"Death penalty in China, Malasia and Singapore, 10 yrs in a roach infested prison in India, 5-7 years incomunicado in Japan for possession.."Sure as hell sounds illegal to me..
Drug offenders continued to face the death penalty. According to Amnesty International, China sentenced 662 people to death in 1997 for drug offenses and executed at least 437. The quantities of drugs triggering the death penalty can be small: in June, a Malaysian court sentenced a man to death for trafficking in a pound and a half of marijuana. In Vietnam, possession with intent to sell a mere 3.6 ounces of heroin is punishable by death. More than thirty drug traffickers were sentenced to death in Vietnam during 1998. In Singapore, two men were executed in September for offenses involving cannabis and morphine. Singapore imposes the death penalty on adults trafficking in as little as one-half ounce of heroin, one ounce of morphine or eighteen ounces of marijuana. Since 1975, it has executed more than 300 people, mostly for drug-related offenses.
Malaysia strictly enforces its drug laws. Malaysian legislation provides for a mandatory death penalty for convicted drug traffickers. Individuals arrested in possession of 15 grams (1/2 ounce) of heroin or 200 grams (seven ounces) of marijuana are presumed by law to be trafficking in drugs.
FROM her cockroach-infested prison cell in Goa, Alexia Stewart can't see the Western tourists who flock to Fort Aguada in Goa, one of the coastal states of India. But they're up there, strolling the 17th-century ramparts, gazing at the white beaches, congratulating themselves on finding palm-fringed paradise just 11 hours by package flight from Gatwick Airport. Under their feet, in the squalid, fetid jail built beneath the Fort, Alexia is living in hellish conditions. The 28-year-old daughter of an Oxford don is serving a 10-year jail sentence for possessing 165g of cannabis. She insists the drugs were planted by corrupt local police. Her father Philip, who teaches human sciences, says the case was based on "shoddy evidence". He has flown to Goa in the latest stage of a battle to free Alexia and her boyfriend Gary Carter from jail. Their appeal against conviction began yesterday. Given the tortuous Indian legal system, a quick outcome looks unlikely.
Although criminalised in Japan by the post World War II occupying US administration in 1948, marijuana never completely went away. Successive US-friendly Japanese governments have demonised marijuana, describing all use of marijuana as "drug abuse" and claiming that cannabis use can cause mental illness, mood swings, hallucinations and threats of violence to others. Most people in Japan believe that marijuana is a narcotic and are unaware that this same "dangerous" substance is the familiar crop that has been growing all over Japan for over 2,000 years. Every year in Japan, over a million wild cannabis plants are destroyed by narcotics agents. Cannabis was for centuries part of Japan's culture and was used for everyday fibres and fabrics as well as for sacred rituals. To this day, the Emperor wears hemp clothes on some religious occasions. Possession of cannabis can bring prison sentences of up to 5 years and cultivating or trading in cannabis can bring prison sentences of up to 7 years.
NAIROBI - Environment and Natural Resources Minister, Dr Newton Kulundu, yesterday ordered DCs to launch a major crackdown on leaders cultivating bhang in forests.
Kulundu said his ministry had established that some leaders were involved in cultivation of the drug as it was a "lucrative but illegal business" to enrich themselves.
He told DCs to destroy the plantations in forests and arrest suspects so they can face the full force of the law.
ZAMBIA, like many African countries, is facing a complex problem of cannabis cultivation, trafficking and abuse.Speaking at a workshop recently, DEC commissioner Mukutulu Sinyani lamented that insufficient manpower and other operational and logistical hiccups had contributed to the non-detection of some cultivators."Let me take this opportunity today and state that Zambia will never legalise the cultivation of cannabis.
Countries that have legalised this drug are not producing countries and hence they can control the small quantities of cannabis entering their countries," Mr Sinyani said.
Zambia on the other hand is a producing country of cannabis and this drug is now being grown at a commercial level. This also means the country exports to outside markets.
He said, for instance, interdiction efforts had so far yielded 54 tonnes of cannabis with an estimated street value of K40.5 billion for the period of January to May 2003.
Spain prohibits the use of cannabis but seldom prosecute for small (minuscule) amounts - whether or not to arrest is left to the discretion of the police.
Personal possession is now legally defined as up to 50 grams, but over that is considered a public health hazard.
Drug policy in Spain is limited to the public sphere rather than in private, in order to protect the rights of citizens.
An activist group in Barcelona, The Association for Cannabis Studies (ARSEC) has formed informal cannabis co-operative to grow 200 plants publicly to pave the way for decriminalisation. Eventually the main organisers were arrested and charged with transgression against public health.
