RAPPER Wiz Khalifa has been sentenced to nine months in a jail after lighting up joint on stage during a festival.
The American musician, whose real name is Thomas Cameron Jibril, admitted to smoking the marijuana-filled joint in Romania.
Jibril was previously told to pay an $829 (£619) fine for drug possession before Romanian prosecutors appealed the decision and won.
A court overturned the original decision in the appeal, re-sentencing him to spend nine months behind bars.
Constanța Court of Appeal judges released their written decision, revealing why they overturned the original fine.
They said the rapper “possessed and consumed, in front of a large audience predominantly made up of very young people, an artisanal cigarette”.
Referring to his behaviour as an “ostentatious act”, the judges said Jibril was sending “a message of normalisation of illegal conduct” and “encouraging drug use among young people”.
The decision is “final” under Romanian law.
The eastern European court heard investigators found the rapper to have more than 18 grams of cannabis in his possession at the time of Beach, Please! festival in July last year.
He was charged with possession of “risk drugs” for personal use.
He was booked as a major international act at the Costinești festival, where he lit up the joint on stage.
Following being charged and taken into custody for a short time, Khalifa released a statement on social media platform X.
“They [the authorities] were very respectful and let me go,” he wrote.
“I’ll be back soon. But without a big a*s joint next time.”
Khalifa was sentenced in absentia, and was seen performing on stage with fellow rapper Gunna in California earlier in the week.
Romanian criminologist Vlad Zaha told BBC News the new punishment was “unusually harsh”, however it was unlikely that he would be extradited.
“Given the defendant’s wealth and connections, Romania’s lack of real negotiating power on extradition, and the legal and political status of cannabis in the US, it is highly unlikely that Wiz Khalifa will be sent to serve a prison sentence in Constanta,” he said.
Despite this, Zaha said Romanian authorities had sent a formal judicial request to the US.
Cannabis is legal for recreational and medical use in some US states; however, it remains illegal under federal law.
Romania has strict laws on the use of the illicit substance, which remains illegal for both recreational and medicinal use.
Physicians in the country are unable to prescribe the drug to patients, but those who receive their prescriptions elsewhere in the European Union can enter the country with the correct documentation.
Khalifa, who is known for songs including Black and Yellow, See You Again and Young, Wild & Free, has been pictured on numerous occasions smoking cannabis.
According to Rolling Stone, he spent two hours on streaming platform Twitch on Wednesday, where he was seen smoking weed.
He also founded his own marijuana brand in 2016.
Khalifa is yet to comment on the new sentence.
