Letter from Prague
When I go to see my parents, I pass a house, where a window on the second floor is always open, loud music is pouring out and flower pots with typical marihuana leaves are immediately obvious. It's also evident that visits to that flat are frequent, and its residents do not try to conceal that they and their guests gather to smoke joints.
When I go to see my parents, I pass a house, where a window on the second floor is always open, loud music is pouring out and flower pots with typical marihuana leaves are immediately obvious. It's also evident that visits to that flat are frequent, and its residents do not try to conceal that they and their guests gather to smoke joints.
The laws on drugs in the Czech Republic is controversial, for instance one can be punished when caught with an amount of drugs 'bigger than an amount for personal use' . How big the amount for one's own use is, nobody is able to specify. But there are cases when young people are being prosecuted and face quite a high prison sentence for handing out one or two joints to a friend or classmate. Last year, president Vaclav Havel pardoned an 18 year old boy who was sentenced to five years in prison for this particular reason.
Three weeks ago Prague's Letna plain became the venue of a huge demonstration of young people who came there to express their wish that cannabis be legalised in the Czech Republic. The demonstration was not approved by the Prague Town Hall, with Prague Mayor Jan Kasl saying the action went counter the anti-drug strategy of Prague. Although several thousand people gathered at Letna, and the police described it as the biggest demonstration for the legalization of drugs in the Czech Republic ever, the demonstrators behaved themselves. Having gathered illegally, they were not allowed to build stands with beverages and in a nine-hour marathon of speeches and music, all the bands played on a makeshift stage on a truck.
No conflicts occurred, because the organizers reminded the demonstrators quite clearly that no drug must be sold, because the demonstration took place to call for a reasonable approach to drugs, not to promote them.
Photos featured in newspapers show crowds of young people, but recently I read that the number of elderly marihuana users was on the rise. And when I say elderly, I have in mind a case of an 85 year old grandmother, who was introduced to marihuana by her young grandson. The old lady was quoted as praising her everyday evening joint for having helped her to overcome insomnia in a far more pleasant way than she had been used to before, when she was on sleeping pills.
My point is that forbidden fruit tastes better, and any new law, aimed at even greater restriction of drugs, might only worsen the situation. But who knows, my view could be changed substantially if my child was on drugs....
