No scope for dope, says Zitnanska

At an Anti-drug Forum yesterday Minister of Justice Lucia Zitnanska said that at present there is no scope for the legalisation of marijuana in Slovakia.

Zitnanska did say, though, that there was some scope to examine the range of penalties for possession, even though no such plans are in the ministry’s pipeline just now. She also pondered on the idea of punishing those caught with marijuana in the form of community service or even house arrest.

A point was raised at the forum on the issue of how doses are classified, as this is not clear in the law, making it subjective. Zitnanska also played down any proposals to decriminalise a very small dose of marijuana, saying such lenience could be abused.

In the opinion of Petrzalka district court judge Marcela Kosova, about 90% of marijuana possession charges meet either with a conditional sentence or a fine.

The coalition SaS party had the decriminalisation of marijuana as part of its pre-election programme, but the current coalition does not look set to accommodate this demand. Source: TASR