Russia jails an American athlete for cannabis oil

Brittney Griner, a double Olympic champion, spent the American off-season playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg. On 17 February 2022 customs officers at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport found vape cartridges with cannabis oil in her luggage. A week later Russia invaded Ukraine, and for ten months the cartridges were an item in the diplomacy between Washington and Moscow.

The law she met

Russian law has two tiers. Up to 6 g of cannabis or 2 g of hashish is an administrative offence: a fine, or up to 15 days’ detention, and deportation for a foreigner. Above that, possession is a crime under Article 228. The threshold was set at 20 g in 2004 and cut to 6 g in 2006.

Griner’s case was different in kind. She had carried the oil across a border, and was convicted of smuggling as well as possession, with a maximum of ten years.

The case

Date	What happened
17 February 2022	Detained at Sheremetyevo
3 May	The United States classifies her as “wrongfully detained”
7 July	Pleads guilty; says she packed the cartridges by accident
4 August	Nine years in prison and a fine of one million roubles
25 October	Appeal rejected
17 November	Confirmed to be in penal colony IK-2 in Mordovia
8 December	Freed in exchange for the arms dealer Viktor Bout

Her lawyers submitted an American doctor’s recommendation of medical cannabis for pain and her clean anti-doping tests. Prosecutors asked for nine and a half years. The defence said comparable cases averaged about five.

I made an honest mistake, and I hope in your ruling it does not end my life.

How unusual was it?

For a foreigner, not very. In June 2022 a Russian court gave Marc Fogel, an American teacher, 14 years for bringing in vape cartridges and cannabis flower. For Russians, Article 228 is among the most used in the criminal code: about 50,800 convictions in 2024, roughly one in ten of all convictions. In 2025 the Supreme Court itself proposed softening the penalty for personal possession.

Nothing in Russian law changed, so this entry moves no score. It is here because it shows how the law works on a visitor: a fraction of a gram, carried across a border, brought a sentence close to the maximum, and what ended it was a trade between governments. Russia’s profile has the rules as they stand.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}