SOLUŢII JURIDICE PENTRU DECRIMINALIZAREA CONSUMULUI DE DROGURI
JURIDICAL SOLUTIONS FOR THE DECRIMINALIZATION OF DRUG CONSUMPTION

Summary/Abstract: Juridical solutions for the decriminalization of drug consumption. The author analyses the juridical mechanisms for the decriminalization of drug consumption, as these are used in the judicial criminal system. The starting point for this analysis is that a clear delimitation must be made between the necessity of incriminating drug trafficking which is hardly controversial in the international criminal doctrine, taking also into account the international conventions on this matter, on the one hand and the controversy linked to the need, utility and conceptual justification of incriminating drug consumption, seen as a self-harm action on the other. The mechanisms used are presented along with their advantages and disadvantages, both in terms of drug prevention and from the perspective of the conceptual justification, since there are other harmful substances that have a self-harm effect on the consumer and, despite this, the criminal legislature does not intervene through the criminalization of the consumption of these (alcohol, cigarettes, chemical substances). The author examines the issue of incriminating drug consumption related to the principle of social values legitimately protected, the principle of minimum intervention and the principle of proportionality and non-discrimination. Subsequently, the concrete mechanisms of decriminalization used in the criminal system are discussed, in fact or in law. The author analyses the use of the opportunity principle in the case of penal pursuit for drug consumption. Next follows an analysis of the principle used in the Romanian criminal system, based on the premise that although consumption related activities are incriminated, in fact such acts may not have the degree of social danger specific for a crime. Other criminal systems that are built on the idea of the existence of a minimum quantity of drugs trafficked or consumed in order to require the intervention of criminal law are also presented. In case of quantities necessary for self consumption, the conduct does not harm any social values that must be protected through the incrimination of the consumer’s action. In the end, the author analyses the decision of legalizing drug consumption, crossing the line of its non-incrimination. In this case, drug consumption would be a licit conduct, not illicit but not incriminated as it is now in Romania. The author’s conclusion is that even though conceptually drug consumptions is a self-harm behavior that must not be incriminated and that the consumption of these substances is treated in a discriminatory manner in the criminal law in relation to alcohol consumption, its legalization is a step too liberal for today’s Romanian society.

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