From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article has a focus on the law and enforcement aspects of growing, transporting, selling and using cannabis as a drug. For other aspects of the plant see Cannabis.

World laws on cannabis possession (small amount). Data is from multiple sources detailed on the full source list. This map is a work in progress, please give corrections and additions here.

European laws on cannabis possession (small amount). Data is from multiple sources detailed on the full source list. This map is a work in progress, please give corrections and additions here.

Most if not all countries have laws regarding the cultivation, possession, supply or use of cannabis. Non-psychoactive cannabis products (e.g. fibre and seed) are legal in many countries, and these countries may license cultivation for these purposes. The herb is a controlled substance in most, though its use is condoned in some locales for medicinal purposes. In some countries, such as Portugal, cannabis drug material is legal for personal use, though restrictions do apply to its sale, distribution or consumption, and the legal limit is 25g. In many countries the consumption of cannabis is legal although it is illegal to possess, sell or distribute it or allow others to consume it on one's property. If the amount of cannabis a person possessed is considered as "minor", charges may be dropped. In the U.S.A (nationwide, in 2004) a person is arrested on "marijuana charges" every 42 seconds, on average [1]. Most other countries have very strict laws against the possession or consumption of cannabis.

Cannabis was criminalized across most of the world in the early parts of the 20th century, first as a response to a petition from Egypt and Turkey to the League of Nations resulted in the 1925 Geneva International Convention on Narcotics Control[2] and some years later by the drug policies of the United States federal administration, embodied in the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics, founded in 1930, and its successor, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, formed in 1973. Through these and other agencies, the US government has energetically lobbied both nationally and internationally first for the criminalization of cannabis and its use and then to oppose its legalization.

The DEA Position on Marijuana (file info) Printed version of the DEA's official statement concerning marijuana. In case of problems, see media help.

At a 1925 conference to amend the International Opium Convention, Egypt and other nations complained of abuse problems with hashish and proposed requiring Parties to prohibit non-medical, non-scientific use of the drug. India and others, citing traditional uses of the drug and its prevalence as a wild-growing plant, successfully watered down the provision to only ban export of cannabis to countries whose domestic laws prohibited its use[3].

Main article: Cannabis legalization in Canada

The cultivation and possession of cannabis is currently illegal in Canada, with exceptions only for medical usage. However, the use of cannabis by the general public is broadly tolerated, and a campaign to legalize cannabis is underway nation-wide. However, the long-standing trend of black-market indoor grow operations in both urban and rural locations has sparked an active campaign by federal, provincial and municipal level police forces to enforce the illegal status of marijuana cultivation.

Cannabis is still considered a SCHEDULE I drug in Ireland MISUSE OF DRUGS ACT, 1977, various movements have been founded to legalize the drug, including an attempt at starting a cannabis legalisation Party. Under Irish Law a schedule 1 drug, such as Cannabis, is a drug which is highly abusable with no medicinal value. Unlike English law Irish does not organise drugs in Classes A,B,C etc. Ireland - Five Classes. SCHEDULE I cannabis, LSD, mescaline, opium SCHEDULE II cocaine, heroin, methadone, morphine SCHEDULE III & IV other psychotropic substances SCHEDULE V specific preparations of drugs

See Wikinews:Mexico on the verge of decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs

On April 29, 2006, the Congress of Mexico passed a bill decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs intended for recreational use (up to 5g for marijuana). The new bill was hoped to relieve cartel-related crime as well as reduce drug-related arrests. A possibly unintended consequence would have been increased tourism. The move caused many in the US government to question Mexico's commitment to the "War on Drugs." However, President Fox sent the legislation back, asking that the decriminalization be removed. Pressure from the United States government is suspected in playing a large part. [4] In the early summer of 2006 Fox and the Mexican congress came to an agreement and illegalized possession of small amounts (and also measured amounts of other drugs)

Main article: Drug policy of the Netherlands

Cannabis is legal to possess and purchase in small amount for people age eighteen and over, but the cultivation and wholesale of cannabis is illegal. A recent court decision allowed a medical cannabis user to avoid legal persecution for possession of a small number of cannabis plants; however, the state is appealing the decision.^[1]

Personal consumption and home cultivation of cannabis have been decriminalized, but buying or selling remains a criminal offense.

