Burundi keeps prison or a fine for drug possession and use

Burundi kept illicit drug possession and use punishable by one to five years in prison when its revised criminal code took effect on 29 December 2017. Judges could choose a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 Burundian francs instead, or impose both. Consumption also continued to carry compulsory court supervision.

An existing ban carried forward

The 2009 revision had already set these penalties. President Pierre Nkurunziza’s signature brought the replacement code into force while preserving its core approach to narcotics: growing, selling, transporting, possessing and consuming them remained prohibited outside exceptions determined by the health ministry.

The ministry also controlled which plants and substances counted as narcotics. People dealing with the criminal law therefore faced both the code’s offences and the classifications made under health-ministry orders.

Possession had a separate fine

Article 510 set the specific punishment for illicit possession or consumption: one to five years, a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 francs, or both. The general regulatory offence elsewhere in the same section carried a higher fine range of 100,000 to 250,000 francs, alongside the same possible prison term.

Production, import, manufacture and export carried ten to fifteen years and a fine up to one million francs. Those penalties doubled for organised groups. Helping someone else use drugs carried one to five years and a fine, even when the help was free.

Supervision added obligations to the sentence

Every consumption offence required judges to add monitoring and assistance intended to prevent repeat offending. The code’s general rules allowed this supervision to include treatment after medical assessment, or training. Refusing ordered care or training could bring further imprisonment.

Courts also had to confiscate controlled plants and substances, along with equipment used for consumption, manufacture or transport. Confiscated crops were to be destroyed at the offender’s expense when the authorities did the work.

Delivering assistance remained difficult

Mainline’s later country briefing described supervision as rarely implemented because institutions lacked the necessary staff, resources and capacity. Its interviews also described stigma and fear of arrest as barriers to seeking health care.

The distinction mattered for people using drugs: the law continued to offer a possible fine instead of prison while requiring assistance that services struggled to provide. The Burundi profile follows those separate questions of legal punishment and enforcement in practice.^[1][2][3]