The story
Soviet Ukraine made keeping drugs for personal use punishable by up to three years in prison under a decree issued on 17 June 1974. The same law threatened suppliers with much longer sentences and directed people diagnosed with drug addiction into compulsory treatment if they avoided ordinary treatment.[1]
The crackdown came from Moscow
The decree’s opening linked it directly to the Soviet Union’s April decision to intensify the fight against drug addiction. Ukraine’s Presidium then inserted a series of drug offences into the republic’s criminal code, covering possession, supply, growing, drug-taking premises and encouraging others to use drugs.[1]
The local law was signed in Kyiv by Presidium chairman Ivan Hrushetsky and secretary Yakiv Kolotukha. Its text shows how the Soviet campaign became offences that could be prosecuted under Ukrainian law.[1]
Keeping drugs for yourself could mean three years
The personal-use offence covered making, acquiring, storing, transporting or sending narcotics without intending to sell them. A conviction could bring up to three years in prison or up to one year of corrective labour, a punishment requiring work. Repetition, or an earlier conviction for specified drug crimes, raised the maximum prison sentence to five years.[1]
Supply had a separate, more severe scale. Selling narcotics, or preparing and holding them for sale, carried up to ten years in prison, with possible confiscation of property. Repeat offending, a prior agreement between a group, certain previous offences or large quantities could bring six to fifteen years and confiscation.[1]
Growing rules named Indian, southern Manchurian and southern Chuy hemp, as well as other prohibited drug crops. The ordinary maximum was five years in prison; repetition or specified earlier drug offences brought three to eight years.[1]
Treatment could also involve confinement
The decree required people diagnosed with drug addiction to undergo treatment. Those who avoided it could be sent to treatment-and-labour institutions for six months to two years. It rewrote an existing 1969 compulsory-treatment law and added the obligation to the republic’s health legislation.[1]
Providing premises for drug use also carried five to ten years in prison, with possible confiscation. The law therefore reached the place where people gathered as well as the drugs they held or supplied.[1]
Ukraine rewrote the rules again in 1987, setting administrative penalties for small personal possession and non-prescribed use, followed by possible criminal punishment for repetition. That later distinction forms part of the long history behind the rules described in the Ukraine profile.[2]
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Ukraine here.
References
- Ukrainian SSR Presidium — Decree 2718-VIII, original edition of 17 June 1974, reproduced from the Rada portal1974 · Preamble; Part 1(1), inserted articles 229-1, 229-3, 229-4, 229-5 and 229-6; Parts 3–5; closing issue date. VVR 1974, no. 27, item 222.
- Ukrainian SSR Presidium — Decree 4452-XI, original edition of 21 August 1987, reproduced from the Rada portal1987 · Preamble; Part I, articles 229-8, 229-9, 229-10 and 229-3; Part VI, articles 44 and 106-2; Part X, article 59-1; closing issue date. VVR 1987, no. 35, item 674.
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.