| Photo: Where I Come From….. |
| Croatia’s first woman Prime Minister, Jadranka Kosor, had a chance to lead her country into the future. But she blew it. |
The prime minister of Croatia has said her party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union, would not support the decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana.
Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, the first female prime minister of her country, said she is against a working group’s proposal to change Croatia’s criminal law to make possession of small quantities of cannabis legal, reports the Croatian Times.
“A decriminalization of the possession of quantities of any sort of drugs has never been acceptable to our party,” Kosor said.
The prime minister added that the Christian Democratic Union (HDZ) would “stick to their position” among coalition partners in the Croatian government.
No distinction is made in Croatian law between marijuana and other illegal substances. According to the current law, growing or sale of cannabis (or any other drug) is considered a felony punishable by a mandatory three-year minimum prison sentence.
The possession of any amount in Croatia is a felony with either a fine or a one-year prison sentence, depending on the circumstances of the case, although people arrested with smaller amounts of cannabis are typically just fined after the court’s ruling.
| Photo: In Strumica |
| A primitive form of alcohol-based tincture called “Green Dragon,” featuring cannabis buds immersed in brandy, is popular in Croatia. |
In April 2010 the attorney general and chief of police adopted a set of temporary “working guidelines” which downgraded the possession of small amounts of cannabis to a misdemeanor with only a fine.
The possibility of decriminalizing small amounts of drugs was announced last October by Minister of Justice Drazen Bošnjaković, who said such reforms were “a trend everywhere in Europe.”
The Justice Ministry confirmed that a proposition to change the legal status of possession and growing of cannabis “for personal use” to misdemeanors will be featured in an upcoming package of reforms — which brings us to the “working group” that Prime Minister Kosor now feels the need to oppose.
