Charleston, SC Public Conduct: Public Marijuana Use (2026)

City Code § 21-126, part of Chapter 21's Article VI offenses against public health, prohibits selling, offering for sale, giving away, bargaining, trading, distributing, transporting, using, prescribing, possessing, knowingly keeping, concealing or allowing on premises under one's control one ounce or less of marijuana or ten grams or less of hashish. The section sets its own misdemeanor penalty, a fine up to $100 or up to 30 days in jail, only for subsection (b), which separately bans inhaling aromatic hydrocarbon fumes to get intoxicated; subsection (a)'s marijuana and hashish prohibition carries no stated penalty of its own, so it falls back to the Code's general penalty at § 1-16, a fine up to $500 or up to 30 days in jail, with each day of a continuing violation charged as a separate offense.

Because the ordinance is not limited to any location, the Charleston Police Department applies it the same way to marijuana smoked or held in a public park, on King Street, at a festival, or on private property; there is no carve-out for outdoor or public consumption. The adjoining § 21-127 separately bans possessing or selling paraphernalia used to ingest, smoke or prepare marijuana, hashish, hashish oil or cocaine. Both sections operate alongside, not instead of, South Carolina's own marijuana possession statutes, which carry their own separate state penalties.