My name is Michail Todua, I am turning thirty-four this year and I was raised in Tbilisi. Music was always my passion since childhood, which is why I decided to work in this industry. Thirteen years ago I met a girl named Salome in a club, we fell in love and I married her before she gave birth to our daughter who is now nine years old. Sadly for the past six years, I have only talked to my little girl on the phone. She thinks I live very far away in the USA because we did not want to hurt her at such a young age with the truth. On September 12, 2013, while I was driving back to Tbilisi from holiday, I was randomly stopped and taken into the local police station. After which I was sentenced to nine years for possession of the drug MDMA (for personal use). After two years in jail, I was granted the right to work on music, and the penitentiary administration allowed me to arrange one room and transform it into a music studio. Music is one of the most important things in my life and I could not be without it. I collected various parts of music gear that people sent me. It was not easy, and I had to depend on the kindness of many people to get what I needed. During my time in prison, I have managed to release five records. This is a labor of love that I craft and work on during the 5-hour blocks of time I get five times a week in the studio. I have created music for a play based on 12 Angry Men and for the documentary Facility 16. I also offer music therapy for my fellow inmates.

We are just a few names in the thousands that have been impacted by the current Georgian legislation. Our drug policy is one of the strictest in the world. Is it right? We are not just numbers, we are lives that are destroyed, children that are left alone, futures that vanish.

Maybe Michailo found solace in prison and became what he was meant to be: a musician, an artist. But what about others who don’t find this welfare, this strength? People with no support that are pressured by a police force who often do not see us as human beings, because the current laws do not encourage them to do so. Please Madam President and our government, think about this youth that is getting stolen away. We have seen and endured these sufferings for too long. We can no longer be prolonging these hardships that are unfair and unjust. What we are asking for is not to decriminalize or legalize the use of drugs, but to correct the political errors which have led to and caused so much pain for the children, women, and men of Georgia.

Georgia has one of the highest incarceration rates with 252.2 inmates per 100 000 inhabitants, in Europe, only Russia has a higher rate. (Source: SPACE 2018 survey)

Georgian law does not establish a threshold for small quantities, which means that possession of even particles automatically qualifies as a large amount, triggering criminal liability and a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence.

Between 2006 and 2008, the first two years of the “zero tolerance” policy, the number of registered drug offenses tripled. It also coincided with a tripling of Georgia’s prison population.