Dangerous Drugs Act 1964
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Dangerous Drugs Act 1964
1964 CHAPTER 36
An Act to amend the Dangerous Drugs Act 1951; to create certain offences in connection with the drug known as cannabis and to penalize the intentional cultivation of any plant of the genus cannabis; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.
[10th June 1964]
Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
Amendments of Dangerous Drugs Act 1951
1 Substitution, for purposes of Part III of Dangerous Drugs Act 1951, of new list of drugs, &c., and provisions consequential thereon.
(1) In section 8 (restriction on importation and exportation of drugs to which Part III of the Act applies) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1951 (hereafter in this Act referred to as the ‘principal Act’), for the reference to a drug to which the said Part III applies there shall be substituted a reference to a substance for the time being specified in Part I of Schedule 1 to this Act, other than a preparation or other substance for the time being falling within Part II of that Schedule.
(2) In section 9 of the principal Act (power to control manufacture, sale, &c., of drugs to which Part III of that Act applies) for references to the said drugs and to any of them there shall be substituted references respectively to the substances for the time being specified in Part I of Schedule 1 to this Act and to any of them.
(3) In consequence of the enactment of the two foregoing subsections, section 10(1) of the principal Act (which specifies the drugs to which Part III of that Act applies) and section 10(2) of that Act (whereunder Her Majesty has, by Orders in Council entitled respectively the Dangerous Drugs Act 1951 (Application) Order 1963 and the Dangerous Drugs Act 1951 (Application) (No. 2) Order 1963, applied the said Part III to certain drugs additional to those specified in section 10(1), being drugs falling within Part I of Schedule 1 to this Act) shall cease to have effect.
(4) Section 10(3) of the principal Act (whereunder Her Majesty has by the first-mentioned of the Orders in Council aforesaid applied Part III of that Act with modifications to two drugs, and their respective salts, which fall within Part I of Schedule 1 to this Act, that is to say, to codeine and ethylmorphine and their respective salts) shall cease to have effect; but, until such day as Her Majesty may by Order in Council appoint (hereafter in this Act referred to as the ‘appointed day’), the said Part III shall, in relation to those drugs and their respective salts, continue to have effect subject to the modifications specified in Schedule 2 to the said first-mentioned Order.
(5) Notwithstanding subsections (1) to (3) of this section, the following, namely,—
(a ) a preparation, admixture, extract or other substance containing less than 0.2 per cent. of morphine or a salt of morphine or less than 0.1 per cent. of cocaine or a salt of cocaine (not being a solution or dilution of morphine or cocaine or a salt of either of them in an inert substance, whether liquid or not); and
(b ) a preparation, admixture, extract or other substance containing less than 0.1 per cent. of ecgonine or any derivative of ecgonine from which it may be recovered industrially;
shall be excepted from the operation of Part III of the principal Act until the appointed day; and for the purposes of this subsection percentages, in the case of morphine or salts of morphine, shall be calculated as in respect of anhydrous morphine and, in the case of liquid preparations, shall be calculated on the basis that a preparation containing 1 per cent. of a substance means a preparation in which 1 gramme of the substance, if a solid, or 1 millilitre of the substance, if a liquid, is contained in every 100 millilitres of the preparation, and so in proportion for any greater or less percentage.
(6) Section 10(4) of the principal Act (by virtue whereof, in consequence of divers declarations of Her Majesty in Council and of a declaration of His late Majesty King George the Fifth in Council, Part III of that Act has ceased to apply to certain preparations containing drugs to which that Part applies) shall cease to have effect; but the preparations which, at the commencement of this Act, are by virtue of that subsection excepted from the operation of the said Part III shall continue to be so excepted until the appointed day.
(7) In section 14 of the principal Act (entry and search of premises, &c., to obtain evidence of offences) and in the proviso to section 15(2) of that Act (restriction of punishment of persons committing certain offences through inadvertence), for any reference to drugs to which Part I, II or III of that Act applies or to drugs to which that Act applies there shall be substituted a reference to drugs to which Part I or II of that Act applies and substances for the time being specified in Part I of Schedule 1 to this Act; but until the appointed day the references so substituted shall be construed as not including references to preparations and other substances excepted from the operation of Part III of the principal Act by either of the two last foregoing subsections.
2 Power of Her Majesty in Council to amend Schedule 1 to this Act.
2. If—
She may by Order in Council make the requisite modifications in the said Schedule 1.
3 Repeal of Part IV of 1951 Act.
(1) Section 11 of the principal Act (by virtue whereof it is not lawful for a person in the United Kingdom to trade in, or manufacture for the purpose of trade, a product obtained from any of the phenanthrene alkaloids of opium or from the ecgonine alkaloids of the coca leaf, not being a product which was, on 13th July 1931, being used for medical or scientific purposes or a product of medical or scientific value specified in an Order in Council under that section) shall cease to have effect on the appointed day.
(2) Section 12 of the principal Act (power to apply Part III of that Act to products mentioned in section 11) is hereby repealed.
4 Addition of poppy-straw to Part I of 1951 Act, and renaming of certain drugs to which Part I applies.
4. Section 4 (drugs to which Part I of the Act applies) of the principal Act shall be amended—
5 Minor amendments relating to customs offences.
(1) In subsection (2) of section 9 of the principal Act and in the subsection which, by subsection (4) of that section, is substituted for the said subsection (2) in the application of section 9 to Northern Ireland, for the words ‘an offence under the enactments relating to the customs as applied by this Act or that Act’, there shall be substituted the words ‘an offence under the Customs and Excise Act 1952 or the enactments repealed thereby, being an offence in relation to a drug or other substance whose importation or exportation was prohibited or restricted by this Act or the said Act of 1920’.
(2) In section 320(3) of the Customs and Excise Act 1952 (section 15 of the principal Act not to be deemed, for the purposes of proceedings under sections 45, 56 or 304 of the Act of 1952 for an offence in connection with the importation or exportation of drugs in contravention of the principal Act, expressly to provide a penalty for that offence), after the word ‘drugs’ there shall be inserted the words ‘or other substances’.
6 Amendment of section 23\(1) of 1951 Act.
6. In section 23(1) of the principal Act (which defines ‘corresponding law’ for the purposes of sections 14 and 15 thereof), the reference to a law providing for the control and regulation in a country outside the United Kingdom of the manufacture, sale, use, export and import of drugs...
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