Chinese top court drops conviction threshold to 50 percent of normal criteria for officials
China has vowed to impose harsher penalties on public sector employees involved in drug-related crimes by lowering the conviction threshold, according to a judicial interpretation released by the country's Supreme People's Court (SPC) on Thursday.
The quantitative criteria for conviction for drug-related crimes committed by public sector employees shall be half as high as the general criteria, according to the interpretation, which reviewed laws applicable to the prosecution of drug-related criminal cases.
Public sector employees who engage in trafficking, sales, transport or manufacture of illegal drugs; who illegally possess drugs; or who instigate and deceive others into using illegal substances shall receive harsher legal penalties than those not employed in the public sector, it said.
"If public sector employees - who should consciously resist drugs and positively fight against drug-related crimes - were to commit such crimes, they would undoubtedly cause more adverse influence and harm to society," Fang Wenjun, an SPC judge, said at a news conference on Thursday, news site people.com.cn reported.
"The move delivered the message that China has a tough attitude toward an increasingly severe situation of drug-related crimes, asking public sector employees to play the leading role in combating such crimes," Qu Xinjiu, dean of the Criminal Justice School at the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times.
According to statistics released by the SPC on its official website on Thursday, China saw 142,000 new drug-related criminal cases in courts at all levels in 2015, a year-on-year increase of 30.79 percent.
Public sector employees, celebrities, professionals and enterprise managers account for just 0.4 percent of all drug users in China, Liu Yuejin, vice director of China's National Narcotics Control Commission, was quoted by The Beijing News as saying in February.
However, Qu noted that the new criteria "to some extent can be seen as a little exception to equality before the law."
"Such a legal document in fact translates the moral duties of public sector employees - for whom the public's moral expectations are higher - into legal obligations, ... [even if] drug-related crimes usually have little connection to abuse of power," Qu explained.
In March, local authorities in Liuyang, Central China's Hunan Province, where 37 Party officials were investigated and punished for taking drugs or engaging in drug-related crimes in 2015, unveiled a regulation to handle drug abuse by Party members and civil servants, people.com.cn reported Wednesday. Under this regulation, officials who take drugs will be removed from their posts.
"China now already has comprehensive legislation in terms of drug control," Qu said, suggesting that in order to solve the drug problem, future efforts should include legislation to improve the field of social work, which could provide care and supervision for drug addicts.
