Abstract:
At present, a narcotic problem comprises three aspects altogether, i.e. prevention, suppression and rehabilitation. This problem is a main concern for every country, particularly in the cure and rehabilitation dimension. It is a severe obstacle to general development of the country, i.e. the country has to lose most of its manpower due to narcotic addiction. The different measures to counteract this including laws are not really suitable for problem-solving. So this research is geared toward ascertaining some legal measures which have successfully been used by the countries experiencing this problem. A comparison is thus made to mete out good legal measures complementing other ones so as to overcome the aforesaid obstacle. There are four main kinds of narcotic which are depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens and mixed sorts. Each kind has different destructive power to humankind. In the old days, people all believed that narcotic produced merely good effects. On the contrary, it now creates a good many problems instead. Each country thus makes a co-operation in order to solve this problem by holding various conferences, making numerous treaties and pacts to regulate narcotic. The member countries have applied a lot of principles obtained from those conferences and treaties to enact their own laws concerning narcotic. Many studies have discovered that the increasing number of narcotic addicts is due to multifarious aliases such as the problems of the offenders themselves, environmental milieu, social as well as economic problems. Besides these, the factors concerning age, sex, education and occupations also play an important role to worsen this problem. All countries in the world. have similar causes of the problem. It is evident that dangers caused by drug addicts are numerous. They often commit crimes again and again such as offences about theft, life injuries, car accidents and so on. Drug addicts are deemed as criminal offenders and thus fall into the judicial process inevitably. The process begins with policemen, then public prosecutors, judges and finally the Correc¬tions officers who conduct investigation and suing and take legal proceedings to punish or at times acquit those offenders. As to this process, people from various walks of life have proposed to set up a special court dealing directly with this matter like a labor court or an administrative court. However, no project has so far been drafted for this purpose. As to the treatment for drug addicts, they are demarcated into two categories. The first one is the treatment for those who voluntarily apply for it according to the article 94 of Narcotic Act 2522 B.E. The drug addicts of this category will be whisked off to Thanyarak Hospital, the biggest drug-addict treatment centre in Thailand. They will be cured and rehabilitated with correct medical methods until the symptom is killed. When they get a letter of guarantee from the authority concerned, they will be exempt from legal punishment. The other category is that drug addicts do not voluntarily apply for the treatment. They have been arrested and taken legal action against according to the judicial process. If their offences are proved true, legal proceedings will be taken against them by the Corrections officers and they will be sent to be cured at a special place for treatment if necessity prevails. As for legal measures to cure and rehabilitate drug addicts, the international community including Thailand has agreed that to cope with all the problems concerning drug addicts entails some standard-cum-suitable measures to be taken as follows: 1. Pre-admission period. 2. Withdrawal. treatment. 3. Rehabilitation. 4. Follow-up study All the four measures are accomplished to a. certain degree by those countries which have a narcotic problem such as the U.S.A., Japan, India, Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia, etc. As for Thailand, the four measures are still not completely carried out due to various obstacles. These are the insufficient strictness of legal measures, lack of co-ordination among the authorities concerned, lack of effec¬tive measures to investigate would-be drug addicts, the preparation for the cure and the follow-up study which have not still been carried out so far. Presently, no methods are found effective for rehabili¬tating drug prisoners during imprisonment. However, the authorities dealing with the cure and rehabilitation of drug addicts must have certain legal power to do their job. Besides these, the obstacles concerned may be the deficient budget, lack of experts or specialists on drug addiction as well as of places and instruments for the cure and rehabilitation. If these obstacles can be overcome and all the four measures can be really carried out with good co-operation from all concerned, to solve the narcotic problem will certainly materialize in the long run.