Our legal information

We have been providing legal information to THC users since 1996. For many, the law is not clear, they do not understand the horrendous fine amounts or they want to find out about appeal possibilities. People seeking advice want to know more about their rights, they have problems with their driver's license, or they have just had the first house search - there are many reasons for seeking legal advice.

We have collected a lot of material for this purpose: laws, ordinances, directives, reports on convictions, fines/summary penalty orders, statistics, stories of repression and much more from thousands of cases. This information has to be brought up to date again and again, which requires a lot of time and perseverance and is an important part of our work.

Every case we see, every document we receive, adds another piece of the mosaic to our picture of concrete repression against hemp users and its changes over time as well as the differences between the cantons.

Because laws and ordinances are one thing, police orders and prosecution practice are another. These can only be seen in the concrete cases and the legally binding summary penalty orders.

We can clarify simple questions over the phone. Those who want to understand repression in its various facets quickly need more than a few minutes. A personal meeting in our office is better suited for this.

Such a consultation usually lasts an hour. Either the topic is prosecution because of dealing with THC (contravention, misdemeanor, statements) or we deal with the problem of driver's license and THC (criminal prosecution, traffic office, readings). Since 2015, we also have many inquiries on the subject of hemp seed import.

Here we can explain the field of repression, classify official documents and give tips on how to proceed. However, our resources do not allow us to represent cases in court. Here we would like to build something in the medium term, but for this we need interested lawyers and of course larger budgets.

The goal of the consultation is therefore to convey the legal basics, to explain the procedures of law enforcement agencies, to compare the case with similar cases and to show the types of punishment. Our Shit happens brochure contains the basics for this.

For our members such consultations are free of charge, for non-members we charge 70 francs per hour.

Sven Schendekehl has been dealing with the legal aspects surrounding THC consumption in Switzerland since 1996 and has gathered a lot of information from thousands of cannabis cases.

If you like this offer around legal issues, you can support our work by making a donation, subscribing, or becoming a member.

If you have any questions or would like to send us texts, summary penalty orders, court decisions or other interesting material, please contact us or send us your documents by mail: Legalize it!, Quellenstrasse 25, 8005 Zurich.