Sanctions on soliders smoking cannabis By Ziv Gensove
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A year and 10 months after a special committee formulated a series of recommendations for dealing with drug use in general, and cannabis use in particular, among IDF soldiers, Aviv Kochavi, the Army Chief of Staff, approved the recommendations and put them into effect.

 

The committee recommended measures that include denial of benefits and financial sanctions against soldiers caught smoking cannabis at the base during service, but even if they smoked cannabis at home during vacation, if they have admitted to doing so on more than five cases.

 

It was initially reported that these sanctions include the denial of benefits such as a combat certificate, reduction or denial of a release grant, and denial of coupons and unit vacations.

 

However, it was later reported that, according to the recommendations received, “the IDF will deny or significantly reduce the various release grants, if a soldier is convicted during his service for low-level drug offenses, such as the use during military activity, or possession and dealing in a limited scale. The new change will include penalties on release grants for the less serious drug offenses and this will also affect scholarships provided by the army.”

 

Although a special committee will review each matter on its merits, according to the army’s decision, every soldier caught using cannabis will feel the new sanction in practice, which in some cases may reach a loss in the range of thousands to even tens of thousands of NIS (New Israeli Shekel).

 

This decision comes after the reform the IDF implemented to address this matter two years ago, which states that soldiers who got caught less than 5 times smoking cannabis while on holiday will not be criminally punished.

 

Simultaneously, with the implementation of the reform, the military police launched efforts to arrest soldiers using cannabis during service inside the base, and accordingly, enforcement data against this use jumped by up to 2 times or more.

 

In 2020, more than 1,000 soldiers in the Israeli army were arrested due to cannabis use offenses. Following this, the army’s Chief of Staff decided establish a committee to examine how to address this phenomenon.

Written and Published By Ziv Genesove in Weed World Magazine issue 152

Image: Emeric Laperriere from pixels