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+# Abkhazia: possession, growing, administrative use and court safeguards
+
+Reviewed 24 October 2026. Six new history entries, three revised entries and four new articles. Abkhazia previously had four entries and no articles. Current profile text is replaced with inline primary citations. Disputed-territory metadata, flag, region, recreational and medical classifications are preserved.
+
+## Primary sources read
+
+Downloads and extracted texts are retained in ignored `tmp/history-abkhazia-gap-2026-10-24/`.
+
+### Criminal Code and its dated provisions
+
+`code-current.pdf/.txt`: Criminal Code posted by the Supreme Court at https://supreme.vs-ra.org/images/DOCS/Reglament/UK_RA.pdf . The court's current regulatory-documents catalogue links this file. Its listed amendments run through 4 August 2023. Read articles 54, 79–80, 223, 224, 224.1, 228–229 and relevant footnotes. This replaces reliance on broad press descriptions of the offences.
+
+- Article 228, expressly in the version of Law 2426 of 21 July 2009: sowing/growing prohibited plants, including cannabis, 6–8 years and RUB100,000–150,000. Group, organised-group or large-scale cultivation: 10–12 years. No ordinary few-plant noncustodial exception appears in this provision.
+- Article 223, introduced by Law 3187 of 7 August 2012: ordinary non-supply possession/acquisition/transport 1–3 years; large 3–5 with fine; especially large 5–7 with fine. Exemption requires voluntary surrender AND active cooperation. Seizure during arrest or a search is not voluntary surrender.
+- Article 224: ordinary supply 5–8 years and fine; middle tier 8–12 and fine. Part 3 expressly notes commencement on 1 March 2020. The later March 2020 wording prescribes 15 years and fine, with life or death absent mitigating circumstances. Article 224.1 has separate import/export/transit tiers and the same March commencement note for part 3. Do not equate every possession, import or gift with the capital tier.
+- Article 54 excludes women, people who offended before eighteen and men aged sixty-five by sentencing from death; commutation is provided. Article 79 states general pardon powers. The profile's old blanket no-pardon/no-sentence-reduction assertion is not repeated: the Supreme Court's later mitigation instructions positively contradict the blanket reduction claim.
+- Article 80 explains criminal-record status; article 229 criminalises running premises for drug consumption.
+
+`code.pdf/.txt`, initially retrieved from Abkhazia's representative office in Transnistria, is only consolidated through 2012. It was useful as a historical cross-check but is NOT used as the current code. Its general web indexing/publication recency does not update its contents.
+
+The code references a 2009 rewritten cultivation provision and a 2012 introduced possession article. Exact gazette commencement dates and original pre-amendment wording remain retrieval tasks. Events are dated to the named laws, describe their stated penalties and do not claim those dates as recovered gazette commencement dates.
+
+### Administrative use reform actually adopted
+
+`admin.pdf/.txt`: Supreme Court's linked Administrative Offences Code at https://supreme.vs-ra.org/images/DOCS/Reglament/kodeksobadmprav.pdf . The catalogue identifies the consolidated version through December 2024 / January 2025. Read article 45 and Law 5601 of 3 April 2023 amendment note.
+
+Final wording: non-prescribed cannabis OR hashish use 3 days' administrative arrest, repetition within a year 10 days. Other drug use/refusal of examination: 15 days, repetition 30. The cannabis paragraph's note bars renewed liability under the first-use paragraph within fifteen days from the earlier liability decision. Voluntary medical help for illegal use exempts the person from administrative liability under this article; it is not blanket immunity for possession or supply.
+
+The new event uses the law's 3 April date, not an independently recovered publication/commencement date. Public text says “law dated 3 April,” avoiding an invented exact commencement.
+
+`vote2022.html/.txt`: complete Ekho Kavkaza report, 29 December 2022. First reading proposed 3 days for cannabis and 30 days for repetition. Deputy Dmitry Marshania explained the previous uniform 15-day sanction; deputies argued for a lighter cannabis penalty. This remains category debate, now linked to the final 3/10-day statutory outcome. The final repeat figure must not be copied from the earlier proposal.
+
+A 23 March 2023 first-reading report was indexed by Apsnypress but the retrieved URL returned 404. Its snippet mixes exceptions in confusing wording. It was not used to establish final law; the court-posted code is decisive.
+
+### Supreme Court guidance of October 2025
+
+`supreme-new.pdf`, `supreme-plain.txt`, `guidance2025.txt`, `guidance-plain.txt`: official Bulletin 1/2026, 280 PDF pages, new valid host https://supreme.vs-ra.org/images/PDF/bul20261.pdf . Read decision 14 of 17 October 2025, printed pages 83–91, especially introductory reasons and paragraphs 1–3, 12–16, 18, 21–28 and 30. The old hostname redirected PDF requests to the new home page; moving to the verified new hostname recovered the actual PDF. All cited material is text-native.
+
+- Paragraph 3: ordinary non-supply possession liability applies irrespective of quantity below larger tiers. Higher thresholds do not create a small-quantity possession permission.
+- Paragraphs 12–16: supply includes sale, gift, exchange, debt payment and loan; individual proof of intent; intermediary roles; lawful authorisation for test purchases. Do not apply the injection-related exceptions as a general cannabis-sharing permission.
+- Paragraph 18: drugs not lawfully seized and properly examined cannot become the subject of trial solely because someone confessed. No fabricated case outcome is inferred.
+- Paragraph 23: constitutional legal-assistance and self-incrimination protections apply when questioning a detained person becomes incriminating. Administratively detained people cannot be questioned about other investigative materials or criminal cases without a lawyer. The article states that specific rule rather than inventing a broad automatic exclusion remedy.
+- Paragraph 26: life/death prohibited with mitigating circumstances; specified cooperation plus absence of aggravation invokes the two-thirds rule. Do not simplify all mitigation to an automatic fixed ten-year term.
+- Paragraphs 27–28: cultivation includes creating growing conditions and plant development; combined cultivation, extraction, holding, transport or supply may lead to combined offences.
+- Paragraph 30 replaces 2011 and 2012 drug-case guidance. The court discusses errors and unjustified convictions; its general findings are attributed to the court rather than presented as a fresh statistical survey.
+
+The new search registry https://vsdocs.apsny.land/search.php and court catalogue were inspected read-only. No upload, edit or other mutation was made.
+
+### Ten-plant cabinet announcement in August 2026
+
+`plants-release.html/.txt`: official Apsnypress report, 25 August 2026, at https://apsnypress.info/ru/item/21629-kabmin-abkhazii-utverdil-krupnye-razmery-narkosoderzhashchikh-rastenij-dlya-tselej-uk-ra . Read complete report. Cabinet amends its 17 July 2013 quantity decision; ten plants is the large-scale threshold for Cannabis and several other species. The report says commencement upon official publication. Neither exact publication date nor the prior plant-count threshold is established here.
+
+The event is category other with an explicit unscored reason: do not invent a tightening/easing direction from an unread prior number. The description and article identify the announcement date and publication condition. Smaller unlawful cultivation remains subject to the ordinary offence; ten plants is not a home-growing allowance. Do not import Russian plant thresholds or treat a newspaper's number of seized roots as the statutory threshold.
+
+The older `km-ra.org` hostname returned unrelated gambling content and supplied no legal evidence. An Apsadgil mirror returned 500. These are not authorities used for the threshold. The recovered state-news report is cited directly.
+
+## Capital-penalty date and later mitigation
+
+`death2019.html/.txt`: Voice of America, 10 April 2019, read relevant account. Deputy Dmitry Dbar argued for harsher penalties in response to overdose deaths and couriers. It forecast 1 January 2020 commencement and reported historical execution-moratorium context. The current code explicitly gives 1 March 2020, so the event and profile are corrected to March. The article uses the historical moratorium only as context to the 2019 debate; it does not certify whether executions remained suspended in October 2026 or claim a drug execution occurred.
