Kosovo restricts cannabis to research, education and police work

Kosovo’s drug law placed cannabis, resin, extracts and tinctures in its most restricted table when it took effect on 19 February 2008. People could handle those substances for scientific research, education and police purposes, while the ordinary medical-treatment rules applied to other tables.^[1]

Cannabis went into the restricted table

The law separated drugs by the purposes for which they could be handled. Table I, which named cannabis, had the narrow research, education and police exceptions. The rules for substances in Tables II and III also allowed medical and veterinary purposes.^[1]

That distinction mattered to patients. The law required special prescriptions for controlled medicines and licences for health institutions handling them, but those medical routes concerned the other tables. Listing cannabis in the law therefore did not give doctors the same route to prescribe it.^[1]

Seeds were part of the cultivation rules

The growing prohibition reached beyond a finished cannabis crop. Cultivation for obtaining narcotics included supplying and holding seeds, sowing, growing and receiving or holding plant parts needed to obtain the drug. The law prohibited growing plants from which narcotics could be obtained.^[1]

For someone planning to grow cannabis, the rules covered the stages before a harvest as well as the plants themselves. They sat alongside the provisional criminal code in force since 2004, which punished cultivation and drug production intended for sale with a fine and one to ten years in prison.^[2]

Health authorities and police shared responsibilities

The UN mission promulgated the law adopted by Kosovo’s Assembly. It assigned licensing work to the health authorities and provided for institutions to report their controlled-drug requirements. Its treatment chapter allowed drug-dependency treatment based on the person’s or legal custodian’s consent, or a court decision.^[1]

The same law provided for confiscating plants and drugs held in breach of its rules. Criminal cases went through the public-health chapter of the provisional criminal code, connecting the health and licensing rules to the existing criminal penalties.^[1]

Later codes kept prison penalties

Kosovo’s replacement code taking effect in 2013 set a distinct possession offence, including a lower penalty for first-time offenders with less than three grams. Growing cannabis to produce drugs carried one to ten years in prison.^[3]

The 2008 law’s table explains why cannabis users and patients could not rely on the ordinary prescription provisions. The Kosovo profile sets out the possession, cultivation and supply rules that followed.