The Swiss Hemp Initiative is an undertaking by "For the Protection of youth against drug criminality" committee. The committee introduced a ballot initiative on July 20, 2004 for an eventual referendum in 2006 or later on the legalization of cannabis. However, cannabis has been decriminalized, and an estimated 250 shops openly sell the drug throughout Switzerland.

Main article: Cannabis reclassification in the United Kingdom

Cultivation and use of cannabis was generally outlawed in 1928. In 2001 the UK government announced that possession of small quantities of cannabis would no longer generally be an arrestable offense, although confiscation and a warning do apply. An arrest is still possible for distribution or cultivation.

Although illegal now, the United States has had a long history of producing and using cannabis.

At one time in the History of the United States, you could have your land taxed, cited, and eventually confiscated by federal laws that demanded that all farmers use Cannabis as a rotation crop[5]. One of these law's spoils went to the US Navy, and then the remainder to the other armed forces for the creation of sails, rope and other "canvas" based uses. Hemp fabric was combined with cotton and paper to create the unique stock used for US currency.

Until 1937, consumption and sale of cannabis was legal in most U.S. states. In some areas it could be openly purchased in bulk from grocers or in cigarette form at newsstands, though an increasing number of states had begun to outlaw it. In that year, federal law made possession or transfer of cannabis without the purchase of a by-then-incriminating tax stamp illegal throughout the United States by passing the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. This was contrary to the advice of the American Medical Association at the time.^[2] Legal opinions of the time held that the federal government could not outlaw it entirely. The tax was $100 per pound of hemp, even for clothes or rope. The expense, extremely high for the time, was such that people stopped openly buying and making it. The decision of the United States Congress was based in part on testimony derived from articles in newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst, who had significant financial interests in the timber industry, which manufactured his newsprint.^[3]

In the United States, the use of cannabis and other drugs came under increasing scrutiny after the formation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, headed by a crusading prohibitionist named Harry J. Anslinger. As part of the government's broader push to outlaw all drugs including alcohol, the FBN encouraged efforts to "educate" the public about drugs and this produced a number of highly sensationalised propaganda films which sought to demonise cannabis (or at least to capitalise on fears about it).

The most famous of these films is Reefer Madness (1936). It was originally produced as an educational film by a church group and released under the title Tell Your Children. It might have been forgotten, but it was obtained and subjected to a radical re-edit by the notorious American 'exploitation' film-maker Dwain Esper, who intercut the existing footage with highly sensational inserts. The resulting hybrid depicted cannabis smoking as the cause of every form of sin, depravity and immorality, up to and including murder. Whether these films were effective at the time is debatable, and Reefer Madness and similar works largely disappeared from view after their initial screenings. It was not until 1971 that the pro-cannabis lobby group NORML, realising the unintended parodic quality of the work, began screening a restored print at pro-pot festivals. It became a major cult hit when distributed on American college campuses, and this is reported to have been a major early success for the New Line Cinema organization.

In the United States, the significant legislation was the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, a federal culmination of many separate state laws that had been enacted in the previous years. Some claim that the U.S. laws may have been in response to lobbying by makers of synthetic fibers that competed with hemp. While hemp was not their main competitor, it was a much easier target than cotton or wool, for example. Critics of the American prohibition have also pointed to the possibility that there was a racial underpinning to the criminalisation of marijuana in America, since it was known to be a popular and widely-used recreational drug in the African-American and Latino communities. Indeed, Harry J. Anslinger has been quoted numerous times on such subjects, implying that "musicians, not good ones, but the jazz type" smoked marijuana, or that marijuana would make white women want to have sex with black men. Nevertheless, the prohibition was strenuously resisted in some quarters, with New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia becoming one of the new law's most prominent and outspoken critics. The LaGuardia Commission, in fact, was the first in-depth study of marijuana in 1944, and it contradicted the earlier findings of addiction, madness, and overt sexuality.

The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs finally did prohibit all non-medical, non-scientific cannabis use. However, tincture of cannabis remained available in the UK as a prescription only drug (POM) until it was banned in 1971 under the then new Misuse of Drugs Act. The international restrictions on recreational use of cannabis were further strengthened by the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

There have been over eight million cannabis arrests in the United States since 1993, including 786,545 arrests in 2005. Cannabis users have been arrested at the rate of 1 every 40 seconds. About 88% of all marijuana arrests are for possession - not manufacture or distribution. (FBI Uniform Crimes Report) While some countries do not enforce or allow a small amount of personal use marijuana, this does not solve the problem of how a user will obtain the "legal amount" of marijuana, since buying or growing marijuana is still illegal. The US Office of National Drug Control Policy points out in Who's Really in Prison for Marijuana? that these convictions are in correlation with other crimes, including cultivation, and crimes not specifically dealing with marijuana.

Laws usually govern distribution, cultivation, and possession for personal use. Enforcement of the law varies from country to country. Large-scale marijuana growing operations are frequently targeted by police in raids to attack the supply side and discourage the spread and marketing of the drug, though the great majority of those in prison for cannabis are either there for simple possession or small scale dealing.

See also: Legality of cannabis in the United States

See also: Cannabis rescheduling in the United States

See also: Decriminalization of cannabis in the United States

United States cannabis laws. Blue represents states with medical cannabis laws; Orange represents states with decriminalization laws; purple represents states with both.

After 1969, a time characterized by widespread use of cannabis as a recreational drug, a wave of legislation in America sought to reduce the penalties for the simple possession of marijuana, making it punishable by confiscation and/or a fine rather than imprisonment. Decriminalization is a drug supply-side control strategy that discourages users, but largely removes them from the criminal justice system, while imposing stiff penalties on those who traffic and sell the drug on the black market. Some of the first examples of this adjustment in drug policy were found in Alabama, when state judges decided to no longer impose five year mandatory minimum sentences for small possession (one marijuana cigarette); Missouri, when their legislature reformed statutes that made second possession offences no longer punishable by life in prison; and in Georgia, when that state revised second sale offences to minors no longer punishable by death.

In 1972 President Richard Nixon commissioned the most comprehensive study to date from the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. The Commission found that the constitutionality of marijuana prohibition was suspect, and that the executive and legislative branches had a responsibility to obey the Constitution, even in the absence of a court ruling to do so. The Richard Nixon administration did not implement the study's recommendations. However, the report has frequently been cited by individuals supporting cannabis rescheduling in the United States. (View Report)

Soon after these developments, an official decriminalization movement was started in 1973 with Oregon prompting other states, like Colorado, Alaska, Ohio, and California, to follow suit in 1975. By 1978, Mississippi, North Carolina, New York, and Nebraska also had some form of marijuana decriminalization. In 2001, Nevada reduced marijuana possession from a felony offence to a misdemeanor. [6]

Regardless of these states' rights, decriminalization was never adopted as a national affair, principally because U.S. Congress disagrees with passing a version of legislation on the federal level. However, several petitions for cannabis rescheduling in the United States have been filed to remove marijuana from the "Schedule I" category of tightly-restricted drugs that have no medical use. The Controlled Substance Act allows the executive branch to decriminalize medical and recreational use of marijuana without any action by Congress; however, such an initiative would depend on the findings of the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services on certain scientific and medical issues specified by the Act. [7]

Issues regarding the unalienable Right to Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness expressed in the Declaration of Independence have at times been raised in the debate, arguing that those imprisoned for cannabis use are de facto political prisoners .[8]

Several countries have either carried out or legislated capital punishment for cannabis use or trafficking.

Main article: Hemp

Hemp is the common name for cannabis and the name most used (in English) when this annual herb is grown for non-drug purposes. These include the industrial purposes for which cultivation licences may be issued in the European Union (EU). When grown for industrial purposes hemp is called, often, industrial hemp, and a common product is fibre for use in a variety of different ways. Fuel is often a by-product of hemp cultivation.

