Drug consumption and the efficacy of the public policies

Abstract

The connection between drug consumption, as social phenomenon with important consequences on the community and the public policies which address this phenomenon is reflected in the legislation which must be adapted and modified so that the drug addicts are not excluded socially may have equal access to the social services, to education and job opportunities. Although the public opinion often expressed its support for the hard repression, of drug addicts’ isolation, most of the specialists consider that the social reaction towards this category of people is fuelled by repressive conceptions totally disproportional in relation with the manifested social danger. The social stigma is reflected equally in the policies which treat these people as irrecoverable offenders; in any penal legislative system there is a need for balance between punishment and treatment, control and care, shame and rehabilitation, the main purpose of a penal code being the social control. The success or failure of the penal policy is due to the “socialisation” of the offender rather than to its “moralization”. This new manner of sanctioning and social reintegration of the delinquents, represented mainly by the European models of probation and by the alternatives to imprisonment for the drug addict delinquents, achieves a real transfer not just of the possibility of action, but also of the responsibility towards the civil society which thus becomes the main actor in ensuring its security.