”. For drugs it would:

• make it an offence to possess or distribute seeds of any prohibited plant, “regardless of the intended use of the seeds”;
• recognise narcotics in liquid as well as solid form, which the Act did not expressly do;
• create an offence of holding narcotics in breach of the conditions of a permit;
• let an officer authorised by the drug enforcement authority issue search warrants, when the commissioner general or the officer in charge of a police station is unavailable;
• require the country of origin of seized drugs to be recorded where it is known.

The report gives no penalties for the new offences and does not say when parliament will vote.

Why seeds matter

The 1961 Single Convention defines cannabis as the flowering tops and leaves seeds out, and Tanzania’s own Act follows it: cannabis is any part of the plant “excluding the seeds”. Planting or scattering seed already counts as cultivation, but seed on its own is not a narcotic. A rule that ignores intended use closes that gap completely.

Oman did something similar the same month, banning any cannabis seed that can germinate in its new drug law.

In the index

The bill is not law, and seeds are described on the index but not scored, so Tanzania’s score does not move. If the bill passes, the country’s note on seeds and clones will change from a gap in the law to an express ban.^[1]