Problems in court practice with determining certain elements of the offenses under the article 246 and 246a of the criminal code of Serbia

Abstract

Unauthorized production and trafficking of narcotic drugs is a criminal offense the Police and the Public Prosecution Office separate significant material and human resources for its prevention.This work is primarly about crime analysis, i.e. problems in collecting the evidence and difficulty in determining the elements of the offense. In this particular prosecutorial and police work in practice, a large number of problems are diagnosed. The offenses related to abuse of narcotic drugs due to imprecise law formulations often provide inadequate qualification and application of the provision of the Criminal Code favourable for the perpetrator. As we shall see, very often it is proved that they committed the criminal offense under Article 246 or its qualification into 246a as a lump term of these provisions provide relatively simple qualification of use of narcotic drugs for personal use, without any drug dealing. In practice we have a large number of cases where “drug dealers” are convicted in a short time for possession of various narcotic drugs (cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, marijuana, etc.) for “personal use”. A number of questions can be asked. Did the police and other criminal authorities use all possible ways to prove the unauthorized sale of narcotics? Is it necessary to make changes and amendments of the specified Criminal Code provisions to make them more precise? Does the number of different kinds of addicts (drug addicts) who consume more types of narcotic drugs increase? We will try to answers these questions and through examples from Court practice show the work of the police, public prosecutors and judges in detecting and proving the illicit traffic of narcotic drugs.