The Executive Yuan is to propose an amendment to the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例) to reduce penalties for people caught growing cannabis plants for personal consumption, officials said.
The announcement came as a group that supports the decriminalization of cannabis said it would hold a rally on April 17 to demand “equal rights.”
Minister Without Portfolio Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) has completed a draft amendment and would present it to the Cabinet for review today, Executive Yuan officials said.
The draft would then be sent to the Legislative Yuan to start the amendment process, they said.
The amendment would reduce prison terms for people caught growing cannabis for personal use from five years to one year. It would also reduce the maximum fine of NT$5 million (US$176,516) and allow judges to use their discretion when imposing one.
The Executive Yuan’s move came after the Council of Grand Justices in March last year issued Constitutional Interpretation No. 790 to strike down provisions in the act.
The grand justices’ ruling followed an appeal by Huang Hsien-chang (黃獻璋), who was convicted for cannabis possession.
Huang was convicted in 2017 when police searched his Tainan residence and found six potted cannabis plants.
He said he bought the seeds from a UK-based Web site.
Huang was eventually handed a two-year and six-month prison term for cannabis possession.
However, he challenged the ruling, saying that penalty was disproportionate to his crime, as he did not traffic drugs, and only grew the plants for personal consumption.
Huang and his lawyer argued that the ruling contravened articles 7 and 8 of the Constitution, which guarantee equality before the law and personal freedoms respectively.
The ruling also violated the principle of the punishment fitting the crime, they said.
The grand justices ruled that Article 12, Item 2 of the act was unconstitutional.
The item reads: “Individual convicted for cultivating cannabis with the intention to supply for manufacturing narcotics shall be punished with a minimum of five-year fixed-term imprisonment and may be fined no more than NT$5 million.”
Although the act categorizes cannabis as a Class 2 narcotic, Article 12 makes no discrimination on the severity of breaches, the justices said.
This has led to judges imposing prison terms of at least five years, regardless of whether the offender was simply in possession of cannabis or trafficking large quantities of it, they said.
The proposed amendment would change Article 12 to limit the maximum prison term to seven years for people caught growing cannabis for personal use.
Judges may also order first-time offenders into drug rehabilitation, instead of imprisonment.
Meanwhile, the group Green Sensation, which calls for the decriminalization of cannabis, has said it would hold a rally on April 17.
The rally would include musical performances, speeches, lectures and a street market.
The Saturday rally would mark the annual “420 Equal Rights for Cannabis” gathering, which began in 2019.
April 20 is International Peter Tosh Day, in remembrance of the reggae music icon and to mark the global “420 Cannabis Day,” organizers said.
They are also planning to hold a brief commemoration for Bunny Wailer, who died last week, they said.
Wailer was the last surviving founding member of Jamaican reggae group the Wailers. The other founders were Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.
The trio were famous for advocating the legal use of cannabis, which they considered a sacrament of their Rastafarian religion, they said.
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