Cannabis in Victoria
status of Cannabis in Victoria (Australia)
Cannabis in Victoria has been legal for medicinal use since the Andrews government passed legislation for a trial of medically-necessary cannabis since 2016. The roll-out of the first Victorian-grown medicinal cannabis products was scheduled to occur in 2017, however, in late 2016 the federal Turnbull government passed legislation legalising the prescribed use of cannabis federally, affecting the initial roll-out. While hemp has been legal federally since 2017; no such law has legalised the recreational use of cannabis in Victoria, and therefore recreational cannabis remains illegal.
Although possession of cannabis for recreational use is technically illegal in Victoria, possession of under 50 grams generally warrants a caution notice and advice to attend drug counselling.
Legality history
In 1928, Victoria became the first state to control cannabis use, making it a criminal offense.
State-based medicinal legalisation – 2015/16
During the 2014 Victorian state election campaign, the Victorian Labor Party committed to legalising the medical use of cannabis in 'exceptional circumstances', citing community feedback from parents in the state alleging that cannabis had helped their children combat debilitating illness unlike other legal pharmaceuticals.
The Andrews government asked the Victorian Law Reform Commission to advise on how to structure the new laws, giving people with illness a pathway to access of cannabis without making it widely available to the general population. The VLRC provided 42 recommendations, of which the government accepted 40 fully and accepted 2 in principle. In 2016, the bill to legalise the medicinal use of cannabis within a regulatory framework passed the Victorian Parliament.
Federal medicinal legalisation – 2016
Following the introduction and debate of the Victorian law in 2015, moderate Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced he would advise his respective minister to draft legislation which would allow the medicinal, scientific and industrial use of cannabis and hemp in Australia, with prospective patients requiring a prescription from their doctor to access approved products.
“Cannabis in Victoria” enters the record as status of Cannabis in Victoria (Australia). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cannabis, Victoria and status can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q131919883. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2017, 1928 and 2015.
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