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.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS