Thousands of young people gathered in front of the Georgian parliament building in capital Tbilisi on May 12 \u2014 not over a contested election, the sort of thing that usually sparks demonstrations in the former Soviet republics, but to protest police drug raids on two nightclubs the previous evening. In addition to calling for the resignation of the interior minister, protesters demanded legalization of personal possession of cannabis and other \u201crecreational\u201d drugs.<\/p>\n
As the New York Times\u00a0reports<\/a>, even though the protesters were labeled as derelicts and drug addicts, the government took the demonstration seriously enough to offer negotiations \u2014 and to move water cannons into position in the streets of Tbilisi, the country\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n Protesters\u00a0held the square<\/a>\u00a0outside the parliament building through the night. To prevent what was shaping up as an occupation of the square, Interior Minister Giorgi Gakharia issued an apology for the excessive use of force in the raids and pledged to meet with activist leaders to discuss their demands. Prime Minister\u00a0Giorgi Kvirikashvili also issued a statement, saying \u201cthe government will have a firm position on the drug trade on the one hand, and will be a lot more humane to drug users on the other.\u201d<\/p>\n The activist group behind the demonstration, calling itself\u00a0White Noise, first came together in 2013 to defend a young artist, Beka Tsikarishvili, who was then facing 14 years in prison for possessing 65 grams of cannabis \u2014 about two ounces. As the case wound through the courts, the \u201cBeka Is Not a Criminal\u201d movement repeatedly took to the streets to demand his freedom, as Georgia\u2019s OC Media website\u00a0reported<\/a>. The campaign paid off. In 2015, Georgia\u2019s Constitutional Court\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0imprisonment for possession of fewer than 70 grams of cannabis to be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n A year later, under continued activist pressure, the Constitutional Court ruled that imprisonment for possession or consumption of any amount of cannabis is unconstitutional. And in July 2017, the Georgian parliament amended the law to comply with the ruling, imposing a fine for cannabis possession instead of prison time. Although possession in any quantity technically remained a criminal offense, Georgia had basically won\u00a0de facto<\/i>\u00a0decriminalization.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a great victory,\u201d said White Noise leader David Subeliani\u00a0in an interview<\/a>\u00a0with pan-European pro-democracy website Political Critique. \u201cNot only because Beka avoided a prison sentence, but also because hundreds of prisoners for the same charge were immediately released.\u201d<\/p>\n Beka, who spent two weeks in jail upon his 2013 bust before being released on bail, ultimately had to pay a fine,\u00a0Radio Free Europe\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0last December.<\/p>\n This victory was especially meaningful in a country which had long been something of an anti-drug police state. Police routinely carried out spot checks on the streets and in clubs, demanding urine samples. Many thousands were thusly tested, and hundreds imprisoned for years merely for failing a urine test. In 2015, a suspect died after officers allegedly made him take diuretic pills for a test, fueling violent protests in Tbilisi. As The Guardian\u00a0reports<\/a>, even now Georgians still face a fine of 500 lari ($200) if they are found with THC in their urine.<\/p>\n The \u201cBeka Is Not a Criminal\u201d campaign later transformed into the White Noise movement, which continued to campaign for drug-law reform and rallied support for others facing lengthy prison terms. This has also won results. The liberal opposition party\u00a0Girchi<\/a>\u00a0in 2016 adopted a plank to officially decriminalize cannabis and turned this into one of its leading issues,\u00a0Radio Free Europe\u00a0reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n There is a sense here of a deep indigenous tradition of cannabis use re-emerging from the shadows after the long years of Soviet and post-Soviet repression. The\u00a0food-and-travel website Atlas Obscura this month\u00a0ran a piece<\/a>\u00a0on the culinary use of cannabis by the\u00a0Svans<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 an ancient community living in the highest inhabited settlements of Georgia\u2019s Caucasus Mountains. They have kept alive the ancient custom of using cannabis as an herb in\u00a0khachapuri<\/i>, the traditional Georgian cheese bread. With the legal and cultural thaw, such traditions may seep back down from the remote mountain communities to Georgia\u2019s heartland.<\/p>\n And in another sign of cultural thaw, on May 17, a group of some 250 gay rights activists holding rainbow flags gathered in the same square in Tbilisi that White Noise had occupied, to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT<\/a>),\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0Civil Georgia.<\/p>\n Georgia\u2019s leaders are doubtless very attentive to the demands of demonstrators right now, following the recent events in neighboring Armenia, where a protest movement in April succeeded in\u00a0bringing down the long-ruling patriarch<\/a>. The real test for the future of the region will be whether the contagion of dissent spreads across the border into Russia, and especially its southern republic of Chechnya, which borders Georgia on the north. There, in contrast to the recent liberalizing trajectory in Georgia, a harsh anti-drug (and anti-gay)\u00a0police state is fast consolidating<\/a>.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b>\u00a0do you think public protests are effective in the effort to legalize cannabis?<\/p>\n The post Youth Movement Protests Pot Prohibition in Ex-Soviet Georgia<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Thousands of young people gathered in front of the Georgian parliament building in capital Tbilisi on May 12 \u2014 not over a contested election, the sort of thing that usually sparks demonstrations in the former Soviet republics, but to protest police drug raids on two nightclubs the previous evening. InContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,4153,94,734,901,1593,81,561,130,4322,4323,4324],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26323,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26322\/revisions\/26323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Early Victories of the Youth Legalization Movement<\/h4>\n
Georgia\u2019s History as an Anti-Drug Police State<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Youth Movement Protests Pot Prohibition in Ex-Soviet Georgia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"