Luxembourg draft bill on recreational cannabis

Following the Luxembourg government's clarifications of October 2021, the Council of Government has recently approved the draft bill on recreational cannabis modifying the amended law of 19 February 1973 on the sale of medicinal substances and the fight against drug addiction.

?As the Minister of State said, the draft bill has several objectives:

• Firstly, the bill authorises growing cannabis for personal use under certain conditions. Growing plants will only be authorised in the private sphere for people of legal age with a limit of four cannabis plants grown at home per domestic community and exclusively from seeds. The draft bill also provides that the cannabis plants must not be visible from outside of the home. Some sanctions when these conditions are not respected have been included in this draft bill.
• Secondly, the bill authorises the consumption of cannabis in the private sphere by people of legal age.
• Finally, the bill provides for lighter sanctions on the consumption, possession and transport of cannabis in public – although it would remain illegal. Criminal sanctions would be reduced to criminal fines of between EUR25 and EUR500 when the quantity is less than 3 g. And the draft bill introduces the possibility to give a warning (avertissement) along with a EUR145 fine. The current sanctions are criminal fines of between EUR251 and EUR2,500. However, it would remain that above this threshold, the seller would still be considered a drug dealer and thus subject to more severe sanctions.

The initial project was for this draft bill to also address the production and sale of cannabis to Luxembourg residents only. This topic is now to be addressed in a later bill that is expected to be presented in the next legislative mandate.

Though the timetable for adoption of the draft bill has been held up because of the health crisis, it seems that the legislative process is now back on track as Sam Tanson, Luxembourg's Minister of Justice, presented the draft bill on the domestic culture aspects to the Justice Committee on 15 June 2022.

The text of the draft bill submitted to the Chamber of Deputies on 22 June 2022 has been made available here on 24 June 2022.??

Authors: David Alexandre, Camille Malécot, Beno?te Chanfray from DLA Piper Luxembourg