Legal Regulation of Narcotic Drugs as an Object of Legal Relations: Administrative, Criminal and Civil Aspects
Author(s): Nataliia Ryzhenko*, Oleksandr Sviatotskyi, Olena Volobuieva, Roman Yemelianov and Dmytro Khamatov
Abstract
Aim: The purpose of the article is to disclose the legal regulation of narcotic drugs as an object of legal relations (administrative, criminal and civil aspects).
Methods: The methodological basis of the study is a set of general scientific and special legal methods, the application of which allowed for a comprehensive consideration of the legal regime of narcotic drugs as an object of legal relations. The choice of methods is due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, which covers administrative, criminal and civil law.
The fundamental approach was the dialectical method, which allowed for the analysis of the legal regulation of the circulation of narcotic drugs in its development and relationship with the current challenges of public safety and health care. Thanks to the system-structural method, narcotic drugs were considered as a specific object with a special legal status, which determines the content of legal relations in various branches of law.
Results: Analysis of the research results allows us to highlight several debatable issues that require further scientific understanding. The first issue is the balance between control and accessibility. The legalization of the use of cannabis for medical purposes (2024) has sparked a lively debate about the adequacy of administrative safeguards against the leakage of these drugs into illegal circulation. A number of scientists insist that excessive bureaucracy (licenses, quotas, electronic systems) can limit patients’ access to necessary treatment, while opponents point to the risks of increasing drug addiction. The second aspect is the effectiveness of Article 309 of the criminal code of Ukraine. There is an ongoing discussion in academic circles about the advisability of criminalizing small-scale drug possession for personal use. The experience of some European countries shows that transferring such acts exclusively to the plane of administrative liability allows law enforcement agencies to focus on combating drug dealers, not consumers. The third point of discussion is civil liability. In particular, the issue of compensation for damage caused to the state or third parties as a result of illegal drug trafficking remains open, since the existing confiscation mechanism does not always fully compensate for social losses.
Conclusion: It was established that narcotic drugs are a specific, multidisciplinary object of legal relations, the legal regime of which is determined not only by their physicochemical properties, but also by
regulatory and legal recognition (inclusion in the relevant state lists). The main feature of these drugs in the legal field is their limited turnover, which determines the dominance of public-law methods of regulation over private-law ones.