Is Cannabis / THC legal in Tuvalu?

Also known as: weed, marijuana

Legal status

Controlled and prohibited in Tuvalu, in two forms under the Dangerous Drugs Act (Cap. 10.10, 2022 Revised Edition). The plant is named in Part II by definition: section 2 says “Indian hemp” means “either of the plants Cannabis sativa or Cannabis indica or any portion thereof”, and section 4(1) applies Part II to “raw opium, coca leaf and Indian hemp and resins obtained from Indian hemp and preparations of which such resins form the base” (pages 9 and 10). Extracts and tinctures are named separately in Part IV: paragraph 7 of Part I of Schedule 2 lists “Any extract or tincture of cannabis” (page 34), and section 13(1) says Part IV applies to “the substances for the time being specified in Part I of Schedule 2”. Paragraph 8 of Part I adds “Any preparation, admixture, extract or other substance containing any proportion of a substance for the time being specified in paragraph 1 above or in any of the paragraphs 2 to 7 above”, so it reaches a preparation containing an extract or tincture of cannabis (page 34). Both forms are therefore named. The Customs Revenue and Border Protection Act 2014 adds a restricted import entry, Schedule 2 item 4, for “Cannabis sativa (known as Indian hemp or bhang), cannabis indica, choras, or any preparation or mixture thereof, except under licence of the Senior Medical Officer” (page 146). Stated as at the 2022 Revised Edition of the Dangerous Drugs Act as amended by the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act 2025.

