La enfermedad de la adicción: un delito según la tabla de cantidades de sustancias estupefacientes y psicotrópicas

Abstract

The development of medical science and Psychology have allowed to demonstrate that drug addiction is a true illness that alters drastically and uncontrollably the way of living of a human being. The person who has drug dependency can be distinguished from the occasional consumer in the way that the deprivation of narcotic and psychotropic substances produce sever physical and psychiatric effects in his organism, due to the abstinence syndrome. In Ecuador, a table of narcotic and psychotropic substances has been created with the purpose of regulating micro traffic of drugs, however, for the consideration of the quantities of allowed drug, the legislator did not considered the fact that, in practice, an addict will always need to carry bigger quantities that the one that are stablished by the table. In this way, an illness is being criminalized and the constitutional statement of the non-criminalization of addictions is being disobeyed. Despite of what’s happening in various legislations of South America, addictions are still not considered as a public health issue; in the contrary, it is still stigmatized by our still conservative society. So, it is necessary to modify this unconstitutional table, so the health of addicts can be guaranteed.