Cannabis Law and Access in Latvia

Latvia's cannabis laws, explained plainly

Somewhere between a Sunday ride through the Gauja Valley and a bowl of sourdough dough sticking to my hands, I ended up reading the Latvian Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Precursors Law in a café near Lonsdale Street in Braddon. That probably says something about how I spend weekends. But the short version is: Latvia's cannabis framework is more complicated than a one-line summary allows, and it is widely misread in English-language sources.

Latvia is a European Union member state. It joined in 2004. That matters for cannabis because EU membership shapes which international treaty obligations apply, how pharmaceutical products move across borders, and how national drug scheduling sits alongside EU-level regulation. But EU membership does not automatically produce liberal cannabis policy , and Latvia is a clear demonstration of that.

Recreational cannabis: prohibited, full stop

Recreational use, possession, cultivation and supply of cannabis are all criminal offences under Latvian law. The primary instrument is the Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Precursors Law (Narkotisko un psihotropo vielu un prekursoru likums), which has been in force in its current form since 2005 with subsequent amendments. Cannabis is listed as a controlled substance in Schedule I of Latvia's national narcotics list, placing it alongside substances considered to have no accepted non-medical use under that framework.

Possession of small quantities for personal use is technically a criminal matter, not just an administrative infraction , a harder line than several neighbouring EU states. Lithuania decriminalised minor possession in 2017. Estonia has operated a quasi-decriminalised minor-possession regime for longer. Latvia has not moved in that direction at the legislative level, though prosecutorial discretion does factor into how cases actually progress through the courts.

Penalties for supply and trafficking are serious. The Criminal Law of Latvia (Krimināllikums) provides for custodial sentences for drug offences, with aggravated trafficking carrying sentences of up to fifteen years. These are not unusual by EU standards for serious supply offences, but they signal a policy context that remains firmly enforcement-oriented at the top end.

Medical cannabis: legal in principle, limited in practice

Here is where it gets more nuanced. Latvia amended its Narcotic Drugs law in 2018 to permit cannabis-based medicines under prescription. In principle, a registered specialist physician can prescribe a cannabis-derived pharmaceutical product where it holds marketing authorisation in the EU or meets the criteria for special import. In practice, the number of such products available through ordinary Latvian pharmacy channels is very small.

The product most commonly cited in Latvian medical contexts is a cannabidiol-based pharmaceutical that holds a European Medicines Agency marketing authorisation , meaning it can move within EU member states under a defined regulatory pathway. Products containing significant quantities of tetrahydrocannabinol face higher regulatory barriers and are substantially less accessible through Latvian channels.

Accessing a cannabis-based medicine in Latvia typically requires a specialist referral, a prescription from a physician with relevant specialist standing, and navigation of a pharmacy supply chain that may need to source the product via a special import process. There is no equivalent to Australia's Special Access Scheme in Latvian law, but the functional effect of their special import mechanism is broadly similar: a named-patient or institutional pathway that sits outside standard retail pharmacy supply. If you want background on how Australia handles this comparison, our Special Access Scheme overview gives useful context on what a named-patient pathway looks like operationally.

CBD and hemp: a separate regulatory lane

Low-THC hemp cultivation is permitted in Latvia under an EU-framework licence system. The EU sets the threshold at 0.2% THC (with a transition to 0.3% now legislated at EU level), and Latvian agricultural licensing follows that framework. Hemp grown for fibre, seed or other industrial purposes within those limits is a legitimate agricultural activity.

CBD products occupy a much less settled space. The European Food Safety Authority's novel foods classification of CBD; formally applied from 2019, means that CBD in food and oral supplements requires novel food authorisation before it can be lawfully marketed in EU member states, Latvia included. Products sold before May 2019 may be covered by transitional arrangements, but new CBD food products without EFSA authorisation are not lawfully on the Latvian market. This is the same position that applies across all EU member states, though enforcement varies considerably country to country.

It is worth understanding what CBD actually is at a chemical level before reading any jurisdiction's rules about it, our cannabidiol glossary entry covers the compound's classification and chemistry. And if you are thinking about full-plant extracts and what they contain beyond CBD, the full-spectrum and broad-spectrum entries explain the distinction that regulators in multiple countries now have to grapple with when deciding which products fall into which category.

How Latvia sits within the EU framework

Latvia is a signatory to the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and its 1971 and 1988 supplements, as are all EU member states. Cannabis remains a Schedule IV substance under the 1961 Convention; though the Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted in December 2020 to remove cannabis from Schedule IV while retaining it in Schedule I, a distinction that matters for research and pharmaceutical access but does not in itself require member states to liberalise recreational access.

The EU's own regulatory body, the European Medicines Agency, has authorised certain cannabis-derived pharmaceutical products. Member states then decide their own dispensing and prescription rules. Latvia's position, permitting those authorised products under specialist prescription while maintaining strict controls otherwise, is legally consistent with EU obligations. It is not the most restrictive approach in the EU, but it is closer to the conservative end of the spectrum.

Honestly, I think the framing that positions Latvia as simply "behind the curve" is a bit lazy. Policy timelines are shaped by political context, domestic public health priorities and coalition dynamics, not just by what neighbouring states are doing. Latvia's government has been more focused in recent legislative cycles on healthcare system reform and accession-era legal alignment than on cannabis-specific liberalisation. That is a political choice, not a failure of awareness.

The cannabinoid science context

For readers interested in the underlying pharmacology: the reason cannabis policy is complex is that the plant contains dozens of pharmacologically active compounds. The THC molecule acts primarily at CB1 receptors concentrated in the central nervous system, which is why it produces intoxication and why it is the compound most jurisdictions control most tightly. CBD has a different receptor interaction profile and does not produce the same psychoactive effects; which is partly why it has been separated out into a distinct regulatory lane in many countries, including Latvia's EU-framework approach.

Minor cannabinoids like CBG and THCV are present in lower concentrations in most cultivars and are only beginning to attract regulatory attention in European frameworks. Right now, most EU member state laws, Latvia's included, do not specifically address these compounds outside of general "cannabis plant" definitions, which creates interpretive ambiguity that is still being worked out by national regulators.

What this means for an Australian reading it

If you are an Australian patient, researcher or clinician trying to understand Latvia's system comparatively, the key takeaways are structural. Latvia has a medical access pathway that is real but narrow, a recreational prohibition that is strict by EU standards, a CBD-in-food position that follows EU novel foods rules, and no imminent legislative movement toward decriminalisation based on publicly available parliamentary records as of mid-2025.

Australia's own framework; the TGA's Schedule 8 controlled drug and Schedule 4 classifications for cannabis products, alongside the Authorised Prescriber pathway, is actually more developed in terms of prescriber access volume than Latvia's equivalent. That comparison is useful context if you are trying to map global access approaches, but it does not mean Australian rules apply outside Australia or that either system has resolved all the policy tensions.

The Poisons Standard is long. The Latvian Narcotic Drugs law is shorter. Both are, in the end, attempts to do the same thing: manage a plant that sits at the intersection of pharmacology, public health and competing political values. Trevor the sourdough starter is significantly easier to manage than either of them.

Sources

• Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Precursors Law, Latvijas Vēstnesis (official Latvian legislative portal)
• Latvia Drug Report 2024; European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA)
• Overview of cannabis-based medicines, European Medicines Agency (EMA)
• Commission on Narcotic Drugs: scheduling decisions, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

, Marcus Hale, Regulatory researcher; TGA & access law