Growing cannabis up to the number of three plants should not even be an offense in the future. The intended legalization only applies to cultivation for personal use by people over the age of 21. The boundary between a misdemeanor and a criminal offense should be exceeding the number of five plants. It will be possible to legally store up to 50 grams of dry cannabis at home, 25 grams outside the home. The amendment to the criminal regulations, which the Ministry of Justice sent to the government today and which is available to ČTK, takes this into account.
“In this respect, the proposal reevaluates the question of what actions should be criminal at all, and liberalizes today’s regulation, where some actions today are classified as misdemeanors and some actions are completely legalized,” the ministry summarized in the presentation report. The partial legalization of self-cultivation was justified by a change in social perception of the harmfulness of recreational marijuana use by adults.
Currently, five cannabis plants or ten grams of dry matter are considered to be an amount greater than a small amount that falls under the offence. It is a misdemeanor to handle less than that. Newly, the ministry wants to set the boundary between a misdemeanor and a criminal offense at five cannabis plants, 100 grams of dry matter when a person has it at home, or 50 grams when it is outside their home.
For the crime of unauthorized cultivation, harvesting or processing of cannabis, i.e. more than five plants, or for keeping a higher than the mentioned amount of dry matter for personal use, the basic rate will be a maximum of six months in prison. For the possession of other narcotic or psychotropic substances for personal use in quantities greater than small, the basic rate will be up to two years.
“The fact that the cultivation and subsequent processing of the cannabis plant for personal use can be punished less strictly than the production of other narcotic and psychotropic substances is also indicated by international treaties and regulations of the European Union,” the ministry stated.
The proposal also increases possible fines for drug offenses from 15,000 to 50,000 crowns.
The amendment to the Criminal Code also brings changes to the criminal offense of illicit drug production, where in more serious cases it lowers the lower limit of the rate from eight years to five, or from ten years to eight.
For the crime of spreading drug addiction – i.e. seducing another to abuse an addictive substance – the proposal presents two variants. The first one envisages maintaining the current state, when this behavior is criminal against anyone. According to the second, only acts directed against children will be criminal.
The proponents admitted that they failed to reach an agreement when dealing with comments on the regulation of drug offences, namely with the Ministry of Regional Development, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Deputy Prime Minister for Digitization, the Minister for Legislation, the Cabinet Office and the Commissioner for Human Rights.
Source: www.tyden.cz
