Is Weed Legal in Peru? Understanding Peru Cannabis and Marijuana Laws (2026)

Recreational weed is not legal in Peru, but the country sits in a regulated middle ground rather than under blanket prohibition. Possessing a small amount for personal use is not a crime, medical cannabis has been legal since 2017, and hemp and hemp-derived CBD are permitted under a separate framework. The recurring problem is access: Peru’s medical program exists on paper but reaches only a fraction of the patients it was meant to serve.

Is Weed Legal in Peru?

Cannabis in Peru splits into three separate tracks. Recreational use and sale are illegal. Personal possession of up to 8 grams of marijuana is decriminalized and goes unpunished. And medical cannabis — along with industrial hemp and CBD — is legal under a licensed, government-regulated system. Knowing which track applies is the difference between a non-event and a serious criminal charge.

Is Recreational Cannabis Legal in Peru?

No. Peru has not legalized cannabis for recreational use, and growing, producing, importing, or selling it outside the licensed medical system is a criminal offense. The penalties are heavy: unlicensed cultivation, production, or trafficking carries a prison sentence of 8 to 15 years under the Criminal Code, along with fines and professional disqualification. Unlike neighboring Argentina and Colombia — which have decriminalized personal use and built out medical or scientific markets — Peru keeps recreational supply firmly off-limits.

Is Cannabis Possession Decriminalized in Peru?

Yes. Under Article 299 of Peru’s Penal Code, possessing up to 8 grams of marijuana — or up to 2 grams of derivatives such as hashish — for personal and immediate use is not punishable. This is not a fine or a civil penalty: below the threshold, simple possession is not treated as a crime at all.

One important condition applies. The exemption only covers a single substance. If you are carrying marijuana together with any other controlled drug, even in small quantities, the protection disappears and the case becomes criminal. Public consumption is separately prohibited and can draw administrative penalties. And the written threshold is not the whole story — Peruvian law leaves police wide discretion, and people carrying small, legal amounts are sometimes detained on suspicion of micro-trafficking.

Is Medical Cannabis Legal in Peru?

Yes. Peru legalized the medicinal and therapeutic use of cannabis in 2017 through Law No. 30681, passed by Congress by a vote of 68 to 5. The law followed a police raid on a home laboratory in Lima that had been producing cannabis oil for around 80 families whose children had epilepsy and other serious conditions — a case that shifted public opinion toward regulated access. Cannabis is recognized in Peru for conditions including treatment-resistant epilepsy, chemotherapy-induced nausea, multiple sclerosis spasticity, and chronic pain.

The framework has been built in stages. The first implementing rules came with Supreme Decree 005-2019-SA in February 2019, which divided cannabis into two categories by THC content: “psychoactive” cannabis (1% THC or more by dry weight) and “non-psychoactive” cannabis, or cáñamo (hemp), below 1%. In 2021, Law No. 31312 added associative cultivation by registered patient groups. The current rulebook, Supreme Decree 004-2023-SA, was published on February 28, 2023, and took effect on September 1, 2023, folding both laws into a single regime.

How Do Patients Access Medical Cannabis in Peru?

Access runs through prescriptions, a national patient registry, and authorized pharmacies. Products containing 1% THC or more require a special medical prescription valid for up to 30 days, and the patient must be enrolled in Peru’s National Registry of Cannabis Users for Medical and Therapeutic Purposes, known as RENPUC. Products below 1% THC need only a standard prescription.

In practice, the program reaches a small fraction of the people it is meant to serve. A 2025 review in the journal Frontiers in Medicine found that only 32 of Peru’s 28,133 pharmacies stocked THC products for the country’s roughly 50,000 registered patients, and that no domestic cannabis cultivation had taken place under either the pharmaceutical-laboratory or patient-association licenses. Because legal supply is still imported, prices stay high, and an estimated 70% of patients turn to the informal market. To widen access, Peru’s drug agency, DIGEMID, has registered most authorized cannabis products as natural products rather than full pharmaceuticals — a faster route to market that had yielded 27 marketing authorizations by mid-2025.

