Togo sets a shorter personal-use penalty for cannabis

Togo’s drug law of 18 March 1998 gave people with a small amount of cannabis for themselves a shorter sentencing range than people supplying drugs. Cannabis derivatives other than oil carried one to six months in prison, a fine, or both. Growing cannabis remained prohibited throughout the country.

Cannabis had its own personal-use penalty

The rule covered someone who illegally held, bought or cultivated a quantity small enough to be considered for personal consumption. It gave no numerical weight or plant limit, leaving the distinction between personal use and supply to be assessed in the case.

For cannabis derivatives other than oil, the fine ranged from 25,000 to 500,000 CFA francs. The court could impose imprisonment and a fine together, or either one alone. This choice mattered for someone convicted with a small personal supply: a prison sentence was one of the available punishments.

Oil faced a different range

Cannabis oil appeared expressly in the higher-risk personal-use rule. Its prison range was two months to one year, with a fine of 25,000–1.25 million CFA francs, again allowing either penalty alone.

The law also listed conditions for waiving a sentence or its execution, referring to a person below the age of criminal majority, previous offending and a solemn promise in court to stop. These decisions belonged to the court.

Use of controlled drugs outside a medical prescription was prohibited. Drugs found in that setting could be seized and judicially confiscated even when the person was not prosecuted.

Growing and supplying remained offences

The law required owners, operators and occupiers of land to destroy cannabis plants growing there. Its nationwide cultivation ban sat alongside the shorter penalty for small amounts grown for personal consumption.

General high-risk drug cultivation and supply carried ten to twenty years and a fine of 250,000–125 million CFA francs, or either penalty alone. Giving or offering a high-risk drug to someone for their own consumption had a separate three-to-five-year range, also with a possible fine-only sentence.

The later code raised the personal-use range

Togo had joined the 1988 UN anti-trafficking convention in 1990. The 1998 law laid out national controls over cultivation, medicines, possession and supply within that treaty setting.

The 2015 criminal-code rewrite replaced the different small-quantity ranges with one to three years, a fine of 500,000–3 million CFA francs, or either punishment alone. That later change is central to the rules now described in the Togo profile.^[1][2]