Consequences if caught

Plant, resin and resin preparations (Part II). Cultivation: section 7 says “No person shall cultivate in Tuvalu the opium poppy or Indian hemp or coca leaf plant”, and section 8(a) makes it an offence to knowingly cultivate Indian hemp “whether for private use or otherwise”. Possession and selling: section 8(b), as amended by section 4 of the 2025 Act, reads “found in possession of or selling, or otherwise traffics or engages in the trafficking of, to any person any substance to which this Part applies”. Import and export: section 4(2) says “No person shall import or export any of the substances to which this Part applies”, section 3 confines dangerous drugs to ports approved by the Minister, and section 6 forfeits anything unlawfully imported or exported. Schedule 3 prints a row headed “Smoking or Possession of Indian hemp”. No section of the Dangerous Drugs Act or the 2025 Act is worded as an offence of smoking Indian hemp: section 8 concerns cultivation, possession and selling, section 12(1)(f) concerns smoking prepared opium, and new section 5(1) bars “use” of a dangerous drug without a licence. The text does not say which offence that row sentences. Bands. Schedule 3 prints these rows for Indian hemp, each with a maximum and a minimum, and no fine column. Growing and cultivation: “Not exceeding 1 plants”, maximum 5 years, minimum 12 months; “Not exceeding 3 plants”, maximum 7 years, minimum 24 months; “Exceeding 5 plants”, maximum 10 years, minimum 4 years. Smoking or possession: “Not exceeding 5 grams”, maximum 5 years, minimum 24 months; “Not exceeding 10 grams”, maximum 7 years, minimum 3 years; “Exceeding 50 grams”, maximum 20 years, minimum 5 years. Selling or trafficking: “Not exceeding 5 grams”, maximum 5 years, minimum 24 months; “Not exceeding 10 grams”, maximum 7 years, minimum 3 years; “Not exceeding 20 grams”, maximum 12 years, minimum 5 years; “Exceeding 50 grams”, maximum 20 years, minimum 5 years. As printed, there is no band for 4 or 5 plants, none for possession above 10 grams and up to 50 grams, and none for selling or trafficking above 20 grams and up to 50 grams. The “not exceeding” bands also overlap as printed: a quantity of 3 grams falls within both “Not exceeding 5 grams” and “Not exceeding 10 grams”, which carry different penalties, the plant rows overlap in the same way, and the text does not say which row applies. No quantity that presumes supply is printed, and the text has no separate offence of possession for supply. Import, export and manufacture have no Schedule 3 row for Indian hemp. New section 5(1) says “No person shall import, export, manufacture, cultivate, sell, or use any dangerous drug except with a license issued under section 14A”, and new section 5(2) says a person in violation “is guilty of an offence under this Act and shall be sentenced pursuant to Schedule 3”. Section 8(2), inserted by section 4 of Act 9 of 2025 (printed page 6), reads “Any person who commits an offence under this Act shall be sentenced according to Schedule 3.” Section 5(2) is worded for the conduct named in new section 5(1), which is import, export, manufacture, cultivation, sale and use, and does not name possession. The section 20 possession offence therefore reaches Schedule 3, if at all, only through section 8(2), and Schedule 3 has no row for a Part IV drug. Section 39(2) separately provides, in respect of each offence “for which no penalty is otherwise prescribed”, on conviction by the High Court sitting with assessors a fine of $4,000 and imprisonment for 10 years, or on summary conviction a fine not exceeding $1,000 and imprisonment for 5 years, with forfeiture of the articles. The text does not say which route governs hemp import, export or manufacture, or the quantities that fall in the printed gaps, so no band is given for them. Section 35(1) deems articles whose importation the Act prohibits to be prohibited goods under the Customs Revenue and Border Protection Act. Section 35(2) (printed page 19) provides: “If any goods the exportation of which is prohibited or restricted by this Act are exported in contravention thereof, or brought to a wharf or other place to be shipped in any conveyance, the exporter or his agent shall be liable for each offence to forfeit either treble the value of the goods or $200, at the option of the Customs Officer.” The text does not say how that liability relates to section 39(2) or to Schedule 3. For goods prohibited under section 78 of that Act, section 212(1)(a) makes importing them an offence, with a fine not exceeding $2,000 under section 212(3) (pages 108 and 109). Section 215 makes knowing possession or custody of prohibited imports an offence, with, for an individual, a fine not exceeding $1,000 or imprisonment not exceeding 3 years or both, and, for a body corporate, a fine not exceeding $10,000, or a fine of 3 times the value of the goods, whichever is the lesser (page 110). Section 216 makes knowing purchase, sale, exchange or other acquisition or disposal an offence, with, for an individual, a fine not exceeding $5,000 or imprisonment not exceeding 5 years or both, and, for a body corporate, a fine not exceeding $50,000, or 3 times the value of the goods, whichever is the lesser (page 110). Item 14 of the list of prohibited imports (printed page 146) reads “Goods the importation of which is prohibited by any other law in force in Tuvalu.” and item 9 of the list of restricted imports (printed page 147) reads “Goods the importation of which is regulated by any other law in force in Tuvalu except in accordance with such law.” The text read does not say whether these Customs Act penalties apply to cannabis alongside section 39(2). Extracts and tinctures (Part IV). Section 14 bans import and export “except in accordance with sections 21 to 29”, which require authorisations from the Senior Medical Officer. Section 20 makes it an offence to have such a drug in possession, or to keep it anywhere other than the appointed store, “unless he can prove that such drug was obtained under the authority of this Act, or in accordance with the prescription of a person whose name appears in the said Medical and Dental Register, or from a person having authority to sell it, or was deposited there without his knowledge or consent”. Schedule 3 has no row for Part IV drugs, so the same gap applies to them. None of paragraphs 9 to 14 of Part II of Schedule 2 names cannabis. Section 30 (printed page 16) provides: “The provisions of sections 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29 shall not apply to any preparation or other substance for the time being falling within Part II of Schedule 2.” Those sections include the section 14 import and export ban, the store rules and the section 20 possession offence, so a preparation that falls within Part II of Schedule 2 is outside them. Section 15 and new section 5(1) carry no matching exception. Other provisions. A police officer may without warrant apprehend and detain a person carrying or conveying Indian hemp (section 9(2)). Hemp found on a plantation may be seized and destroyed (section 10). Attempt, soliciting and inciting carry the same punishment (section 39(4)). The old section 5, which banned import and export of hemp seed, was repealed by the 2025 Act and the replacement does not mention seeds. The text does not say whether a seed is a “portion” of the plant under the section 2 definition. The text read prints no exemption for personal or recreational use. The highest maximum printed for Indian hemp is 20 years in Schedule 3. The text of the Dangerous Drugs Act and of the 2025 Act contains no death penalty. Tuvalu’s general law on capital punishment was not checked.

