Police in Keelung last week urged people to temper their curiosity about cannabis horticulture and not buy seeds of the category 2 drug online, as it remains illegal to use, grow, transport and distribute.
Keelung City Police Department Criminal Investigation Division Second Corp Captain Lin Hsueh-chih (林學志) on Monday last week said that while marijuana has medicinal uses, it remains illegal to import seeds and grow the plant in Taiwan.
Recently, several people have bought cannabis seeds online with the intent to grow, with a seller directly mailing packages to buyers to circumvent regulations, Lin said.
Photo copied by Wu Sheng-ju, Taipei Times
The police department said it last year pursued more than 20 cases of people seeking to grow cannabis, most of whom had purchased the seeds over the Internet.
Some of the buyers said they intended to grow the plants for personal use, but others said they bought the seeds to challenge their horticulture skills, as they heard it could be difficult to cultivate, it said.
The cannabis agriculture enthusiasts included office workers, engineers, foreign workers and students, it said.
After being alerted to graduate students seeking to buy cannabis seeds online, the police obtained a warrant to search one of the students’ apartments, it said.
Police said the student told them that they were just curious about what a cannabis plant looked like, adding that they did not expect to succeed at growing one.
Another incident involved a worker from Thailand, who told police that they grew cannabis for personal consumption — making a tea with the leaves, the police said.
While legal amendments in the past few years have adjusted the sentencing based on a person’s intent for growing cannabis — whether for sale or personal use — the act itself is still illegal, lawyer Ko Lin-hung (柯林宏) said.
Under article 13 of the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例), people convicted of transporting or selling cannabis seeds with intent to provide for cultivation face a minimum of two years in prison and a fine of no more than NT$200,000 (US$6,361).
The Legislative Yuan in 2022 passed amendments to the act that changed the sentencing for people who grow cannabis for personal use, without intent to distribute, Ko said.
The sentence was reduced from the original five years in prison to a minimum of one year, up to a maximum of seven years, he added.
The amendment also reduced the fine from NT$5 million to a maximum of NT$1 million, he said.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS