Drug Purity And The Sentencing Study

Drugs brings calamity to the country and the people, greatly threatening the survival and development of human beings. Drug criminality has become an increasingly thorny international issue, against which each country has been fighting a hard and enduring struggle. Each country regards the types and quantity of drugs as the main factors in sentence. While on the method that how to calculate the quantity of drugs, different nations adopt different measures. As stipulated in Article 357, section 2 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, the quantity of Narcotic drugs smuggled, trafficked in, transported, manufactured or illegally possessed shall be calculated on the basis of the verified amount and shall not be converted according to its purity. Although being simple and clear, it has some problems, one of which is that defendants with large amount but low purity receive heavier punishment than those with small amount but high purity, the other is that the judge cannot determine the accurate punishment where not taking account of the purity of some drugs such as Ecstacy and pethidine. Then, what is the role of drug purity in sentence and how to perfect our country's legislation? This paper studies this question in four sections:Section I introduces the issue of relationship between drug purity and sentence in some foreign countries especially the U.S and Great Britain. After discussing the totally different practices in these two countries, the author draws the conclusion that their legislations are of high value to China.Section II deals with the history and status quo of the relationship between drug purity and sentence in our country. It reviews the public debate that whether the amount of drugs should be converted according to its purity since the Standing Committee of NPC passed Dicision on the Prohibition Against Narcotic Drugs in1990. Furthermore, it generalizes some judicial interpretations concerned and focuses on the latest regulation in the Summary of Forum of the Supreme People's Court in 2000.Section III analyses the importance of drug purity in sentence and its reasons. The author points out that drug purity plays an important role in sentence. There are three main reasons: first is that there still exists death penalty in China at present, second is that the demand of the mildness of punishment and finally, the benefit to the implementation of the purposes of punishment.Section IV puts forward two proposals to the perfection of our Criminal Law. One is drawing up the relationship table between drug quantity and sentence and drug equivalency table in the form of Amendment of Criminal Law, the other is the revision proposal to Article 357 in the Criminal Law currently in force.