A 55-year-old Cuban citizen was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment for the crime of trafficking and commercializing marijuana, following a trial held in the province of Santiago de Cuba.
The harsh sentence imposed by the Provincial Court has raised concerns among those who watch with alarm the tightening of drug-related penalties on the island, even for amounts deemed minor in other countries.
According to local television, the trial took place in the Room for Crimes Against State Security, and was part of the case 64 of 2025. The court found it proven that the accused was intercepted on September 26, 2024, at the intersection of Pilar and Martí streets in the municipality of Palma Soriano, while transporting 230 grams of cannabis sativa, marijuana, in a backpack.
The man bought the substance in Palma Soriano and sold it from his home in the city of Santiago de Cuba. In addition to the main sentence, the court ordered the deprivation of civil rights, the prohibition of leaving the country, and the confiscation of the seized money and drugs.
The television report emphasized the "exemplary" nature of the ruling, in line with the official zero-tolerance policy against drugs, promoted by the regime amid the Third National Exercise for Prevention and Confrontation against Crime, Corruption, and Social Indiscipline.
However, for many Cubans both inside and outside the country, these types of sentences fuel a growing concern about the proportionality of the penalties and the use of courts as a punitive tool in a context of deep economic and social crisis.
While in other regions the decriminalization of cannabis is being debated, in Cuba a person can be sentenced to nearly a decade in prison for less than a quarter of a kilogram. This case reignites the discussion about the limits of punishment and the systematic neglect of the structural causes that drive many into illegality.
In recent weeks, Santiago de Cuba has become the focal point of a judicial crackdown on drug trafficking. For example, in the town of Sigua, a man was arrested with over 19 thousand seeds and 950 marijuana plants cultivated in his backyard. The operation was praised by official sources as a demonstration of the collaboration between MININT and "the aware population."
Weeks earlier, another resident of Santiago was arrested for having a small marijuana cultivation in his yard, using cut rum bottles as improvised planters. He claimed to have planted “what he had,” reflecting how precarious circumstances lead to desperate solutions.
Also in June, a 64-year-old Venezuelan was sentenced in the Santiago court for drug trafficking, in a process held as part of a state narrative that seeks to demonstrate a "heavyhanded" approach without addressing the socioeconomic reasons behind these crimes.
In another case, a 23-year-old man was sentenced to eight years in prison for selling marijuana in pouch-like wrappers. He was carrying only 20 grams at the time of his arrest. Another defendant received 12 years for transporting cocaine from Havana, intercepted at a checkpoint.
All these processes have taken place in the same court for crimes against state security, in trials where effective defense is rarely mentioned and the discourse of punishment prevails over structural analysis.
The official message is clear: zero tolerance, public punishment, and display of force. However, what many Cubans are asking is what lies behind the increase in these cases, why more and more young people and adults are ending up facing long years in prison for minimal amounts, and whether the repressive approach truly addresses a problem that is fundamentally social, economic, and political.
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