According to Harm Reduction International, court cases for possessing or smoking cannabis fell by more than 90 per cent after the reform of April 2015, and criminal cases referred to the courts in 2016 were 25 per cent fewer than in 2014. In 2016 the government nearly doubled its budget for the national HIV response, from 2.83 to 5.17 million US dollars.
An Australian resident entered pretrial custody in Dili in a case involving five suspected cannabis plants, according to Lusa reporting.[@1] Prosecutors had challenged an earlier decision allowing him to remain outside prison with reporting requirements and a confiscated passport, and the appeal court backed detention.[@1] The case later led to a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, with the…
A judicial source told a government newspaper that 620 drug cases had come before the courts in four months, 115 of them in Damascus, against fewer than 500 in the whole of 2013. He recalled that trafficking carries ten years to death under the 1993 law, that whoever plants cannabis is treated as a trader, and that the law regards addicts as the victims of dealers.
Moscow police arrested the investigative reporter Ivan Golunov on drug charges; they published photographs of a drug laboratory and then admitted that only one had been taken in his flat. Three leading newspapers ran the same front page, the case was dropped after four days, and five officers were later sentenced to between 5 and 12 years. The case revived calls to soften Article 228.