마약류 사용사범의 피해자적 특성과 처우방향

Legal Status and Treatment of Drug Abusers

Drug-related offenders have continued to increase in Korea In 2002, 7,251 persons were arrested for use, 1,470 persons for drug supply consisting of smuggling, trafficking and manufacturing. Now Korea has been faced with more serious problems of drug abuse and drug trafficking than ever before. Drug abuse appears to become more widespread regardless of class and region. So, drug control policy should be given more emphases on treatment and rehabilitation of drug abusers. There has been an urgent need for government to invest more of its budget in developing programs to treat and rehabilitate drug abusers, to establish more treatment facilities, and to train more specialized personnel. It is necessary for the drug abusers to have chances of enough treatments without any fear of arrest, because drug abusers are the victim of drugs. Government must provide appropriate treatment policy to them. For many abusers, incarceration by itself was not enough to break the cycle of illegal drug use and crime. In order to pursue effective coerced treatments of drug abusers, there must be systemic and appropriate treatment programs.