The Chair of the Human Rights and Civil Integration Committee, Mikheil Sarjveladze held the briefing to inform the media about the registration of the Bill on Narcotic Means, Psychotropic Agents, Precursors and Narcological Aid.

According to him, the current law fails to determine the small, large and extremely large amounts of the certain part of the narcotic means, which creates the gap in enforcement of the law. The hereof gap of the law has been stressed in the recent decisions of the Constitutional Court of Georgia.

“Often, only because of the fact that the narcotic means fail to have the determined small amount, it entails the application of the disproportional penalty to the users of the small number of drugs, and often, the penalty is expressed in the years of detention. Hence, pursuant to the current law, in the event of detection of any amount of some narcotic means, the person is subject to the direct criminal disproportional and unfairly severe responsibility”, - he noted.

The bill is not to somehow decriminalize the drug crimes and especially to somehow legalize them. The bill also cannot have an impact on the qualification of some grave forms of the drug crime (for instance, realization and sale of drugs), towards which the severe policy shall be maintained.

As the reporter noted, the bill specifies the small, large and extremely large amounts of the narcotic means as follows: amphetamine, desomorphine, lysergic acid, its derivatives and preparations, including the LSD, MDMA, efedrone, meth, methadone and heroin. “Information about the exact amounts shall be available on the Parliamentary website. The bill shall as well be uploaded to the website. The bill will entail the improvement and facilitate foreseeability of the amounts of the drugs providing the dosage and intoxication effect, which will create the legitimate basis for the proportional and fair punishment, as it is the basis for the balanced drug policy. The amount calculation method was based on the scientific material and the laboratory expert examinations. The measure for the small drug amount is considered to be one-time usage of the drug. The drug amounts have been calculated in the manner to prevent encouragement of the usage and drug sale”, - he stated.