Aden keeps cannabis growing illegal under a replacement drug law

Aden’s replacement drug law made cannabis growing an offence throughout the colony. Published in January 1961, it placed the plant and its resin within a framework of import licences, criminal penalties and powers to regulate possession and distribution.^[1]

Cannabis was already restricted

The colony’s earlier regime rested on a 1942 drug ordinance. Its government report for 1952 described cannabis imports and sales as prohibited, while other drugs could pass through licensed medical channels.^[2]

The report also recorded enforcement: eight cannabis cases involved 1.75 kilograms of hemp, and the accused were fined. Officials confiscated and destroyed the drug. The report attributed its account of Ethiopia as the main source of smuggled hemp to the defendants themselves.^[2]

A 1947 notice had expanded the controlled-drug list to include preparations made from cannabis extract or tincture when they were not solely for external use. The replacement law carried that distinction into its schedule.^[1][3]

Growing became an express offence in the replacement text

The law said that anyone growing the cannabis plant anywhere within the colony committed an offence. Its definition covered the plant Cannabis sativa; the separate definition of the drug referred to dried flowering or fruiting tops of the female plant with the resin still present.^[1]

Cannabis resin and preparations based on it were also covered. Importing or exporting these drugs required a licence, and bringing them through an unauthorised landing place or frontier crossing was an offence.^[1]

Penalties depended on the court

The general penalty provision allowed the Supreme Court to impose up to ten years in prison, a fine up to twenty thousand shillings, or both. A magistrate’s court could impose up to twelve months, five thousand shillings, or both.^[1]

Conviction also brought forfeiture of the articles involved. The court could order them destroyed or otherwise disposed of. These were the ordinance’s general sentencing limits, applying to its offences.^[1]

Earlier rules could continue

The ordinance gave the governor power to regulate production, possession, sale and distribution, including restricting them to authorised people. It repealed the previous drug ordinance while preserving compatible existing rules, orders, licences and permissions.^[1]

Later, Yemen’s 1993 law expressly listed male and female cannabis among prohibited crops. It set five years for personal-use growing and death or twenty-five years for growing for trade. Those distinctions form part of the law described in the Yemen profile.^[4]