Parliamentary hearings around Georgia’s drug decriminalisation bill, scheduled to take off on 28 November, have been postponed. The move has prompted anger amongst the authors of the bill and drug policy activists.
According to the White Noise Movement (WNM), a group campaigning for a softer drug policy and a co-author of the bill, the authors were only notified of the postponement late evening on 27 November, and were given no explanation.
A number of parties, including non-government policymakers were planning to attend the parliamentary hearing, which was to be headed by three parliamentary committees.
Mariam Jashi, the head of Parliament’s Educational Committee the told Liberali the process would continue ‘in about a week’, and the session was postponed so that ‘opinions between the group of authors and the government are made consistent with one another’.
‘As soon as the positions are reconciled, we will continue discussions’, she added.
If passed, the bill would decriminalise possession of all drugs. It has been developed by Tbilisi-based advocacy group the National Drug Policy Platform (NDPP), which consists of over 40 NGOs, and was put before Parliament by the Health Committee in June.
‘Unfortunately, Parliament’s decision makes us think that the authorities do not see the vital importance of the reform, are calling on us to be flexible with the content and format of it, but are not following the declared plans and promises, which indicates the unfairness of the process’, the NDPP said in a statement on 28 November.
According to them, drug policy activists do not see any room for compromise.
The core principle of the changes would be to move the country’s drug policy away from a criminal justice approach, treating drug use instead as a public health issue. According to the authors of the bill, current drug policy concentrates on punishing drug addicts, instead of treating them. If the bill is adopted, distribution and trafficking of drugs would still be treated as a criminal offence.
Drug policy groups have planned a large-scale demonstration on 10 December, which marks a year since one of the largest such rallies in Tbilisi.
Tbilisi City Court sentenced actor Giorgi ‘Bakhala’ Giorganashvili to eight years in prison on 23 January on drug charges. Giorganashvili had claimed that police had planted the drugs on him.
Giorganashvili was arrested on 29 January 2017 for ‘possession of 0.3726 grammes of buprenorphine’, an opioid used to treat opioid addiction, while travelling from western Georgia to Tbilisi.
After hearing the court’s ruling, Beka Tsikarishvili, a drug reform icon, threw a brick at the courthouse
Georgia, a country where every third prisoner is serving time for drugs, may be about to transform its strict drug policy into a far more liberal system. Activists and reformers are hoping that new legislation could change Georgia’s system away from what they call ‘the war against the people’.
On 15 September 2016, a 46-year-old man slashed his own stomach outside the Georgian Government Chancellery, where dozens had gathered to protest the country’s drug policy. He claimed police had terro
Tbilisi City Court has fined Beka Tsikarishvili, who became an icon for drug reform activists in the country, with ₾2,000 ($820) for possession of 69 grammes of cannabis.
Tsikarisvhili was also banned from driving, teaching, or practicing law for the next five years, and from working in the medical and pharmaceutical sector for 10 years.
Following the verdict, Tsikarishvili posted a photo on Facebook saying ‘this is not over, time to decriminalise’].
‘I am thankful that I shared the pai
Parliamentary hearings around Georgia’s drug decriminalisation 
