Promised lower penalties for drug offenses related to unauthorised production and handling: What changes can be expected?

The government has prepared a comprehensive amendment to the criminal law, introducing significant changes in the area of drug-related crime. Last autumn, it promised to lower the penalties for drug offenses in the draft amendment to criminal legislation. In the explanatory report, the government particularly highlighted the considerable variety of criminal conduct in drug-related cases.

Recently, proposed amendments were distributed to Members of Parliament, and the draft is now moving toward its third reading. The changes aim to reflect efforts for fairer sentencing, especially in less serious cases, such as the self-cultivation of cannabis.

The goal is to eliminate disproportionate punishments for individuals who produce drugs for their personal use and to better distinguish between serious and minor offenses. The government is also responding to the shift in public perception regarding cannabis and acknowledging that the current legislation often penalizes similar conduct inconsistently.

How will the change affect home growers?

Given the changing societal views on the harm of recreational cannabis use by adults, it is proposed to adjust the threshold between criminal offenses and administrative infractions and to legalise part of the self-cultivation of cannabis entirely.

The government noted that current legal practice and court decisions have gradually established the following interpretation:

• If a person grows plants or collects mushrooms containing narcotic and psychotropic substances (NPS) for personal use in more than a small quantity, they may be punished under Section 285 of the Criminal Code. This offense carries a milder penalty.
• However, if the person further processes the plants or mushrooms (for example, by drying or crushing them), even solely for personal use, this conduct may be classified as drug production under Section 283 of the Criminal Code. Drug production carries a significantly harsher penalty — imprisonment from one to five years.

This distinction is illogical because all such actions serve the same purpose: to obtain a substance for personal use. Yet they are punished differently — sometimes markedly so.

Therefore, a proposed amendment suggests introducing a new standalone offense of "unauthorised handling of cannabis," which would carry significantly lower penalties — with the basic offense punishable by up to one year of imprisonment.

Proposed reduction of penalties for the unauthorized production of narcotic or psychotropic substances

Regarding production under Section 283(1) of the Criminal Code, the government newly proposes requiring a more demanding process involving physical or chemical methods aimed at increasing the concentration of active substances or using advanced technologies.

At the same time, it proposes reducing penalties in other parts of Section 283. The reason is that the current narrow sentencing range does not allow courts to sufficiently differentiate between individual participants according to their level of involvement in the criminal activity.

For example, it is proposed to lower the minimum penalty to five years, so that courts can distinguish between a person who only purchased a precursor substance and a perpetrator who carried out the entire production of methamphetamine and kept all the profits.

Correspondingly, the minimum penalty would also be reduced for cases involving organized groups operating across multiple countries. The government noted that this criminal offense could be fulfilled even when an offender is only marginally involved — for instance, by delivering precursor substances from Poland — without being an actual member of the group.

Nevertheless, such conduct could currently be punished in the same way as activities of a large-scale international drug trafficking organization making huge profits. Therefore, the government proposes lowering the minimum sentence to eight years to better reflect these differences.

The proposed amendment also addresses the maximum penalties for less serious forms of production:

• In subsection (1), the maximum sentence would be reduced from five to three years,
• In subsection (2), from ten to eight years.

All proposed amendments have now been distributed to Members of Parliament. The draft legislation is thus entering the final stage of the legislative process.

Mgr. Petr Motyčka