Georgian Dream announces new legislative amendments tightening drug policy

The ruling Georgian Dream party has announced new legislative changes aimed at tightening drug policy, including long prison sentences for selling small amounts of drugs and penalties for individuals who evade drug testing. Critics have focused on the second measure, arguing that the government intends to use forced drug tests as a tool to pressure its opponents.

Georgian Dream’s parliamentary leader Mamuka Mdinaradze stated on Monday evening that the proposed changes will affect several laws, including the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offenses.

According to him, ‘even for selling small quantities, the punishment will range from 12 to 20 years or life imprisonment’.

Another planned amendment is related to the confiscation and transfer of real estate owned by drug dealers or individuals facilitating drug distribution to the state.

Additionally, under the proposed amendments, if a person is confirmed to have used drugs or evades drug testing, they will lose their right to drive any type of vehicle for three years. The same individual will also be banned from working in the public service or educational institutions for five years, and will lose their right to own a weapon.

As with several other legislative changes, Mdinaradze said that liberal drug policies were being ‘externally imposed’ on Georgia, adding that the consequences of a liberal drug policy could be catastrophic for Georgian youth.

Critics have repeatedly described Georgia’s drug policy as harsh and ineffective. In particular, they have emphasised that instead of addressing drug-related issues in a systemic way, including properly studying the black market and informing the public, as well as developing the proper rehabilitation practices, the current policy focuses only on punishing users.

Guram Imnadze, the director of the Justice and Democracy Programme at the local civil rights group the Social Justice Centre, wrote on Facebook on Tuesday that the real aim of the current legislative changes is the forced drug testing of individuals.

According to Imnadze, under the current legislation, the sale of small amounts of drugs is not punishable under criminal law. However, since the law does not define small quantities for a large number of substances, ‘this gap has not posed a significant problem for the police in practice’.

Imnadze added that he suspects the ruling party is likely planning to reinstate a mechanism that was previously used to mass-transfer individuals for drug testing — a process which put people ‘under threat of police blackmail, intimidation, and the risk of drugs being planted on them’.

‘It seems the government is planning to reactivate this mechanism in an even more brutal form, and it’s easy to guess which part of our society it will target’, Imnadze wrote, hinting that the target would be government critics.

Natia Mezvrishvili, a former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs under Georgian Dream and currently one of the leaders of the opposition For Georgia party, echoed this sentiment.

Mezvrishvili emphasised that ‘drug dealers must be punished with the utmost severity’ without any compromise and the state should shift from a punitive policy against users to a prevention-focused approach. However, according to her, Georgian Dream has no real interest in the victims of drug use.

‘What really concerns them is something else — persecuting activists at protests, taking them for so-called drug use checks, planting drugs on them (like they did to Giorgi Akhobadze), harassing them this way, and then discrediting the protests’, she wrote on Facebook.

Akhobadze was an anti-government protester who, according to Transparency International, had drugs planted on him by the police along with two other demonstrators in early December.

If found guilty, all those detained on drug charges could face sentences ranging from eight to 20 years in prison or even life imprisonment.

The drug-related amendments are just one of many legislative changes announced or already adopted by Georgian Dream, which the party claims are necessary to fight the ‘influence of external forces’.

In February, Mdinaradze announced that changes would be made to the current drug policy during the same press briefing where he proposed a media law and a Georgian translation of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

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OC MediaYousef Bardouka