Cannabis — Tunisia
What travelers need to know about cannabis in Tunisia. What is legal at home can be a serious crime here — each rule links to its official source.
Cannabis in Tunisia: prohibited — what is legal at home can be a serious crime here.
Cannabis is illegal in Tunisia. Consuming it, or holding it for your own consumption, is a crime under article 4 of Law No. 92-52 carrying one to five years in prison plus a fine of 1,000 to 3,000 dinars - the law sets no quantity threshold, so no amount is treated as too small. A 2017 amendment is widely reported as decriminalisation and it was not: it only restored a judge's discretion to reduce the sentence, exercised after conviction. For a foreign national, article 17 additionally requires expulsion once the sentence is served, plus a ten-year ban on returning to Tunisia.
Consumption, or possession for personal consumption (art. 4): one to five years' imprisonment plus a fine of 1,000 to 3,000 Tunisian dinars; attempts are punishable. Being in a place used for drug taking (art. 8): six months to three years plus 1,000 to 5,000 dinars. Cultivation, possession or sale for trafficking (art. 5): six to ten years plus 5,000 to 10,000 dinars; smuggling, import or export for trafficking: ten to twenty years plus 20,000 to 100,000 dinars. A foreign national convicted under this law must be expelled from Tunisia immediately after serving the sentence and is barred from entering Tunisia for ten years where the conviction is for a delit, or for life where it is for a crime (art. 17); breaching that ban carries a further one to five years plus 1,000 to 5,000 dinars.
§ UNODC Country Legislation Database - Tunisia: Loi n. 92-52 du 18 mai 1992 relative aux stupefiants, art. 4 (Tunisian official hosts iort.gov.tn and legislation.tn were unreachable; the 2017 amendment was verified against the Journal Officiel text)