Politics
Malta Limits Historic Marijuana Legalization Law, Sending Threat Letters To Consumers Over ‘Nuisance’ Odors
“We’re back to punishing plants and people instead of fixing the real problems, which are housing density, social stigma and lack of safe venues.”
By Felipe Neis Araujo, Filter
In late 2021, Malta became the first European country to legalize marijuana possession for adult use. Anyone over 18 could keep up to seven grams on their person and up to 50 grams at home, plus grow up to four plants. The act also established a regulatory framework that included cultivation and distribution by licensed nonprofits known as Cannabis Harm Reduction Associations (CHRAs).
Portugal and other countries had decriminalized personal possession, but it was still a civil violation. Malta’s reform was praised as a pragmatic, public health‑oriented pivot that would siphon revenue away from drug-trafficking groups and spare people the burden of a criminal-legal record. Public consumption remained banned, but people could smoke cannabis at home.
Four years later, the island nation’s governing Labour Party has changed its tune.
In May, the Parliament of Malta unanimously approved Bill 128, which sets a €235 fine for public consumption of non-medical cannabis—including “in any place where the [odor] causes a nuisance to third parties.”
Previously this had only applied to public consumption, but it now includes people smoking in the privacy of their home—if a neighbor complains about the smell. A free hotline has been set up to receive complaints. In July, warning letters began to arrive.
“A lot of people were smoking on their balconies and annoying people who lived above them,” Joey Reno Vella, the executive chairperson of the Authority for the Responsible Use of Cannabis (ARUC), told the Times of Malta earlier in 2025.
The law states that no “criminal proceedings…shall be taken except at the request or with the authorization of the Authority on the Responsible Use of Cannabis.” But it becomes a court matter if the fine goes unpaid—and then what? As time goes on, how will ARUC handle people who are fined repeatedly and cannot pay?
“We’re back to punishing plants and people instead of fixing the real problems, which are housing density, social stigma and lack of safe venues,” Maltese activist and former ARUC employee Karen Mamo told Filter at an academic drug policy conference in June. CHRA have been forbidden from operating on‑site lounges.
The policy U‑turn did not come out of nowhere. Policing remained part of legalization from Day One, targeting young people who smoked outside. Police officers pounced on those using cannabis on beaches or rooftops. Conservative lobbyists and the Catholic Church spread a narrative about Malta becoming the new Amsterdam.
In 2023, House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Claudette Pace told members of Parliament that she’d met a visually impaired man whose guide dog had gotten high from second-hand smoke. In 2024, the government launched a high-profile Responsible Cannabis Use campaign. Warnings about the fine for smoking in public or near minors appeared on billboards and Instagram posts.
The message was clear: Cannabis is still a threat to children and public order. These tired tropes ignore the fact that adults can drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes while holding a a child in their lap, and apparently not pose the same risk.
In the island’s densely populated apartment blocks, the issue of odor complaints emerged as a way to effectively roll back the 2021 protections.
In 2011, Malta saw an historic cannabis criminalization protest led by David Caruana, who was facing charges for growing cannabis plants on his balcony; cultivation was considered to be drug trafficking, even in personal-use quantities. Advocates highlighted the case of Daniel Holmes and Barry Lee, who in 2006 had been arrested for growing five plants. Lee died by suicide while awaiting trial; Holmes was serving a 10.5-year sentence. He was released in 2018.
NGOs such as ReLeaf Malta rallied public support and pushed politicians to imagine something better. This lobbying gained traction after 2015’s Drug Dependence Act nominally decriminalized personal possession, but left police free to detain users for 48 hours. Advocates fighting against piecemeal reform finally prevailed in 2021.
The new amendments will fall hardest on tenants who cannot control communal airflow and on working‑class youth who smoke cannabis outside because landlords ban indoor use. Cultivating the four permitted plants anywhere other than at home now comes with a fine of up to €1,000, yet the plants cannot be visible outdoors. Such fines may not deter affluent growers with detached homes and gardens, but may bankrupt someone renting a third‑floor walk‑up in Birkirkara.
The new law could easily clog the courts, with every contested fine becoming a quasi‑forensic dispute over whose nostrils caught what and when. And, perhaps most galling, the new law imposes mandatory data-sharing on CHRAs—they must hand over their membership lists to ARUC, sowing fear over how that information will be used.
Malta once offered reformers across Europe a glimpse of what nationwide legalization might look like outside the Americas. Yet Malta’s rapid reversal shows how fragile reform can be and that legalization is a process, not a finish line.
This article was originally published by Filter, an online magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights through a harm reduction lens. Follow Filter on Bluesky, X or Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
