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THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT has approved a plan to partially decriminalise cannabis use in public in favour of fines and treatment.
First-time users who confess will be fined 1,000 shekels (€255) euros. The fine will be doubled on the second offence, with the third time forcing a probation period on the user.
Police will refer a user to criminal procedures only on the fourth time they catch someone in possession of or using cannabis in public.
The plan, based on recommendations from a committee set up to study the issue, applies only to instances of personal use. Producing, selling and buying cannabis remain illegal in Israel.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan called the approval “an important step on the way to implementing a new policy that will emphasise education and treatment instead of criminal enforcement.”
Erdan had formed the committee in July when tasking his director general with examining Israel’s enforcement policy on the personal use of cannabis.
Reform
Sunday’s decision was met with mixed feelings by two of the lawmakers most active in reforming Israeli law on cannabis.
Sharren Haskel, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, said the decision was “an important step but not decriminalisation,” since users could ultimately face criminal charges.
Haskel said the decision will allow police to “continue hounding cannabis users”, and she vowed to push for full decriminalisation.
Tamar Zandberg of the opposition Meretz party welcomed the decision, which she said was “a message that a million Israelis who use cannabis aren’t criminals,” noting she would ensure the recommendations were implemented.
The government will form an inter-ministerial committee to implement the new policy that will submit its recommendations by May 7, the decision read.
The shift in policy comes on the heels of Israeli ministers endorsing a draft bill to legalise export of cannabis for approved medical use last month.
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said on Sunday that “Israel can’t ignore the changes around the world on the use of cannabis and its effects”.
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Not cracks but the grand canyon
“I think it’s probably a lack of political will or lack of urgency on the issue and associated resources to match that,”
Just like health and housing no politician’s kids at risk. Ah but sure the country is flying.
This should be the first thing every country should solve. Who doesn’t understand that has no clue or doesn’t care about future generations.Abusive behavior creates new abusers. I was against death penalty, but changed my mind. pedos and traffickers should get it.
But Irish liberals scream racist at any suggestion of screening and our politicians back down out of fear of the hysterics that surround theses issues. The liberals don’t care about genuine victims, only about those who take offence.
@Morning Gus: nonsense
And yet whenever there’s an article about a missing teenager here, there are often many comments accusing the missing child of “playing stupid Facebook games” or just looking for attention without any knowledge of their backgrounds or situation. I especially worry about the kids where the only photo available seems to be an ID photo of some sort. I often wonder why there isn’t any recent pictures of them, smiling, at a family occasion or with their friends. Don’t they have anyone who cares enough about them to take these kind of photos? Nobody who wants to make memories with them they can keep forever? These are the kids that are vulnerable to these s€um because nobody cares about them. These abusers are often the first time they’ve been ‘cared’ about.
How many children have been placed by Tusla in foster homes where abuse has happened and were left in that home. I would guess it’s happening left right and centre and it will continue because nobody is ever held accountable in that agency for anything it seems.
@Lyndsay Rehn:
That is another serious problem. Tusla is not fit for purpose…nor were the childcare services before it. How hard could it be to organise the welfare of vulnerable kids without destroying them?
The whole issue of child trafficking has been hijacked by organisations that are constantly deriving their relevance from sex work abolitionism. On the surface, when it comes to protecting children there shouldn’t be much harm that mentality could do, but it is more complicated than that.
They are deeply committed (and have, in turn committed a portion of our laws) to an ideology that focusses on sex as a threat to the exclusion of all other considerations. This distorts everything they do, in terms of research and solutions, too far from reality to be harmless, let alone of any real use to real victims.
In the real world, by the time a child of being subjected to unwanted sex that is unlikely to be the only threat he lives under and is damaged by, let alone the worst one. To help such a child you have to acknowledge, and rescue him from ALL the things that threaten him, not just the sexual threats that support a specific ideology, because if you are not looking at the whole picture and are ready to ignore, dismiss, or even just downplay non-sexual threats to him and his survival his survival instinct will drive him away from you and deeper into sexual exploitation, because that is less dangerous to him than you are.
have your say