+
+`exception2020.html/.txt`: Abkhazia-Inform, 12 March 2020, read complete substantive report. It describes a parliamentary vote and age/cooperation exceptions, but some reported ranges do not match the later consolidated wording. The new event is dated to the code's 20 March 2020 amendment and uses the actual code plus 2025 court guidance. No unverified March 12 commencement or blanket age exception from the article is adopted.
+
+`proposal2023.html/.txt`: Abkhaz World, 30 March 2023. Daur Amichba's criticism of harsher penalties, proposal for a central body and statement that enforcement reaches consumers/small dealers are attributed to him, not asserted as independently verified effectiveness statistics. It supplies human/policy context for the capital-penalty article and revised debate entry.
+
+## Score reconstruction and remaining historical limits
+
+Current possession 1 → 0, cultivation 1 → 0 and enforcement 1 → 0 now reflect the verified prison/capital provisions. Sharing 0, consumption 1 and access 0 remain unchanged. Exact current score moves from 8 to 1; as a disputed territory, Abkhazia does not affect the world average.
+
+The earlier scored baseline was inherited: possession 1, cultivation 1, enforcement 2, sharing 0, consumption 1, access 0. It is now the before-vector at the 2009 rewritten cultivation provision. The 2012 introduced possession provision carries the possession correction, and the existing 2020 capital step is re-based to possession/cultivation 0 and retains enforcement 2 before the capital drop to 0. The 1934 FREE vector is unchanged.
+
+These placements attach the verified strict penalties to their named statutory versions rather than incorrectly making all three current corrections occur in 2020. The inherited earlier levels and the exact transition timing still need checking against original pre-2009/pre-2012 texts and gazette commencement. A consolidated amendment note establishes the dated wording; it does not independently prove every earlier penalty or sentencing practice. Recover the originals before presenting the earlier baseline as a complete historical reconstruction. The 1934 first-ban source also remains weak and was not re-researched here. The structural chain check is not proof of those earlier historical facts.
+
+The 2023 shorter use arrest remains within the same illegal-use consumption band; it does not legalise possession or growing. The March mitigation change leaves capital punishment available in cases without mitigation, so it stays within enforcement 0. The 2025 mixed guidance clarifies existing offences and safeguards rather than introducing a new penalty range.
+
+## Other retrieval and classification limits
+
+- The 2026 President's page returned an attached 27 July 2026 archaeology amendment (`president-law.pdf/.txt`), despite the generic criminal-code-amendment title. It is unrelated to cannabis and was not added as a drug event.
+- A 23 April 2025 criminal-code amendment was indexed in the official newspaper, but direct download returned 404. It was not read and supplies no substantive claim here. Current public text relies on the court's posted code, its October 2025 guidance and the August 2026 cabinet announcement; a fully up-to-date gazette consolidation remains a follow-up.
+- The medical-use phrase in administrative article 45 is not evidence of an operating patient cannabis programme. Medical-none and access 0 are preserved; public medical context describes the actual use/medical-help exemption. Licensing, commercial products and seed/clone-specific law were not independently established, so no invented planting classification is added.
+- Broad statements about foreign offenders being unpardonable, absence of all legal medical products, or no known clubs were removed. The profile instead describes the statutory offences and procedural rules actually read.
+
+## Validation
+
+Local verifier checks article length (350–500 words), 3–5 sections, inline source coverage, valid categories/tags, related links, current score vector and the three dated penalty steps. Disputed metadata and unaffected status fields are preserved. Production build passed with 4,054 pages. Rendered verification passed for 104 citation links, numbered references, tag pages, history JSON/CSV, profile API and score exports; exact current score is 1 and medical classification remains None. Structural score-chain checker reports no flagged steps; the historical source limits above remain open. The isolated commit includes only this batch’s nine history blocks, country profile, four articles and this note. The temporary `site` build was deleted after verification; research downloads and logs are retained. Unrelated staged/working `source-archive.json` changes are excluded from the commit.