Work is being carried out on the draft of a new Act on counteracting drug addiction. The current Act on counteracting drug addiction, which has been in force for 4 years, has not turned out to be useful.
An Act that introduces the punishment of imprisonment for the possession of any amount of narcotic has been in force since the year 2000. The tightening of laws has not brought the desired effect: it has not made the access to narcotics more difficult and has not caused their price to increase. Furthermore, odds are that drug addicts and not dealers are filling up prisons.
The Ministry of Health, which is being driven by, among other things, the provisions of the conference organized in November by the HFHR on the topic of “Social consequences of the narcotic policy”, has drawn up a new draft of the Act on counteracting drug addiction, according to which the possession of an “insignificant” amount of narcotic is still illegal, but is not subject to punishment. The ministerial draft of the new Act will now be the subject of cross-department negotiations.
A meeting of experts and non-government organization representatives handling the prevention of drug addiction and the reduction of the damages caused by it, devoted to the new draft bill, took place on 26 January at the head office of the HFHR. The meeting’s objective was to work out a common standpoint that is supposed to be presented to the Ministry of Health.
