A 38-year-old German man has been arrested at St Petersburg airport in Russia after edible cannabis gummies were found in his luggage, the German foreign ministry confirmed on Wednesday.
“I can confirm that we are aware of the case and that it concerns a German national,” foreign ministry spokesman Christian Wagner said after Russian customs authorities reported the incident on Tuesday.
The government is in contact with the man’s lawyers, Wagner said.
He could face up to seven years in jail under Russia’s drug laws.
The man was carrying a plastic bag labelled “Fink Green Goldbears” and bearing the image of a cannabis leaf, the Russian customs service said. The bag contained six jelly candies weighing about 20 grams.
Upon testing, these were found to contain tetrahydrocannabinol — “a narcotic drug and therefore… prohibited from being transported across the border”, the Russian authorities said.
The man had arrived from Hamburg via Istanbul and was planning to meet a woman he had met online and travel around Russia, they said.
“The passenger explained that at the end of last year he bought 10 candies containing marijuana in a speciality store in his homeland,” the customs service said.
He liked to use the sweets during long flights “for a restful sleep”, he reportedly said.
Western countries have accused Russia of arresting their citizens to use them for negotiations to secure the release of Russian spies held abroad.
In February 2022, US basketball star Brittney Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport for possessing vape cartridges containing a small quantity of cannabis oil.
Griner was sentenced to a nine-year prison term but freed as part of a US-Russia prisoner exchange.
In his interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson last week, President Vladimir Putin brought up the case of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian prisoner serving a life sentence in Germany.
Without mentioning him by name, Putin referred to Krasikov in the context of negotiations over a deal to free Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Krasikov was jailed last year for the 2019 killing of separatist commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in a Berlin park, which German authorities say was ordered by Russian intelligence services.
