At an anti-drug forum that just ended in Beijing, some experts suggested legally defining drug use as a crime.

They have plenty of reasons.

In China now, producing, trafficking and selling drugs are all crimes. But the act of taking drugs itself is not legally classed as a crime.

As a result, the experts said, people charged with the possession of drugs could successfully avoid being convicted by declaring to the courts that the drugs were for their personal use. The reasoning is probably true in some cases. And making taking drugs a crime may help the country in its fight against drug dealers.

As one of the most serious problems in modern society, drug abuse causes great harm to drug users and their families, leads to various other types of crime and endangers social order.

However, whether or not to label an action as a crime is not a simple question of yes or no.

As in many other complex matters that defy simple solutions, decisions about laws governing drug use touch on a vast array of overlapping problems that make it very difficult to make decisions that would be fair in all cases.

One of the experts advised finding drug-users guilty of a crime if "their drug use leads to other crimes or if they intentionally start taking drugs again after being rehabilitated more than five times."

It does not need much expertise to see that such a ruling would be impracticable and subject to a variety of interpretations.

Therefore, a reasonable and detailed description of which drug users should be charged must be the basis for any such law.

If this is not done, any such law will be unfair and unsatisfactory. And if any such law is put into practice but proves impracticable, it must be rescinded.

The number of registered drug users in China now has reached 1.05 million.

This is a group of people whose basic rights must be respected by the State, unless there is adequate proof that their actions threaten the welfare of others.

(China Daily July 28, 2004)