This was ruled by Judge Anna Sotnikova in a court in Moscow, the city where the athlete was arrested last February with vaporiser cartridges containing cannabis oil.
Brittney Yevette Griner is an American basketball player who since 2015 has been a member of the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg. She was the first NCAA player to score 2000 points and block 500 shots. Two-time Olympic gold medalist, eight-time WNBA all-star and Phoenix Mercury player in the WNBA.
On 16 February she was arrested at Moscow airport for drug possession. She was carrying in her luggage refill cartridges for "vapers" containing about 1 gram of cannabis oil. She has since been held in prison awaiting trial on drug possession charges. On Thursday she was sentenced to nine years in prison. Brittney is yet another example of the persecution of cannabis users around the world, which, depending on the country or region, can be more or less severe.
In Chile, Luis Quintanilla, founder of the first Corporación de pacientes usuarios de Cannabis, a well-known activist in the country's cannabis movement who since 2014 has attended Congress on many occasions to speak about his knowledge of cannabis, was remanded in custody. The Corporation was closed, leaving more than 300 patients without treatment.
These are just two of the latest high-profile victims of the "war on drugs", but there are millions of users around the world who every day are treated like criminals whose human rights are not respected and who are continually singled out, persecuted, financially punished and even thrown in prison for simply liking a plant, or benefiting from its medicinal properties.
In Spain hundreds of thousands of patients with different diseases still cannot safely benefit from cannabis products. Several million users are still without any legal security accessing cannabis through dealers, associations or self-cultivation, as well as purchasing from people involved in larger drug trafficking networks.
