Brazil Decriminalised 40 Grams. South Africa Gave You Your Garden Back. The World Is Changing.

The story of cannabis reform is usually told through North America and Western Europe. But some of the most significant changes in recent years have happened in Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico — countries that together hold over half a billion people, and where cannabis law has shifted dramatically, if imperfectly.

Brazil

Following landmark Supreme Court rulings in 2024 and 2025, Brazil decriminalised possession of up to 40 grams of cannabis, or six female plants, for personal use. What was previously a criminal offence is now treated as an administrative matter. The change does not create a legal commercial market — sales remain illegal — but it removes the threat of criminal prosecution from the everyday lives of millions of people.

Brazil is the fifth most populous country on earth and historically has some of the harshest enforcement of drug laws in the region. The Supreme Court ruling represents a genuine shift in how the law treats people caught with cannabis for their own use.

South Africa

South Africa's Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, fully operational by 2025 and 2026, gives adults the legal right to possess and cultivate cannabis in private. Grow it in your garden. Use it at home. The government has not moved toward a commercial retail market, but the decriminalisation of private personal use is meaningful for a country where cannabis prosecutions have historically fallen disproportionately on poor and Black communities.

Mexico

Mexico has been in something of a holding pattern. Despite Supreme Court rulings mandating legislative action, Mexico enters 2026 with private possession and small-scale cultivation tolerated in practice but no formal commercial framework established. Legislative action has been promised repeatedly and not delivered. It is a lesson in how a legal ruling and a functioning legal framework can be very different things.

The Direction of Travel

The world is not moving uniformly toward cannabis legalisation. Thailand reversed course in mid-2026, implementing a Cannabis Control Bill that restricted cannabis strictly to medical and scientific purposes, ending its brief status as a recreational destination. Global drug policy is contested, uneven, and politically fraught.

But the direction of travel — across Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia — is broadly toward recognising that criminalisation has failed. The communities who have paid the highest price for prohibition deserve to see that direction become reality in their own countries, not just in the news from somewhere else.

Sources: MPP, Thinking Nomads, South African Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, Brazil Supreme Court Records 2024-2025.