NOVOSIBIRSK, April 9 - RAPSI, Dmitry Mikhalyov. The Novosibirsk Central District Court has passed a guilty verdict on seven businesspeople for selling hemp leaf stickers for cars, the Federal Drug Control Service's local department reported on Tuesday.

"The investigative actions conducted by the Federal Drug Control Service at car markets and malls in Novosibirsk in early 2013 uncovered seven instances of drugs being illegally advertised," the watchdog reported in a statement.

Yekaterina Bogatyryova from the watchdog's Novosibirsk branch said the case concerns hemp leaf stickers for cars that were sold in retail booths.

The court passed a guilty verdict on the seven businesspeople for popularizing or illegally advertising narcotics, psychotropic substances or their precursors, or plants containing narcotics or psychotropic substances. Six were sentenced to a temporary suspension of operation for 10-15 days and one was fined 40,000 rubles ($1,265).

The hemp leaf on the confiscated items symbolizes cannabis, which is a narcotic substance. Such images can attract people's attention to narcotic substances and encourage their interest in narcotics," according to an expert conclusion issued by a local outpatient drug facility and the Research Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences' Siberian branch.