Serbia’s top court keeps three years for preparing cannabis to sell

Serbia’s top court upheld Marko Luković’s three-year prison sentence on 23 January 2019 after finding that drying and packaging cannabis for sale amounted to drug production. The case showed how preparing harvested material could expose a person to the production-and-supply offence alongside the separate cultivation rules.

The code separated growing from producing a drug

The 2009 amendment expressly addressed growing psychoactive cannabis, with six months to five years in prison. Production and supply carried three to twelve years.

The production-and-supply wording covered several acts: making or processing a drug, selling or offering it, and holding or carrying it for sale. An offence could therefore depend on what someone did with the plant material after it had been harvested.

The code also separately addressed small quantities held for personal consumption, with a fine, up to three years or possible waiver of punishment.

Flowers collected near the Morava were dried for sale

Luković had collected flowers from mature cannabis plants near the Morava, taken them home, dried them and packed them in a plastic sack. He later carried the prepared cannabis to Kraljevo for sale.

His lawyer challenged the conclusion that those acts amounted to production. The court rejected that argument and left the three-year sentence in place.

The decisive conduct included processing the harvested flowers and preparing the resulting drug for sale. The judgment described the stages of handling the material as part of its explanation.

Processing added a legal question beyond tending plants

The court distinguished sowing and caring for a plant through its growing period from further work such as drying, breaking up or packaging harvested material. In this case, it found production and possession for sale.

That distinction mattered because the code assigned different prison ranges to cultivation and production. The supply wording also covered holding or carrying a drug for sale, without requiring the case to begin with a completed transaction.

Licensed agricultural hemp had a separate route under the 2010 controlled-substances law, with permits tied to specified fibre-and-seed purposes.

Cultivation sentences rose later that year

The December 2019 amendment raised the cultivation range to two to eight years. It also added a longer sentence for possessing a large quantity of drugs, while retaining the smaller-personal-possession offence.

Serbia’s current profile reflects those separate questions: cultivating a crop, preparing a drug, holding it for sale, and possessing it for personal use can lead to different offences and punishments.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}