Cannabis — Sri Lanka

Cannabis is illegal in Sri Lanka, and there is no legal amount and no personal-use exception. Possessing, using, growing or bringing in any part of the cannabis plant is a crime - even less than 1 kilogram is punishable by one to two years in prison plus a fine, and cannabis was the single biggest category of drug arrests in 2024, with over 75,000 people arrested. CBD counts too: cannabis extracts and tinctures are listed as dangerous drugs and it is illegal to bring any cannabis preparation into the country, so leave CBD oil, vapes and gummies at home - airport scanners are used on transiting passengers as well as arrivals. One definition is worth knowing before you travel: the Ordinance provides that anything in a person's order, disposition, power or control is deemed to be in their possession, so a bag in your car, a package someone asked you to carry, or a room you hold the key to can be treated as yours.

Under Part III of the Third Schedule to the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, as substituted by Act No. 41 of 2022, penalties for trafficking, possessing, importing or exporting cannabis are banded by quantity: less than 1 kilogram — a fine of not less than 20,000 rupees and not exceeding 50,000 rupees and imprisonment of not less than one year and not exceeding two years, or both; 1 kilogram to less than 5 kilograms — a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 rupees and two to five years; 5 kilograms to less than 100 kilograms — a fine of 100,000 to 200,000 rupees and five to ten years; 100 kilograms or above — a fine of 200,000 to 500,000 rupees and ten to fifteen years. Cannabis is not in the Ordinance's death-penalty tier, which applies to opium and to morphine, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Transit is criminalised in its own right rather than merely caught by the import offence: section 70(1) makes it unlawful to carry a "restricted article" through Sri Lanka, its territorial waters or any port, with or without transhipment or unshipment, or to bring it into those waters or a port with a view to carrying it through — and section 69 defines restricted articles to include the hemp plant, its seeds, pods, leaves, flowers and any part or preparation of it, together with the resin and the preparations known as bhang, hashish and ganja. Section 28 separately forbids importing or bringing in any part or preparation of the plant outright, with no quantity threshold, and a contravention makes the article liable to seizure and forfeiture under the Customs Ordinance as if it were a prohibited import (s.72).

Verified Sep 16, 2026