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French national was sentenced to one year in prison by the Denpasar District Court on Wednesday for possessing 44.6 grams of marijuana.

Karim Chabib was found guilty of possession and misuse of narcotics, violating article 127 of the 2009 Narcotics Law, presiding judge Amzer Simanjuntak told the court.

“The defendant has been proven guilty of misusing the drugs, although he only used them personally and he is not a dealer,” Amzer said, adding that the defendant’s actions “could negatively affect the young generation and tarnish the image of Bali’s tourism.”

The sentence was lighter than the one-and-a-half years sought by the prosecution in their sentence demand read in court two weeks ago.

The prosecutors said they had sought only a minor sentence of one-and-a-half years because the defendant had used the drugs for medicinal purposes as prescribed by his doctor.

Two doctors from France were present at the trial as expert witnesses, and confirmed that the defendant had used the drugs as
medication.

In response to the sentencing, lawyer Made Loster and prosecutor Ketut Sukada said they would consider filing an appeal.

Chabib was arrested by the Bali Police on March 28 in a villa in the Legian area after locals reported to the police that they suspected that an illegal drug transaction had taken place on the premises.

The police then searched the villa and found three packages of marijuana. One of packages, containing 6.25 grams of the drug, was found in the toilet, and the other two, weighing 19.31 grams and 18.5 grams, were found in the bedroom on the second floor of the villa.

The man, who was born on July 16, 1978, said he used the drugs to ease pain in his waist from a motorcycle accident several years ago, as recommended by his doctor in France.

However, he was unable to produce the doctor’s prescriptions at the time of his arrest. He later produced the prescriptions after he had been reported to the French Consulate. A letter was then sent from France to confirm that the prescriptions were real.

The Bali Police have recorded an increase in drug cases every year over the last few years in the island’s major tourist hubs, including Denpasar, Badung and Gianyar.

Of the 670 drug cases last year, 41.6 percent, or 279 cases, occurred in the three regencies, which have the highest rate of tourism development on the island.

Data from 2009 showed that 41.7 percent of all drug cases on the island were reported in the three regencies.

In 2010, the police arrested 490 drug dealers and more than 200 users, 27 of whom were foreigners. The police estimated that drug cases in Bali would likely increase in line with the island’s rapid tourism
development.