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A Russian court sentenced U.S. citizen and WNBA player Brittney Griner to nine and a half years in prison on Thursday for smuggling cannabis oil into Russia in February.
This sentence appears to be in accordance with an established Russian penal code outlining criminal punishments for people found guilty of violating the nation’s cannabis circulation laws. The code states that a person convicted of such a crime “may be sentenced to eight to twenty years of imprisonment, or even to a life sentence if the crime is committed on an especially large scale (for cannabis this means more than 10kg),” the international legal advisory service CMS observed in a recent article.
Russian law prohibits the use of cannabis for medical or recreational purposes, according to an article titled “Cannabis Law and Legislation in Russia,” published by CMS in April 2021.
“Cannabis is included in the List I of the narcotic and psychoactive substances. The circulation of substances included in the List I is under the strictest governmental control,” CMS wrote.
This statement is supported by a copy of the “Enumeration of Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Their Precursors That Shall Be Subject to Control in the Russian Federation” published on the World Trade Organization’s website. “List I” of the document includes “Cannabis (marihuana) [sic].”
“Depending on particular circumstances, a violation of the rules on cannabis circulation may be punished under different articles of the Russian Criminal Code,” according to CMS.
