Marijuana peddler on trial in Tongzhou

A 32-year-old man from Qinghai Province was charged with the crime of peddling drugs, and will stand trial Wednesday at Tongzhou district court, the court told the Global Times Tuesday.

The court said the suspect, Yu Peng, is accused of peddling marijuana to local drug users at subway stations. He would sell amounts of four to six grams at one time, according to a press release Tuesday.

Yu, a music producer, was arrested by Shijingshan district police last November and the police seized marijuana at his apartment in Tongzhou later, said Dou Juan, a media officer from Tongzhou Court Tuesday. It is not known why he was arrested in Shijingshan.

Dou did not disclose what drugs police found in Yu's residence, or in what quantities.

Yu sold 6 grams of marijuana to a local resident, surnamed Wang, at a subway station in Tongzhou district for 400 yuan ($63) on November 4, 2011.

He confessed that he had sold drugs on several previous occasions to Wang in October, 2011, as well as dealing drugs to a man surnamed Guo at a subway station in Chaoyang district. He sold four grams of marijuana to Guo for 200 yuan, the press release said.

"Yu was jailed for five months in 2010 under the same charge, so the prosecutor thinks his punishment should be more severe this time," said Dou.

Wang Yan, a lawyer from Beijing Yingke Law Firm, said that Yu may be looking at a sentence of up to three years, according to Chinese criminal law.　

"For drug laws, smuggling, trafficking and producing heroin of less than 10 grams, and opiates under 200 grams or smaller amounts of other drugs means a prison sentence of under three years," said Wang Yan.

"For marijuana specifically, anyone smuggling over 150 kilograms would get a severe penalty of up to seven years in jail," Wang Yan noted.

A 27-year-old musician surnamed Wu from a local band was sentenced in June 2010 to three years after being charged with dealing 14.24 grams of marijuana in a club at Sanlitun, Chaoyang district, after he started to "use it for excitement and inspiration."

He was arrested by Chaoyang police on the scene trying to sell 4.17 grams of the drug to a local drug user for 1,000 yuan, according to a report on website Chinacourt.org.

In January 2011, a Nigerian man was sentenced to 13 months in jail for smuggling 3,000 grams of marijuana via express packages in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, reported the Legal Daily in 2011.