white noise movement

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A priest attending counter-rally on Sunday (Mari Nikuradze /OC Media)

Drug Policy

Georgian Church distance themselves from Neo-Nazi groups

by OC Media

•5 min read

Georgia’s Orthodox Church distanced themselves from neo-Nazi groups, at a press conference at the Patriarchate on Monday, according to Netgazeti. Announcing their plans for 17 May — International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia — the Church urged any ‘aggressive’ groups to abstain from participating in events, and disavowed neo-Nazi group the Nationalist Socialist Movement — National Unity of Georgia. The Church have marked 17 May as Family Purity Day since 2014, a year af

beka tsikarishvili

Georgian actor sentenced to 8 years on drug charges

by OC Media

•3 min read

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

Cannabis

Court decriminalises cannabis consumption in Georgia

by OC Media

•2 min read

Georgia’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, has ruled that it is unconstitutional to criminally prosecute people for consuming cannabis, effectively decriminalising its use. This is short of decriminalising the purchase, storage, or sale of cannabis, and is not legalisation. In what has been described as a historic decision by drug policy activists, the Court ruled on 30 November that it is up to an individual to choose if they wish to consume cannabis. ‘Cannabis consumption has be

beka tsikarishvili

Parliamentary hearing on drug liberalisation postponed

by OC Media

•2 min read

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 po

beka tsikarishvili

Georgia’s ‘war against the people’ and the war against a ‘system that stinks’

by Dato Parulava

•9 min read

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