Guatemala sets prison terms for cannabis growing, supply and possession

Guatemala’s new penal code took effect on 15 September 1973 with prison terms of three to five years plus fines for unauthorised growing of drug-producing plants. Its trafficking rules also covered selling, supplying, delivering and keeping drugs, reaching well beyond commercial dealers.

A new code replaced the older criminal code

The legislation replaced Guatemala’s 1936 penal code. Its closing rules also repealed conflicting legislation while preserving special criminal laws on matters the new code did not cover.

Drug offences appeared within the code’s public-health rules. They addressed the plants from which drugs could be extracted, the handling of drugs themselves, and activities that helped other people obtain or use them.

For cannabis growers and suppliers, the code provided prison sentences and financial penalties within this wider criminal system.

Seeds and plants carried the same growing penalty

Unauthorised sowing or cultivation of drug-producing plants carried three to five years in prison and a fine of 500 to 5,000 quetzales.

The same punishment applied to trading, possessing or supplying seeds or plants from which drugs could be extracted. The wording reached planting material as well as a crop already being grown.

That mattered for someone keeping seeds or handing a plant to another person: the plant-related offence extended to those acts alongside cultivation itself.

Keeping drugs appeared in the trafficking offence

The trafficking section prescribed the same prison range and fine for several kinds of unauthorised handling. These included importing drugs or materials intended for their preparation, and selling, delivering, transporting or supplying drugs.

It also included retaining, storing or otherwise keeping drugs. The section’s wording therefore made possession relevant within an offence headed as trafficking.

A separate offence punished providing premises for drug trafficking or consumption, even when the premises were supplied free of charge. That carried two months to one year in prison plus a fine.

The later drug law set different sentence ranges

The 1992 drug law prescribed five to twenty years for unauthorised cultivation and twelve to twenty years for trafficking, both with fines. It separately punished acquiring or possessing drugs for personal consumption with four months to two years plus a fine.

A 2016 cannabis bill later proposed repealing the code’s older drug sections and adding cannabis exceptions to the special drug law. That proposal brought the relationship between these layers of Guatemala’s drug legislation into the reform debate.^[1][2][3]