Court denies government right to set permissible amount of drugs by decree

The Constitutional Court has struck down part of the Czech Criminal Code allowing the government to set by decree the amount of a drug considered legally acceptable. The court said the criteria regarding what constitutes a crime should ensue directly from the law; otherwise assessing particular cases fell entirely to the judiciary. The judges also threw out government directives establishing what is considered “more than a small amount”, and therefore illegal, in the case of individual narcotic substances. It will now be up to courts to rule on individual cases on the basis of the concrete circumstances and precedent.