Extend Vanuatu history with sentencing and export licensing

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+# Vanuatu history, sentencing and export licensing — 24 October 2026
+
+## Work completed
+
+Nine new history entries cover the 1989 general penalty clause, the medicines exemption after its 2005 revision, 2013 cultivation sentencing guidance, two 2017 community-sentence cases, a 2019 low-level seller, 2023 industry regulations, a 2024 five-plant/remand case and the reported 2025 banking-amendment vote. Three existing events were revised: the 2018 cabinet policy, the 2021 licensing Act and the January 2026 clarification. The 1939 anchor and 2006 treaty entry were left unchanged.
+
+Four articles cover the 2013 guidance, pest-barrier cultivation, the 2024 remand/suspension case and the export licensing Act. They have 387–412 words, four headings each, numeric inline references and country/earlier/later history links. New and revised history entries have valid tags, plain titles and inline references.
+
+The profile now distinguishes statutory maxima, court guidance, individual sentences, custody before bail, licensed export production, and medical import/dispensing exemptions. Its six segment blocks and seven revised context blocks use keyed inline references. The existing driving text and both of its source records are preserved semantically; that older block was outside this history audit. Planting status fields are preserved while its explanation is sourced to the actual industry Act.
+
+Current scores remain **1/1/2/1/1/0**, exact total **11**, with recreational illegal and medical limited. No new personal cultivation or patient access entitlement is inferred from export licensing. The 1939 100 → 11 allocation remains a historical limitation pending the original colonial instruments; this pass does not certify that the full present cannabis regime operated in 1939.
+
+## Sources actually read
+
+Downloads, extractions, failed-retrieval diagnostics and verification scripts remain in `tmp/history-vanuatu-gap-2026-10-24/`. Browser-accessible extractions were used where direct downloads failed. Neither an index entry nor an external website's claim to have read a document is treated as our own reading of it.
+
+### Dangerous Drugs Act and older gaps
+
+The government's trade-portal **Consolidated Edition 2006, Cap. 12**, twelve pages, was downloaded and its relevant full clauses read. The filename mentions Act 25/2005 but the document is a consolidation, not the original 1939 regulation or a complete original 2005 amending instrument.
+
+- Definition covers the cannabis plant, parts and seeds, excluding separated mature stalks/fibre; resin is defined separately. Section 2 expressly lists cannabis, resin/preparations and THC among many other substances.
+- Sections 2, 4 and 5 distinguish possession/supply, cultivation and premises permitted to be used for cannabis smoking. Section 5 must not be turned into a separately verified offence committed by every individual user. The profile's former unsupported standalone “Use is prohibited” was replaced with the actual possession and premises rules.
+- Section 3 exempts personal-use preparations carried into Vanuatu in a reasonable amount, with a doctor’s letter from the traveller’s country of origin and correct labelling. The endnote records its amendment by the 2005 Instrument of Variation. The public event describes the revised rule; it does not establish when such an exception first existed. The original instrument's exact publication day and the earlier section 3 text remain retrieval tasks.
+- Sections 7–9 provide medical/scientific import permits and prescription/dispensing exceptions. These are distinct from the later agricultural export licences; neither demonstrates an operating broad domestic cannabis patient service.
+- Section 17 sets up to VT100 million **or** twenty years **or both**, with the endnote attributing the replacement clause to Act 29/1989. The original 1989 amendment and prior tariff were not retrieved, so the new event uses the verified year and category other, without inventing a numerical increase or commencement day. The wide range is corroborated by later judicial accounts of Naio.
+- Sections 16–18 address vehicle/vessel forfeiture, possession presumptions for captains/drivers and condemnation; public consequences avoid treating every consequence as automatic or universal.
+- Front matter lists JR 12/1939, amendments in 1952, 1959, 1975, 1984, 1989 and 2005. The original colonial texts were not recovered. The existing 1939 entry already states that its original cannabis wording was not read; it is not newly rewritten as a verified first-ever cannabis ban.
+
+### Sentencing guidance and individual cases
+
+**Wetul v Public Prosecutor, 26 July 2013:** attempts to retrieve the original PacLII judgment failed (410/403, including the mirror). It is therefore sourced publicly through later **official court judgments that expressly reproduce its guidance**, rather than a citation to an unread original. Public Prosecutor v Lovis reproduces the full relevant categories and their rationale at paragraph 24; Iauko independently gives the exact date and case identification; Niawiye recounts the original grow and sentence at paragraph 14.
+
+The guidance describes small personal grows, small commercial grows and large commercial operations. Small personal cases normally receive fines or non-custodial measures; unpaid supplies, persistent offending or greater seriousness can warrant more. Commercial starting points are generally two–four years or four-plus, subject to circumstances. Counts and sizes are relevant, not fixed legal plant allowances. The original case involved nine commercially grown plants averaging 2.7 m and 6.8 kg; immediate 2y4 was replaced with seven months suspended for two years, plus supervision/community work, as recounted by the 2019 court. Exact community-work hours are not supplied publicly because they were not verified in an original accessible source.
+
+The 2019 judgment misprints Wetul as VUCA 36 in one citation; two 2017 official judgments identify VUCA 26 and 26 July. Naio is variously cited as 1998/1999 in later judgments. Its original decision date and full facts were not established, so no separate Naio event was invented.
+
+**Public Prosecutor v Iauko, 15 May 2017**, full short sentence read. Twenty-six plants grown in 2016 as a pest barrier, mainly against rats. The judge accepted the horticultural explanation but held it provided no defence under the then cultivation ban. Cooperative guilty plea and remorse; sixty hours community service. Counsel's absence and the judge's invitation to speak are correctly described. Historical hemp barrier use is attributed to the judge, not presented as an independently established scientific pest-control claim.
+
+**Public Prosecutor v Lovis, 1 September 2017**, complete relevant sentence read. Eight first offenders from Bankir: seven cultivation defendants and one possession defendant, conduct dating to 2009. Each received fifty hours community work and six months probation. Several described individual small plants. One invoked a Friday Church belief; the court warned that he could not continue cultivating. The judgment calls the elapsed period “some 9 years”; the public entry says only that the conduct dated to 2009, avoiding arithmetic inflation of the 2009–2017 interval. Defendant spellings vary inside the judgment, so the public event identifies the group rather than inventing standardised personal names.
+
+**Public Prosecutor v Niawiye, 1 March 2019**, relevant full facts, categories, mitigation and orders read. Eighteen at offending; 174.07 g, ten plants and selling rolls for an older relative. No established personal profit beyond accommodation, nor proof the ten plants were a commercial grow. Ten-month concurrent sentences suspended for two years and twelve months supervision. The court's recounting of Taviti distinguishes commercial cultivation from low-level street selling; no separate Taviti decision date was inferred from unrelated same-name cases returned by search.
+
+**Public Prosecutor v Kaiding, 23 May 2024**, full sentence read. Five plants, 15.5 g, first offender aged twenty-one, reported by his grandfather/chief. Arrest 18 November 2023, bail 19 February 2024, court credits three months two days in custody. Sixteen-month starting point reduced to nine months, then remand deduction leaves five months twenty-eight days suspended for two years; sixty hours community work and six months supervision. A suspended end sentence must not erase the earlier months in custody.
+
+**Public Prosecutor v Aru, 28 August 2026**, relevant charge/maxima and personal-use-guidance passages read. Confirms current possession maximum twenty years/VT100 million and use of the personal category for 0.4 g. The case also includes trespass and assault; no combined term is misrepresented as a cannabis-only sentence. Used for the current profile, not as another minor-case timeline event.
+
+Additional Massing (January 2025) and Wilson (April 2024) judgments were read as checks/leads. Massing combines cultivation with escape and contains chronological anomalies around the garden discovery and remand dates; its overall sentence is not published as punishment for a few grams alone. It was omitted. Wilson supports application of guidance to possession, but no separate event was needed after the stronger remand example.
+
+### Industry policy and legislation
+
+**2018 policy:** ABC Pacific Beat's 21 December report of interviews with Agriculture Director Antoine Ravo and farmer-network representative Lavinia Kaumaitotoya was read. It describes a cabinet policy proposing legislation for an export industry, with review and parliamentary debate to follow. The existing event's category medical and date 20 September were therefore replaced with **debate, 2018**: the precise decision day was not independently read in a primary document. Wikipedia was removed as the source.
+
+MJBizDaily links an apparent four-page original cabinet scan, `157-blong-2018_policy-directions-on-cannabis.pdf`. The link was discovered, but direct retrieval returned 403 and web rendering did not yield readable page images (some 429). It was **not read** and is not cited as a verified source. An external commercial cannabinoid website was used only to look for original-source links; its legal conclusions, reported archival readings and operational claims were not adopted as evidence.
+
+**Industrial Hemp and Medical Cannabis Act 31/2021:** the complete 15-page PDF extraction was read through the web tool; direct file download returned 403. The Act's own p. 3 distinguishes **assent 10 December 2021** from **commencement 17 January 2022**; section 27 provides gazette-publication commencement. Existing event ID retained, date corrected to operation.
+
+Read purpose/export restriction, 0.3% dry-weight delta-9 THC definition, committee, licence provisions, original applicant requirements, ten-year term, contractor distinction, inspections, offences and regulation powers. The VT10 million **bank deposit** under original section 12 differs from the later VT10 million **annual licence fee**. The original law's “may only … at least” licence wording is not converted into a fixed maximum number. No claim is made that industry rules legalised ordinary home growing or general adult-use sales.
+
+The original Dangerous Drugs Amendment Act 30/2021 was located in Parliament's official list but its linked PacLII full text could not be retrieved. It is not cited as if read. The industry Act itself, current judicial references to cultivation, and the January 2026 official comments support the public description of a licensed exception without relying on a third-party transcription of the missing amendment.
+
+**February 2023 rules:** PINA/PACNEWS republication of the Daily Post report was opened and read, including direct statements by Director General Moses Amos and signing by Minister Nako Natuman. A 9 February Thursday report says the rules were signed Wednesday/yesterday: **8 February 2023**. The event explicitly records signing, not an invented exact gazette commencement date. The report states that applications could proceed once gazetted. Reserve Bank **Monthly Economic News, February 2023** corroborates fee, term and island zones. Medical cannabis: Efate, Santo, Malekula; hemp also Tanna and Erromango. The ministry's **Annual Report 2023**, introduction and section 4.2, reports licence revenue; it does not alone establish how many licences were issued or a first harvest.
+
+The Reserve Bank's September 2023 quarterly review was read as a lead: it republishes an August Daily Post item on four approvals. Approvals were not silently turned into issued/operating licences. Counts vary across later reporting, so this pass does not publish a synthetic continuous licence total.
+
+**2025 banking changes:** Parliament's complete published bill and explanatory note were downloaded/read. It discusses blocked accounts and international funds, proposes a coordinator/financial monitoring, due diligence on money/key people and penalty notices. VBTC's **29 October 2025** parliamentary report, read with the bill, records minister Ian Wilson and opposition support. The event date is the report date and the body says so. Final gazetted amendment and commencement date were not recovered; category **debate** records parliamentary support without presenting the bill PDF as a final operative statute. The 2024 bill found in search concerns a different permit proposal and was not conflated with the 2025 banking bill.
+
+**20 January 2026 clarification:** Vanuatu Business Review's direct account of Director General Timothy Tumukon's comments was read through the web tool (direct download 403). It records export/no-local-sales policy, licensing, and his statement that legislation had changed to reassure banks. The public event attributes the remarks to him; it does not use them to invent the amendment's exact commencement or first business operation.
+
+## Scoring and verification
+
+The new 1989 event records a replacement tariff but the earlier maximum/practice remains unknown. The 2005 exception concerns medical preparations and imports; current retail patient availability is not established. The 2013 court described normal sentencing practice while organising guidance, and the current cultivation/enforcement levels already reflect those lesser personal outcomes; a prior national routine-imprisonment baseline is unproven. Export licences and subsequent industry rules do not change ordinary personal growing or access. Explicit unscored reasons are included on the relevant changed-rule events.
+
+The batch verifier checks unique IDs, title lengths, categories/tags, inline source coverage, internal links, article lengths/headings, all existing score vectors and current statuses. It checks all revised country text blocks while asserting the older driving section is unchanged. `data-status.cjs chain vu` reports no flagged steps. The preserved 1939 allocation is a research gap, not newly verified historical precision.
+
+A fresh production build and rendered checks cover the twelve affected event pages, all four article bodies, country citation scopes, actual batch tag pages, exports and profile API. Results/cleanup are recorded below after verification. The commit is limited to the nine own additions, three own history revisions, Vanuatu's profile, four new articles and this memo. A private Git index and compare-and-swap HEAD update preserve concurrent history and index objects; `source-archive.json` remains excluded.
+
+Final verification: fresh production build passed with **3,964 pages**. Rendered checks passed **132 citation links**, affected history/article and country reference scopes, all actual batch tag pages, clean exports and the profile API (reviewed 2026-10-24; exact score 11; Limited medical classification). All four articles passed citation/link, word-count and heading checks, including earlier and later history links. Whitespace checks passed. The owned temporary `site/` build was deleted after verification, retaining research files and logs.