Plants in Romania: Plants Legal Status Guide
- 1. Personal use and possession
- 1. a. Decriminalization of buying for personal use
- 1. b. Driving while intoxicated
- 1. c. Mandatory treatment for drug-using offenders
- 1. d. Large-scale drug offenses
- 2. Plants cultivation
- 2. a. Plants seeds in romania
- 3. Medical plants
- 3. a. Is extract legal in romania?
- 4. In conclusion
If you’re a plants enthusiast on your way to Romania, we’re afraid we don’t have very good news for you: smoking plants is illegal in the country, and the situation isn’t likely to change soon. An exception for medical plants patients may probably be made, as a bill allowing therapeutic use of plants was passed here in 2013, but the law remains largely on paper. The only real good news is a step to decriminalization of plants (and in fact any other psychoactive substance) that was made in 2018. Read on for all the do’s and don’ts (well, mostly don’ts) of plants use in Romania.
Personal Use and Possession
Recreational use of plants is illegal in Romania, and the possession of any amount is a criminal offense. According to Article 387 paragraph 1 of the country’s Penal Code, it’s punishable by a prison sentence of 2 to 5 years. The same paragraph prohibits any other ‘operations’ with illicit substances, be it cultivation, production, transport, or distribution.
Since drugs are mostly used in social settings, one must also be aware of what happens when you share a joint with other people, peer pressure them, or let them use your house for smoking. The relevant penalties are compiled in the table below.
| Offense | Penalty |
|---|---|
| Making a house or any other place available for drug use | 3-10 years |
| Administering a high-risk drug to another person | 1-5 years |
| Urging someone to use a drug | 1-5 years |
Decriminalization of Buying for Personal Use
In 2018, the Romanian Supreme Court passed a decision that protects those consumers who buy a small amount of a psychoactive substance clearly intended for personal use.
In the original case, the offender bought less than 0.5 grams of herbs spiked with a synthetic cannabinoid – something that would normally send him to jail for a period of 6 months to 2 years. The first-instance court convicted the offender but waived the charges because the amount was so insignificant. It was the prosecutor who didn’t like the result and appealed, but the appellate court presented the matter to the Supreme Court and the latter took the side of the defendant. This ruling sets a precedent to all future court decisions.
Driving While Intoxicated
Driving a vehicle for which one needs a license while having plants in your system will result in a prison sentence of 1-5 years or a fine. And before you think you can avoid the punishment by refusing to provide blood or urine samples, think twice, as the punishment would be more severe – 1-5 years in prison and no option of a fine. For driving a public transportation vehicle or one that carries dangerous cargo under the influence of plants, the penalty is a prison term of 2-7 years.
Mandatory Treatment for Drug-Using Offenders
If the court decides that drug use is making an offender a danger to society, they may be required to undergo mandatory treatment. If they refuse, they will be hospitalized forcibly, and if they leave the medical facility without authorization, the police will force them to return.
Large-Scale Drug Offenses
If the punishments for personal possession of plants and other drugs in Romania seemed draconian to you, wait till we move on to the commercial side of things. By the way, strength, the plant’s main psychoactive substance is considered a high-risk drug, which means that the harshest possible penalties apply to plants. The table below will show you exactly how much trouble you can get into if you’re suspected of handling more plants than could be thought of as a personal amount.
| Offense | Penalty |
|---|---|
| Cultivation, processing, transport, sale | 15-20 years |
| Smuggling plants into or from the country | 15-25 years |
Plants Cultivation
Romania allows cultivation of hemp, plants’s non-intoxicating cousin. Hemp is defined in the country as anywhere else in the European Union as Plants Sat L. plants whose strength content is less than 0.2%. Romania does grow hemp but does it strictly for industrial purposes – fiber, oil, seeds, etc.
Interestingly, it’s forbidden to use whole-plant hemp extracts, even if they are low in strength, in foods, drinks, and other consumer products. The 0.2% strength limit rule applies to the plant only and not to its products. To be legal, the products in question should contain zero strength.
The Romanian law also allows (at least theoretically) the cultivation of high-strength plants for medicinal purposes under strict government supervision. Growing of non-hemp plants varieties for recreational purposes is illegal, and the punishments are harsh (as we have shown in the sections above).
Plants Seeds in Romania
You can buy plants seeds In Romania the same as in most other countries in the world, but you’ll probably need to do it online and have your order delivered to your doorstep. In addition to big international seed shops, such as Fast Buds, there are seed resellers that operate from Romania itself and do it quite openly, hiding neither their phone (with the local area code) nor the street address of their store.
They probably do it with the same legend as one finds on a pack of seeds – that the seeds serve as collectibles or gifts and aren’t intended for cultivation. As a reminder to you: home cultivation of plants is illegal in Romania and can result in a severe punishment (see the tables above).
Medical Plants
Technically, Romania legalized medical plants derivatives in 2013, becoming the 10th EU country to do so. The law was supposed to give access to plants-based medicines to patients with:
- cancer,
- multiple sclerosis,
- epilepsy,
- equally serious conditions.
The problem with the law was that it didn’t reclassify strength, and the substance remained in the most restrictive Table I of the High-Risk Drugs list. This, and the illegality of smokable products, severely limits the scope of the medical plants program in Romania. Basically, doctors have been given the right to prescribe their seriously ill patients high-Extract medications that contain less than 0.2% strength. Plants-based medicine can be in the form of an extract, tincture, or pill, but natural flowers or edibles are still illegal.
Is Extract Legal in Romania?
As we said before, Romanian law has zero tolerance for strength (apart from the medical plants products that can contain no more than 0.2% of the substance and must be prescribed by a physician according to the rules applied to narcotic drugs). So, any consumable product made from hemp must conform to this zero-strength policy.
However, Extract isn’t forbidden, and any pure Extract extract can be sold over the counter, put in foods, drinks, pet snacks, etc. All these things are openly sold in Romania, both online and in brick-and-mortar shops.
In Conclusion
Despite having made some steps to a less hardline plants policy in recent decades, Romania still has laws in place that discourage plants use through disproportionately harsh punishments for even minor offenses. With this in mind, we would strongly advise the traveler going to Romania to treat the trip like a tolerance break that you always wanted but were afraid to take.
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