Cannabis laws in Europe FAQ: What are countries’ international obligations to control cannabis?

This page is part of the Cannabis laws in Europe FAQ which answers some of the more frequently asked questions raised in discussions about cannabis legislation.

Last revised: 21 April 2026

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Overview

This section describes why and how countries are obliged to control cannabis. Specifically, it outlines the obligations placed on the EU Member States to control cannabis under UN drug control treaties. It also provides an overview of the 2018 critical review on cannabis and related substances, conducted by the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence, which led to a rescheduling of cannabis in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in December 2020. The extent of current controls on cannabis and the corresponding room for manoeuvre open to countries that choose to vary their legislation within these international obligations are explored.

Why should countries control cannabis?

In order to answer this question it is important to recall the history of international drug law, which legally binds signatory countries to take certain measures to control drugs. Cannabis was first placed under international control by the Second Opium Convention of 1925, which banned the export of cannabis resin to countries that prohibited its use and required ‘adequate’ penalties for unauthorised possession of cannabis extract and tincture.

Currently, three UN conventions (see the box Overview of the UN drug conventions) describe the basic framework for controlling the production, trade and possession of around 300 psychoactive substances (most of which have a recognised medical use). These conventions have been signed by all EU Member States. The 1961 and 1971 conventions classify narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances in four schedules each, according to their perceived danger to health, risk of abuse and therapeutic value (see Table 1 and Table 2 for summaries of the schedules). This classification directly affects international trade in the listed substances by imposing the need for import and export controls. Substances should only be made available for scientific or medical purposes.

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WHO critical review and rescheduling of cannabis

In 2018, a critical review of cannabis and associated substances was conducted by the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD). Following this critical review, on 24 January 2019, the Director General of the WHO sent a letter to the Secretary General of the UN recommending, among other measures, that cannabis and associated substances be rescheduled in the international drug control framework. The recommendations by the WHO Director General and the findings of the ECDD are summarised below.

• Cannabis and cannabis resin to be removed from Schedule IV of the 1961 Convention (but kept in Schedule I) as it is not ‘particularly harmful’ (e.g. their use is not associated with a significant risk of death) and there is now evidence that cannabis preparations have therapeutic advantages.
• ‘Extracts and tinctures’ to be removed from Schedule I of the 1961 Convention as it is a complicated and imprecise term, covering preparations that have psychoactive properties as well as those that do not. As ‘preparation’ is a general term covering mixtures, solids or liquids containing a substance, the ECDD concluded that control of preparations of cannabis would result in greater certainty with regard to the control measure.
• Delta-9-THC/dronabinol to be deleted from the 1971 Convention Schedule II and added to Schedule 1 of the 1961 Convention (with cannabis and cannabis resin). This would be a similar approach to that taken for the scheduling of coca leaf/cocaine in the conventions.
• THC isomers to be deleted from Schedule I of the 1971 Convention and added to Schedule I of the 1961 Convention.
• Cannabidiol (CBD) preparations considered to be pure CBD and not more than 0.2 % delta-9-THC should not be scheduled under international control by adding a footnote to the entry for cannabis and cannabis resin in Schedule I of the 1961 Convention. The ECDD recommended that CBD is explicitly excluded as it does not satisfy the criteria for control under the conventions (e.g. there is no relevant risk to public health). States can still control CBD under their own national legislations if they wish to.
• Pharmaceutical preparations of cannabis and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Dronabinol) to be added to Schedule III of the 1961 Convention.

After two years of detailed discussions, on 2 December 2020 the members of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted to accept the first proposal, to remove cannabis and cannabis resin from Schedule IV of the 1961 Convention, but to reject the other five proposals. Therefore ‘extracts and tinctures’ remain under control of the 1961 Convention.

There is no explicit mention of CBD in the UN conventions, which has resulted internationally in different interpretations of whether plant-derived CBD should be considered an ‘extract of cannabis’ or a substance unlikely to be abused and therefore not requiring control. The approach used in Europe is discussed below.

What types of cannabis are controlled?

Since 1961, the UN drug control conventions have defined the cannabis plant as ‘any plant of the genus Cannabis’, to cover the species Cannabis indica Lam. and Cannabis sativa L. and any variety discovered in the future. The treaties prescribe what types of cannabis are controlled. The 1961 Convention defines ‘cannabis’ as the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant (excluding the seeds and leaves when not accompanied by the tops) from which the resin has not been extracted. The international treaties also require that the whole plant is controlled under national drug laws, and the 1961 Convention explicitly includes the leaves in such control, to prevent their misuse and trafficking (Article 28.3), but excludes its application to the cultivation of the plant exclusively for industrial purposes (fibre and seeds) and horticultural use (Article 28.2). The 1988 Convention also requested countries to take appropriate measures to prevent illicit cannabis cultivation and to eradicate cannabis plants on their territory (Article 14). However, the 1988 Convention also does not apply to the cultivation of cannabis plants exclusively for industrial purposes (fibre and seeds).

In many countries, permission to cultivate cannabis for industrial purposes has been operationalised through permitting plants which have a defined maximum THC content — typically for example between 0.2 % and 0.5 %. Moreover, national control is not obligatory for cannabis seeds under the UN conventions. However, some countries, including Cyprus and Portugal, have specified seeds as subject to their national drug control laws. In other countries, the supply of cannabis seeds for cultivation might be covered by a more general offence, such as ‘facilitating drug production’.

Are countries under any obligation to penalise cannabis users?

The UN conventions specify that unauthorised actions, such as possession, acquisition, distribution or offering for sale, must be punishable offences, and that serious cases should be punished by the deprivation of liberty. Nevertheless, the conventions do not explicitly specify that drug use itself should be a punishable offence, and thus they offer some room for manoeuvre in their interpretation.

The 1961 and 1971 conventions largely set out terms and mechanisms for regulating international trade, so the extent to which they required punishment in the case of possession for personal use only was debatable. The UN Convention of 1988 (United Nations, 1988, Article 3(2)) specifically requested that, ‘subject to constitutional principles and basic concepts’, countries’ legal systems establish ‘as a criminal offence […] the possession, purchase or cultivation of drugs […] for personal consumption’, though it also permitted ‘alternatives to conviction or punishment’.

Countries are not required to use the schedules as a basis for the distinctions they make between different drugs in terms of establishing penalties in national law. Countries can therefore apply the same or different penalties in relation to cannabis than they do for other substances.

Furthermore, the 1961 and 1971 conventions allow parties to adopt stricter national control measures than those provided by the conventions if they are considered desirable or necessary for the protection of public health and welfare. For example, while the conventions do not specify that drug use itself should be a punishable offence, each country can classify simply using a drug as a specific offence if it chooses to do so.

Since the conventions were first drafted, however, the emphasis in many countries has shifted away from penalising people who use drugs and this has been reflected to some extent in debates at international level. In November 2018, the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination published the ‘United Nations system common position supporting the implementation of the international drug control policy through effective inter-agency collaboration’ (CEB/2018/2). This common position among the UN system entities reiterated the ‘strong commitment of the United Nations system to supporting Member States in developing and implementing truly balanced, comprehensive, integrated, evidence-based, human rights-based, development-oriented and sustainable responses to the world drug problem’. Among other measures, the agencies agreed, in appropriate cases, to promote alternatives to conviction and punishment, including the decriminalisation of drug possession for personal use.

Do countries have flexibility in how they interpret the UN conventions?

There is considerable flexibility available to countries in their implementation of the UN drug conventions, and this has resulted in a wide variety of different responses, both internationally and within the European Union. The following three elements are relevant to the discussion concerning the conventions’ impact on national legislation and the flexibility that countries have in respect to interpreting these conventions:

• the safeguard clause referring to constitutional principles and basic concepts;
• the different national interpretations of what constitutes ‘a criminal offence’; and
• the explicit possibility of providing ‘alternatives to conviction or punishment’.

Drawing on these elements of the conventions, there have recently been several legal interpretations, at the national level, of countries’ constitutional principles relevant to cannabis control. In 2018, the highest courts of three non-European Union countries found that penalising the use of cannabis in private was in breach of these nations’ constitutional principles. Specifically, it was found to be in breach of the right to privacy in South Africa and the right to free development of the personality in Mexico and Georgia. Within the European Union, Spain does not formally penalise cultivation for personal use in places not visible to the public, or personal possession and use in private. In 2021, Malta changed its legislation to specify that personal possession of up to 7 grams of cannabis is not an offence, and other countries are now considering similar — see Is there a trend towards cannabis regulation in Europe — and if so, why? Cannabis laws FAQ.

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• Overview of the UN drug conventions

References