Cannabis in Russia

Soviet-era award for hemp production

Hemp harvesting, USSR 1956

Cannabis in Russia is illegal, but possession of up to 6 grams of cannabis or two grams of hashish is an administrative rather than criminal infraction.

Former limits

In 2006, Russia reduced the limits for criminal possession of many drugs, with the criminal threshold for cannabis being reduced from 20 to 6 grams for cannabis, and 5 to 2 grams for hashish.

Industrial hemp

A 1914 USDA report noted:

Hemp is cultivated throughout the greater part of Russia, and it is one of the principal crops in the provinces of Orel, Kursk, Samara, Smolensk, Tula, Voronezh, and Poland. Two distinct types, similar to the tall fiber hemp and the short oilseed hemp of Manchuria, are cultivated, and there are doubtless many local varieties in isolated districts where there is a little interchange of seed. The crop is rather crudely cultivated, with no attempt at seed selection or improvement, and the plants are generally shorter and coarser than the hemp grown in Kentucky. The short oilseed hemp with slender stems, about 30 inches high, bearing compact clusters of seeds and maturing in 60 to 90 days, is of little value for fiber production, but the experimental plants, grown from seed imported from Russia, indicate that it may be valuable as an oil-seed crop to be harvested and thrashed in the same manner as oilseed flax.