Moscow makes first-time small possession an administrative offence

For twelve years after 1975, a person caught in Soviet Azerbaijan with a small amount of cannabis for personal use could be sent to prison. A USSR edict of 22 June 1987 changed that for first-time offenders.^[1]

The edict

The edict amended the 1974 decree on strengthening the fight against drug addiction. It made the first-time purchase or keeping of a small amount of narcotics without intent to sell an administrative offence. The penalty was a fine of up to 100 roubles, one to two months of corrective labour with 20% of earnings withheld, or, in exceptional cases, up to fifteen days’ administrative arrest.^[1]

The same edict made drug use without a doctor’s prescription an administrative offence with the same penalties. A repeat within a year could bring up to two years in prison, corrective labour or a fine of up to 300 roubles.^[1]

What it changed

The 1975 amendment had made possession without intent to sell a crime carrying up to three years. The 1987 edict moved a first offence out of the criminal code. It did not make cannabis legal: the drugs could still be seized, an administrative record was created, and a repeat could end in prison. The fifteen-day arrest option also meant that a person could still lose their liberty without a criminal conviction.^[1][2]

The edict did not define “small amount”. That was left to the union and republican rules that set the quantities separating personal use from trafficking. The result was a two-track system: a small first offence was administrative, while a larger amount or a repeat stayed criminal.^[1]

A short life

The relaxation lasted less than four years in the Soviet Union. Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet criminal code returned possession without intent to sell to the criminal law, and the current Article 234.1 still punishes it above the substantial threshold. Below that line, the 2016 administrative code handles the case.^[3][4] The Azerbaijan profile sets out the present limits, and the 1961 code entry shows what the law looked like before the 1975 amendment.