The story
Kazakhstan ordered the closure of its Interior Ministry treatment-and-labour institutions in 1991 and the release of people held there for alcohol or drug dependence. The same law removed penalties for using drugs without a prescription, ordered release from punishment for that offence and cleared the resulting conviction status. It changed both the legal treatment of users and the institutions through which the state confined them.[1]
A constitutional review reached the camps
The law expressly followed the Soviet constitutional oversight committee’s review of compulsory treatment, labour re-education and punishment for non-prescribed drug use. President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed the response on 21 June. Its commencement depended on publication.[1]
The repeal reached back to the Kazakh republic’s 1964 compulsory-treatment decree and the later rules for adult and youth institutions. These were establishments run by the Interior Ministry. Closing the system meant ending that particular route into confinement and ordering the people inside to be freed.[1]
Release included people already sentenced
The law instructed authorities to release people punished for escaping the treatment-and-labour institutions or for using drugs without a prescription, and to clear their conviction status. Investigations and cases still awaiting decisions were to be discontinued. Its wording therefore reached existing cases and sentences as well as future prosecutions.[1]
Treatment alongside a criminal sentence remained a separate matter. Another part of the same amendment retained a court’s power to order treatment for someone who committed a crime and was diagnosed with alcohol or drug dependence. The law closed the Interior Ministry institution system while leaving that judicial power in the criminal code.[1]
Using and keeping drugs became different questions
The criminal amendment deleted drug use from the offence introduced in 1987. Its administrative counterpart lost the general use penalty too. Repeated acquisition or keeping of a small personal quantity remained in the criminal code, so the repeal of a use offence did not give people a lawful supply or possession allowance.[1][2]
That separation matters for the history of cannabis: a person’s act of consuming it and their possession of the plant were governed by different rules. The replacement code in 1998 would change the personal-possession offence again.[1][2]
Public use later acquired new penalties
Kazakhstan added a specific public-use fine in 2006. The offence later gained detention for repeated breaches. Those later restrictions help explain the distance between the 1991 repeal and the rules described in Kazakhstan’s current profile.[3][4]
Score by segment 0 to 10
- Possession · 25%1 → 1
- Personal cultivation · 25%0 → 0
- Punishment & enforcement · 20%1 → 1
- Sharing & gifting · 10%1 → 1
- Consumption · 10%0 → 3+3
- Legal access · 10%0 → 0
The bar shows the score after the change; the tick marks where it stood before. Kazakhstan's scores have changed again since.
References
- Kazakhstan — Law 694-XII of 21 June 1991 on compulsory treatment and drug-use penalties, PRG reproductionSections I, II(1)(4), II(4)(1), III and V; edition before July 1992 changes, retaining later repeal annotations
- Kazakhstan — Kazakh SSR Criminal Code, final consolidation reproduced by UchetArticles 212-1, 213, 213-3 and 214, including amendment notes for 30 July 1987 and 21 June 1991; final 1997 text, not original 1959 penalties
- Kazakhstan — Law 123 of 20 January 2006, reproduced by CDBArticle 1(221), inserting administrative article 336-2; article 2 assigns commencement from 1 January 2006
- Kazakhstan — Law 372-IV of 29 December 2010, reproduced by PRGArticle 1(3)(4): replacement article 336-2, including fifteen days’ detention after two earlier penalties within a year
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read. The score before the change is an editorial estimate.