Shanghai court jails three pig-farm cannabis growers over buried “drop” sales
Putuo District People's Court in Shanghai sentenced Fan and two friends to six to ten months in prison for selling and transporting cannabis after police caught them in Putuo on 3 August 2024 with nine bags of leaf from plants grown at a remote pig farm. The court heard they had sold earlier harvests through buried dead drops arranged online.
Three men who grew cannabis at a remote pig farm and drove to Shanghai to bury
sales for online buyers were sentenced for selling and transporting drugs,
Legal Daily reported on 26 June 2025.[1]Tencent News carried the same court
account on 24 June.[2]
Fan, a pig-farm worker, bought 20 cannabis seeds online, planted two plants
behind the farm and later expanded onto a hillside shack with two childhood
friends, the court heard.[1][2]After a successful buried “drop” sale in
Shanghai, the group looked for new buyers in August 2024, drove to Putuo
District and were stopped by police on 3 August 2024 with nine bags of cannabis
leaf; officers also destroyed plants at the farm.[1][2]
Putuo District People’s Court convicted Fan and the two others of selling and
transporting drugs, noting partial attempts and guilty pleas, and sentenced each
to between six and ten months in prison plus fines.[1][2]Judge Shen Hengzhi
told Legal Daily that cannabis is a controlled drug in China regardless of
foreign legalisation debates.[2]
The sentencing notices did not break down individual prison terms or give the
net weight of the nine bags.[1][2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Legal Daily and Tencent give only the range of six to ten months and fines without naming which defendant received which term or the fine amounts.
The pig farm where Fan first planted two plants is described only as remote; its province or county is not named in the text opened.
Laboratory weights for the nine bags seized on 3 August 2024 are not quoted; earlier undercover buys included a 90 g buried package in February 2024 per related prosecution reporting not cited here.
Tencent republishes a Legal Daily interview with judge Shen Hengzhi; the exact sentencing date is not given beyond “recently” before the 24 June 2025 report.
Qujing court sentenced two men for picking and drying wild cannabis leaves, using some themselves and selling some to another person. One received a one-year prison term and the other nine months.
Beijing No. 4 Intermediate People's Court sentenced a man named Wang to six months in prison and a 5,000-yuan fine on 26 June 2026 for smuggling cannabis e-cigarettes posted to him from abroad and concealed in supplement bottles. Police seized 16 e-cigarettes holding 6.92 grams of THC paste; the court treated it as a small quantity and gave him leniency for his confession.
Two foreign transit passengers were sentenced to eight and four years after Customs seized 70.8309 kg of cannabis from four checked bags at Beijing Capital International Airport in June 2025. They had planned to carry it through Beijing to a third country.
Charged 2Cannabis 70.8309 kgPrison 8 years and 4 years
A Shanghai court sentenced a man named Xu to four years in prison and a 10,000-yuan fine on 30 March 2026 for smuggling and transporting more than four kilograms of cannabis from Southeast Asia in three trips in 2025 and burying it in four cities. No cannabis was recovered; prosecutors built the case from bank flows, travel records and recovered phone data, and he confessed.
