Basketball star Brittney Griner gets 9 years in Russia over vape hash oil
A Russian court in Khimki convicted American WNBA player Brittney Griner on 4 August 2022 of smuggling cannabis oil and sentenced her to nine years in prison and a 1 million rouble fine. She had been detained at a Moscow airport on 17 February with vape cartridges in her luggage and was freed in December in a prisoner exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout.
American basketball player Brittney Griner was detained by Russian customs at an
airport on 17 February 2022 after officials said her luggage held vape
cartridges containing cannabis oil.[1][2]Customs officers at Sheremetyevo
International Airport outside Moscow found less than a gram of hash oil in the
cartridges.[3]Her lawyers said she used cannabis for medical reasons, and she
said she had been prescribed medicinal cannabis in Arizona.[3]Her trial began
in July 2022 and she pleaded guilty while saying she had packed the cannabis oil
by accident.[4]
On 4 August 2022 the Khimki Court outside Moscow found Griner guilty of drug
charges and sentenced her to nine years in prison.[4]The court also fined her
1 million roubles, about $16,301.[4]The charge carried a penalty of up to 10
years, and prosecutors had asked for nine and a half years.[4]Griner asked
the court for leniency and said she had never meant to hurt anybody or to break
any laws here.[4]
In October 2022 a Russian court rejected her appeal.[1]On 8 December 2022 she
was released in a prisoner exchange for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who
was serving a 25-year sentence in a US federal prison.[1][2]Before the sentence,
the US State Department said Griner was being wrongfully detained.[3]
The prisoner trade took place in the United Arab Emirates.[2]
Photos and video
Brittney Griner being escorted to a courtroom outside Moscow on 7 July 2022; credited on the page to AFP via Getty Images.Photo details
A Blagoveshchensk city court sentenced a local man to four and a half years in a strict-regime penal colony for illegally acquiring and storing more than 23 kilograms of marijuana and cultivating 162 cannabis plants. He gathered the plant near Markovo in August 2025, hid it in an abandoned house in Belogorye, and tended sprouts in his own garden from May to July 2026.
The Bakhchisaray district court in Crimea convicted a resident of the village of Rechnoye under part 2 of article 228 and gave him three years of imprisonment, suspended, with a three-year probation period. Prosecutors said he picked leaves and flower heads from cannabis bushes he had planted at his home in July 2026 and kept 312 grams of the plant material in his outbuilding for his own use.
Convicted 1Sentenced 1Cannabis 312 gPrison 3 years suspended with 3-year probation
A court in Amur Oblast convicted a 20-year-old resident of Petropavlovka, in Ivanovsky District, of illegally buying a large consignment of cannabis in June and revoked his earlier suspended sentence. He was ordered to serve two and a half years in a general-regime penal colony after pleading guilty in full.
A court in Usman municipal okrug, Lipetsk Oblast, sentenced a local man to nine months in a strict-regime colony for illegally growing more than 30 cannabis bushes on the garden plot of his house. Prosecutors said he sowed the seeds for his own use, and the case was brought under part 1 of article 231 of Russia's Criminal Code.
