Poland considers drug decriminalization
Poland's Council of Minister is to submit draft bill which would decriminalise possession of recreational drugs for personal use.
Under the proposed law, the attorney general and courts could drop charges citing the crime's low risk to society. This way the government wants to focus only on pursuing drug producers and dealers, a commendable step forward, claims Boguslawa Bukowska, deputy head of the National Bureau for Drug Prevention:
"It is important to separate two distinct situations. It is one thing when an individual possesses a small dose of narcotics for his or her own use and does not sell it or incite drug use," Bukowska told Polish Radio.
"It is an altogether different case, however, when someone has a larger amount of drugs and distributes it. The legal system needs to differentiate between the two and so the punishment should also vary," she said.
The bill proposes the introduction of track records of repeat offenders, allowing courts to refer drug addicts to treatment centres rather than prison.
[Thanks Jamie!]
|
Recently @ DoseNation
|
|
Something not said in this article: it would actually be a return to a policy we used to have before 2000. In the communist period (1944-1989) the law was pretty liberal so that the authorities didn't have to admit that a drug problem did exist "in our socialist homeland"; later this law's general quite liberal character remained. And the one who pushed the new law was our tragically deceased President, Mr. Lech Kaczynski, at that time Minister of Justice. (I was shocked by the news from Smolensk, but I also definitely never liked him - from the time he gained popularity as a "tough" Minister, the "sheriff", which rose him to the post of Mayor of Warsaw and finally to presidency. Actually he never was that tough, he was very dependent on his twin brother Jaroslaw, the much more fanatic one - and now there are rumours that exacctly Jaroslaw told his brother not to let the pilot divert to another airport, which caused the tragedy. End of digression...)
I remember what arguments for a stricter law were given then - something in this style: "the pushers are smart, carry just a bit and then say it's for personal consumption, and what can we (we, poor policemen) do?". Now practice definitely goes against the spirit of this law (at least in some cases) because people have been arrested for items clearly proving the drug was NOT intended for sale (small glass pipes with THC-containing tar) and even for "possessing a drug within their bodies". The Constitutional Tribunal decided that having a drug with intent to consume it immediately shouldn't be understood as possession in thye meaning of this act, but later this decision was overturned. Now we hope for liberalization, but it's still such a small step...
The comments posted here do not reflect the views of the owners of this site.