Europe’s drug laws are a mess – and ordinary people pay the price

The law has yet to catch up with the public embrace of recreational marijuana, leading to confusion and ruined lives, writes Borzou Daragahi

At the heart of the issue is ambiguity over what constitutes hemp products and marijuana, both of which belong to the cannabis family of plants (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Cristian Dide knew that his politically motivated stunt of sending sealed packets of cannabis products he purchased legally to the Romanian prosecutor’s office would eventually trigger a response.

The whole point was to open a debate about what he describes as the absurdity, inconsistency and outdated nature of the patchwork of laws governing the sales and use of various cannabis products, both in shops and online in the EU and Romania.

What the 36-year-old activist and businessman did not expect was to be tracked down by security forces spying on him through his smartphone, dragged off a train in the middle of the night by Romania’s elite Directorate for Investigating Crime and Terrorism, and held in jail for 30 days, late last year. He’s now awaiting trial on charges of drug trafficking. He remains vocal and unbowed about the absurdity of Europe’s cannabis laws.