Ich habe eine detailliertere und aktuellere Karte der Legalität von Freizeit-Cannabis auf der ganzen Welt erstellt [OC]

I work in the political/legal sector in Canada, and from 2015-2018 I worked on Canada’s legalization of cannabis. A lot of world maps don’t really show the real nuances, so I wanted to make something a bit more accurate, current to April 2024. **This doesn’t include any information on the legality of medicinal cannabis, only recreational.**

Cannabis is only legal for commercial sale in three countries – Canada, Uruguay, and Thailand. Out of those three, Canada is by far the most commercially open – Uruguay limits sales to residents, and Thailand has THC limits on oils and edibles. There are other countries where it’s legal, but not for commercial sale (Germany just legalized like this on April 1).

Here’s the elephant in the room – decriminalization. I’ve had many people tell me cannabis is legal in the Netherlands, when it’s not – it’s still an illegal substance, but decriminalized. That means that under the law, possessing it doesn’t have an offence attached, or it doesn’t carry any criminal penalties, but cannabis itself is still an illegal substance.

Decriminalization is also different from places where cannabis is illegal, but the laws aren’t enforced. I’ve kept those places red, because the laws still say possessing recreational cannabis is illegal.

America and Australia both have systems where state laws have either legalized or decriminalized recreational cannabis, but it’s still illegal nationally – which means you can’t take recreational cannabis across state lines, even if it’s legal or decriminalized in both states.

Some places have local exceptions set in law, like bhang in India being legal, or exceptions for religious practices in Nepal, Jamaica, or Barbados.

This was my main source for data: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis) and the tool I used was [mapchart.net](http://mapchart.net) (Also, Australia is messy on the map because the original Map Chart map doesn’t show states, so I had to do a quick and very dirty overlay.)

I was at first surprised that the US was more lenient than most other places. Then I remembered: $$$

Also, Mercator projection sucks!

I don’t get “legal, no commercial sale”

So it’s legal but you have to get it from the criminal black market as before.

What are the exceptions in India?