Brno, June 5 (CTK) – Emerich Drtina, director of the Nase vojsko publishers, has failed with his constitutional complaint against a suspended sentence he was given for the publication of two versions of a book called Recepty z konopi (Hemp Recipes), CTK has found in the Constitutional Court’s database.
According to the valid verdict, Drtina spread drug addition because his book advises how to raise the intoxicating effect of meals and drinks, the US (Ústavní soud; Czech for Constitutional Court) said.
US judges said the purpose of the article of the penal law is to prevent the spread of abuse of narcotics and psychotropic substances. The US said it considers the seriousness of the problems related to their abuse as proved. The debate on other opinions or possible positive effects must be held not at court, but in politics, possibly in the media and the scientific environment.
“On the contrary, the US cannot provide protection to a ‘rebellion’ aimed to challenging the legitimacy of criminal laws by their direct breach,” the US said in its ruling.
Drtina told CTK last year that he was disappointed by the verdict and that he considers it a manifestation of curtailment of freedom.
In his constitutional complaint, he pointed to the gradual liberalisation of hemp, including its legalisation for curative purposes.
Drtina wrote that the book does not incite to drug abuse and that the courts’ surprise at the lightly jovial style of the book is “expediently rigid.” Many extracts show humour and hyperboles, he wrote.
The book written by Adam Gottlieb and a collective of authors is still on sale, the judiciary has not banned it.
A Prague district court gave Drtina a one-year prison sentence with a probation of 18 months.
The court said the book contains meal and drink recipes containing hemp in a way to preserve or raise their effects on the human organism during preparation.
The Prague Municipal Court and later also the Supreme Court said the book is written in a careless tone and that it does not warn of marijuana’s negative effects.
The recipes can arouse the readers’ desire to try marijuana and experienced users to further experimenting with influencing consciousness with drugs.
The same author’s book ended in the prosecution of the Votobia publishers’ representatives.
Eventually, only one of them was given a suspended sentence for drug addiction spread.
The case was eventually ended with the amnesty president Vaclav Havel issued on the occasion of his re-election in 1998.
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