Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures - Oapen

Drug Offences 101
Drug offences: the definition is largely uniform through international conventions
Please indicate whether these
items are separately identifiable
in criminal law:
Yes No Remarks
Include the following:
cultivation
production
sale
supplying
transportation
importation
exportation
financing of drug operations
consumption
possession of larger quantities
possession of small quantities
Table E.7 presents the results of the evaluation of the trial questionnaire. It shows
that in many responding countries the majority of drug offence concepts are separately
identifiable in criminal law. However, some other countries (Finland, Iceland,
the Netherlands) noted for all or most of the concepts that they are not separately
identifiable in criminal law. This is usually due to the fact that drug offences in
these countries, like explicitly stated in the questionnaire for Iceland, are all covered
by the same article in criminal law. In such a situation, the question for separate
identifiability is ambiguous, since it could be answered “yes” as soon as in one
article a concept like “transportation” is mentioned among other concepts. But it
could also be understood in the way that the answer is only “yes” if there is a separate
article on transportation in drug laws. The latter will not be the case for many
countries, e.g. Germany, where the concept, however, is separately mentioned in the
article on drug offences. Combined with the results of table E.3.3, table E.7
makes clear that consumption is excluded from the data in Albania, Germany and
Ukraine since it is not a legal concept identifiable in criminal law. In other words:
Consumption is not an offence.