Can You Grow Cannabis at Home in Peru?

Not for personal recreational use, and personal self-cultivation has no clear legal protection. Peru’s only sanctioned growing pathways are licenses granted to pharmaceutical laboratories and public entities, and — since Law No. 31312 — artisanal “associative” cultivation by associations of two or more registered patients, who may grow, process, transport, and store cannabis strictly for their own members’ medical use. Individual home growing was deliberately left out of that law. Because Article 299 decriminalizes possession but says nothing about how to obtain cannabis legally, a person tending a few plants for personal use can still be treated as a trafficker during a police search.

Is Hemp Legal in Peru?

Yes. Hemp — cannabis containing less than 1% THC by dry weight — is classified as non-psychoactive “cáñamo” and falls outside the controlled-substance rules that govern medical marijuana. Peru moved this forward in December 2024 with Law No. 32195, which established a dedicated legal framework for industrial hemp and opened the door to its use in cosmetics, food, textiles, and construction. The law assigns oversight to the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation (MIDAGRI), bars smokable hemp products, and allows hemp flowers to be processed for CBD extraction. The framework is not fully operational yet. In August 2025, the ministry published the draft implementing decree for a 90-day public consultation, and commercial hemp licensing had not begun.

Is CBD Legal in Peru?

Yes. CBD derived from non-psychoactive cannabis — hemp containing less than 1% THC — is legal in Peru. Note that Peru’s 1% threshold is higher than the 0.3% line used in the United States, so products are judged against Peru’s own limit rather than a foreign one. Because CBD is not regulated as a standalone compound, its legal status follows the product it comes from: a hemp-derived CBD product can be prescribed with a standard medical prescription and sold through authorized pharmacies. Hemp-derived cosmetics require authorization from DIGEMID, while foods and beverages need sanitary approval from DIGESA. For a fuller primer on the compound itself, see our guide to CBD.

What Are the Penalties for Cannabis in Peru?

Outside the licensed medical system, cannabis offenses are punished severely. Growing, producing, or selling cannabis without a license carries 8 to 15 years in prison, plus heavy fines and professional disqualification. Trading or transferring cannabis seeds without authorization carries 5 to 10 years. Possession above 8 grams, or any amount that police read as intended for sale, pushes a case out of the decriminalized zone and into criminal territory — and carrying 100 grams or more is automatically presumed to be trafficking.

Can Tourists Use Cannabis in Peru?

Tourists have no realistic legal route to cannabis in Peru. The medical system requires a prescription from a Peruvian doctor plus RENPUC registration, which is impractical for a short visit, and a foreign medical-marijuana card carries no weight. Bringing cannabis — or even CBD — into the country is not permitted. The 8-gram personal-possession rule technically applies to anyone, but enforcement is unpredictable, and a visitor caught buying on the street risks confiscation, detention, and a drawn-out legal process. Consuming at archaeological sites such as Machu Picchu is treated especially harshly.

Will Peru Legalize Recreational Cannabis?

There is no active push to legalize recreational cannabis in Peru, and the near-term focus remains on making the existing medical framework function. Change has been incremental — the 2017 medical law, the 2019 rules, the 2021 cultivation amendment, the 2023 regulation, and the 2024 hemp law each widened the legal space without touching recreational use. International signals point the same way: in December 2020 the United Nations reclassified cannabis to recognize its medical value, though Peru voted against the change at the time.

Regionally, Peru sits between very different models. Uruguay runs a fully legal recreational market, Argentina and Colombia have decriminalized personal use, and neighboring Bolivia keeps cannabis entirely illegal. Whether Peru goes further will depend on shifting public opinion, the performance of its medical program, and political will — none of which currently point toward recreational legalization. We’ll update this guide as the law changes.