Teach
a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
Teach a man to fish with hemp
seeds, and you might be criminally convicted.
A Russian court has convicted a
90-year-old philosophy professor on charges of drug possession after planting
and drying hemp to use as fishing bait.
Nikolai Ryabov, a professor at
Moscow State University of Surveying and Cartography, had planted hemp at his
dacha several decades ago to “use it as fishing bait,” mixing the plant’s seeds
with oatmeal. The bushes continued to grow on their own, and last fall, Ryabov
again gathered some of the hemp to create fishing bait.
The
Sarayevo district court in the Ryazan region, a three-hour drive from Moscow,
handing him a suspended sentence of three years and eight months with a
six-month probationary period for large-scale drug possession.
Ryabov pleaded guilty to the
charges and said he never smoked the hemp or used any other drugs. In a press
release Tuesday, the court said it took Ryabov’s age, profession, status as a
World War II veteran and guilty plea into account and made his sentence more
moderate.
Ryabov had previously been
convicted in 2018 for growing, collecting and storing cannabis on his property.
According to the court’s press
release, growing hemp wasn’t prohibited at the time Ryabov first planted it in
his garden decades ago. “It used to grow everywhere and was used for the
production of oil and clothes,” it said.
But it's illegal now, and
that's all that matters.
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