Hemp may be grown also for food (the seed) but in the UK at least (and probably in other EU countries) cultivation licences are not available for this purpose. Within Defra (the UK's Department for the Environment, Food and the Rural Affairs) hemp is treated as purely a non-food crop, despite the fact that seed can and does appear on the UK market as a perfectly legal food product.

In the UK, at least, the seed and fibre have been always perfectly legal products. Cultivation for non drug purposes was however completely prohibited from 1928 until circa 1998, when Home Office industrial-purpose licences became available under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

If industrial strains of the herb are intended for legal use within the EU then they are bred to be compliant with regulations which limit potential THC content to 0.3%. (THC content is a measure of the herb's drug potential and can reach 20% or more in drug strains). In Canada the THC limit is 1%.

Millennia of selective breeding have resulted in varieties that look quite different. Also, breeding since circa 1930 has focused quite specifically on producing strains which would perform very poorly as sources of drug material.

Hemp grown for fibre is planted closely, resulting in tall, slender plants with long fibers. Ideally, according to Defra in 2004, the herb should be harvested before it flowers. This early cropping is because fibre quality begins to decline as flowering starts and, incidentally, this cropping also pre-empts the herb’s maturity as potentially a source of drug material. UK licence conditions actually oblige farmers, however, to allow some flowering so that flower material can be tested for its drug potential.

Further information: Spiritual use of cannabis

Cannabis has an ancient history of ritual usage as a trance inducing drug and is found in pharmacological cults around the world. Hemp seeds discovered by archaeologists at Pazyryk suggest early ceremonial practices by the Scythians occurred during the 5th to 2nd century BC, confirming previous historical reports by Herodotus. In India, it has been engaged by itinerant sadhus for centuries, and in modern times the Rastafari movement has embraced it. Some historians and etymologists have claimed that cannabis was engaged as a religious sacrament by ancient Jews (Rastafari also hold to this), and Muslims of the Sufi order.

• Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party
• Cannabis reform at the international level
• Drug policy of the Netherlands
• School district drug policies
• Ganja Bridge
• Health issues and the effects of cannabis
• Illegal drug trade
• Jack Herer
• The Spliff Committee
• Legalise Cannabis Alliance
• Promena
• Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
• War on Drugs
• National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
• Marijuana Policy Project
• Howard Marks
• New Mexico approves medical use of marijuana, Breaking Legal News, April 2, 2007

• The cannabis problem: A note on the problem and the history of international action, Bulletin on Narcotics, 1962.
• The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, Marihuana - A Signal of Misunderstanding. 1972

(note that the following sites may express opinions for or against cannabis, and you are urged to visit more than one of the following for balance)

• History of the marijuana laws
• EMCDDA ELDD European Legal Map on Possession of cannabis for personal use
• UNODC Makes the Case for Ending Cannabis Prohibition, Inadvertently
• Marijuana Policy Project Information from America's largest marijuana policy organization.
• Cannabis News Informing the public about cannabis.
• Weight of Marijuana and Criminal and Tax Law .
• The History of Drug Criminalization in America.
• Unbiased Research Overview of Marijuana
• Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base
• World wide Medicinal Marihuana Information
• The Emperor Wears No Clothes Jack Herer's book, partially online.
• National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)
• Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy: Senate hearing on cannabis.
• Vote Hemp
• North American Industrial Hemp council
• A history of the Marihuana Tax Act
• Jack Herer and The Emperor Wears No Clothes
• Reefer Madness (The archetypal sensationalized anti-drug movie. This 1938 propaganda film dramatizes the "violent narcotic's ... soul destroying" effects on unwary teens, and their hedonistic exploits en route to the bottom)
• Science and the End of Marijuana Prohibition, John Gettman, May 13, 1999.
• What No One Wants to Know About Marijuana from The Natural Mind by: Dr. Andrew Weil
• Drug Policy Alliance
• Students for Sensible Drug Policy
• Transform Drug Policy Foundation
• Maple Leaf Web: Decriminalization of Marijuana in Canada
• Texans for Medical Marijuana
• The Swiss Hemp Initiative
• Europe Loosens its Pot Laws
• Citizens for Marijuana Regulation and Control
• Marijuana Legalization Organization