If prescribed or medical

The text read states no prescription route for the plant or its resin. For extracts and tinctures, section 15(1)(c) lets the Minister make rules “regulating the issue by medical practitioners of prescriptions containing any such dangerous drug and the dispensing of any such prescription”, and the possession offence in section 20 does not apply to a person who proves the drug was obtained “in accordance with the prescription of a person whose name appears in the said Medical and Dental Register”. New section 14A, inserted by section 6 of the 2025 Act, says “The Minister may issue licenses for the importation, exportation, manufacture, cultivation, sale, or use of dangerous drugs for medical and scientific purposes”, on conditions the Minister prescribes. The Customs entry for cannabis refers instead to a licence “of the Senior Medical Officer”, and the text does not reconcile the two authorities. The Tuvalu Medicines Schedule that section 9 of the Pharmacy and Therapeutic Products Act requires was searched for on three routes and not found, so the classification of cannabis under it is not established.

Documentation

Read in full: the Dangerous Drugs Act, Cap. 10.10, 2022 Revised Edition (36 pages, printed commencement 20th October 1948), and the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act 2025, Act 9 of 2025 (9 pages), which says in section 1(2) “This Act shall come into force on the date of publication”. It commenced on the date of its publication under its section 1(2); the text gives no date and none is stated. The 2025 Act is not consolidated into the 2022 Revised Edition. The printed pages of the Dangerous Drugs Act carry only the words “2022 Revised Edition” and no consolidation date. The legislation site’s home page, https://www.tuvalu-legislation.tv/cms/, read on 7 October 2026, states that the Laws of Tuvalu are in force as at 31st December 2022. This entry rests on the Dangerous Drugs Act and its 2025 amendment. Tuvalu’s Penal Code was not read. Also read: sections 78, 212, 215 and 216 and Schedule 2 (item 14 of the list of prohibited imports and items 4 and 9 of the list of restricted imports) of the Customs Revenue and Border Protection Act 2014, Cap. 26.04, 2022 Revised Edition (the PDF prints “Customers”), and sections 9 and 42 of the Pharmacy and Therapeutic Products Act, Cap. 28.32, 2022 Revised Edition. Searched in the text of the Dangerous Drugs Act and the 2025 Act: the word rules occurs in sections 15, 16(2), 38(2) and 39 as a power or a reference, and in Form B of Schedule 1 (printed page 24) in a condition about rules or regulations on the transmission of articles by post, and no rules made under the Act are printed. The tuvalu-legislation.tv all-legislation index page, read on 7 October 2026 (sha256 f1a30168fc3e2cb5944e6849a1de4afc5ceffddaa6b71bed2cf522c86d0c3070), lists beneath the Dangerous Drugs Act only the 2025 amendment and lists no rules, so whether any rules were made is not established. A search for presum, travell, passenger, personal use, baggage, luggage, death and capital returned nothing in the text of either Act. The Tuvalu Medicines Schedule was searched for on 7 October 2026 on three routes: the tuvalu-legislation.tv legislation, subsidiary legislation, notices and gazette pages; the government and Ministry of Health websites, where the hostnames tried returned no connection; and WHO and Pacific health sources. It was not found. No Tuvalu court decision, penalty practice or licence issued under section 14A was read.

Drug laws and enforcement change and vary within a country. This is not legal advice. Always confirm with Tuvalu’s embassy or official drug authority before traveling; penalties can be severe, including imprisonment.