Sitting punishment under Art. 228 of the Criminal Code will not solve the problem

If drugs were thrown to you, then, by and large, there is no difference - they will put you for five years or ten. Your life will still be broken, and those who ordered you will still receive their own.

Anton Gorelkin

State Duma deputy Anton Gorylykin discusses the mitigation of punishment under the article on the illegal acquisition and storage of drugs.

After the story with Ivan Kolunov, they started talking about the need to change something in article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, according to which he was attracted. In the State Duma, active discussions are now underway on this matter. I am very far from criminal law, so I do not venture to develop a bill with amendments to the Criminal Code. But I became interested in the topic and I want to share some considerations.

Colleagues offer to mitigate the punishment under this article. For example, in terms of the second (where it is about a large amount) - instead of a maximum period of 10 years, give, a maximum of five.

I believe that this situation with the “folk” article will not change in any way. If drugs were thrown to you, then, by and large, there is no difference - they will put you for five years or ten. Your life will still be broken, and those who ordered you will still receive their own - they will get rid of you for years, or maybe forever.

The same thing is manipulations with the amount of substance for which to punish. If, relatively speaking, now they throw a little more than three grams, then they will - a little more than five or ten. There is no difficulty for criminals.

The problem, it seems to me, is that a person under this article is announced by a criminal, simply finding a prohibited substance from him. Regardless of where it came from, and whether he tried to sell him.

I’ll clarify right away: I am a categorical opponent of drug use. Any - up to alcohol and tobacco. But drug use in our country is not officially punishable. In fact, the majority of convicts under the 228 Criminal Code are ordinary drug addicts who were not caught by the hand when they traded this rubbish, and who simply found a little more than it should.

This is the ground for abuse. There is no need to prove anything, you don’t need to carry out operational work, you don’t need to catch the hand - just put a person in a backpack (pocket, car) a bag and find it. It is this moment that you need to change, not the deadlines. Let the real drug dealers even sit all their lives all their lives, I don’t feel sorry for them. But the law should not help to blame honest people of drug trafficking.

As we know in the high -profile case of Colonel Zakharchenko, he will not bear any responsibility for billions of rubles found in his apartment. Because the investigation could not prove their origin. So, in the case of a rich colonel, the presumption of innocence works. She should work for those who suddenly found the notorious “bag”. If a person’s involvement in drug trafficking or their production is not proven, there is nothing to punish him for. Otherwise, it will be like now, on the example of Golunov.

I believe that when developing amendments to Article 228 of the Criminal Code, it is necessary to proceed with such considerations.