Afghanistan lowers prison terms for hashish trafficking

Afghanistan lowered ordinary hashish trafficking sentences in its 2010 replacement drug law. A case involving two kilograms now carried more than six months to one year in prison, compared with one to three years and a fine under the earlier law.

Hashish received its own penalty scale

The law was published on 14 June 2010 and took effect on publication. It replaced the earlier counter-narcotics law and gave hashish a separate set of trafficking penalties, alongside different scales for opium, heroin and other controlled drugs.

The earlier law had placed cannabis in a broader controlled-drug group. That group’s penalties could reach ten to fifteen years once the weight exceeded ten kilograms. The replacement made the type of drug, as well as its weight, central to choosing the ordinary sentence.

Prison terms rose in smaller steps

For less than ten grams of hashish, the new ordinary trafficking penalty was up to one month in prison. More than ten and up to 100 grams carried over one month to two months. The next range, over 100 to 500 grams, carried over two to three months.

More than 500 grams to one kilogram carried over three to six months, and more than one to five kilograms carried over six months to a year. Above five kilograms, the law added three months for each additional half-kilogram, up to a ten-year ceiling for that ordinary offence.

An organiser who managed, controlled, funded or guided more than two people in committing the offences faced double the maximum punishment, subject to a twenty-year ceiling. The lower ordinary scale therefore sat alongside a separate rule for directing others.

A limited treatment exemption depended on medical certification

A person using or holding up to fifty grams of hashish for personal consumption was exempt from prosecution if a medical examiner certified drug dependence. The person was to be taken to a treatment centre.

Above that quantity, certified dependence could still lead to detention in a treatment centre, but punishment remained available. Centres had to report to the court every fifteen days, and the court could end or extend treatment detention according to the circumstances. Time spent there counted towards a later custodial sentence.

The republic’s law preceded another political rupture

The reform combined lower ordinary hashish trafficking terms with a medical route that depended on both quantity and certification. It remained a system of prohibition, prison and supervised treatment.

After the Taliban returned to power, its leader issued a nationwide cannabis cultivation order in 2023, requiring crop destruction and punishment through the courts. That later order belongs to a different period of Afghanistan’s cannabis history.^[1][2]