China’s Supreme Court is planning to put more teeth on punishment for certain drug-related offenses as they saw a significant rise in the number of people caught for such crimes.
Ma Yan, a senior Supreme People's Court judge, revealed the court's plans on handing down stricter sentences to drug offenders in order to alleviate the worsening problem in the country.
According to China Daily, the call came after the Chinese judiciary reviewed records on drug-related crimes whereas a total of 137,198 people were sentenced for transporting, smuggling, producing, buying, or illegally holding illegal drugs.
Apparently, that number was 25 percent higher than that of 2015, making the problem more serious than expected.
Additional Illegal Substances
In the review, the Chinese Supreme Court offered a couple of additional substances that should be considered illegal. Included in the list is ketamine, a substance that is often used as an anesthetic during surgery or as a pain reliever.
"The review defines 500 grams of ketamine as a 'large amount' and people who smuggle, transport, purchase, make or illegally possess that much of it will be sentenced to at least 15 years in prison," Supreme Court No. 5 Criminal Tribunal judge Fang Wenjun explained.
The No. 5 Criminal Tribunal is the part of the highest court in the land which specializes in cases related to drug abuse.
According to Li Wenjun, an expert in narcotics control at the People's Public Security University of China, ketamine was initially safe to use for medical purposes until some "medical professionals stole chemical ingredients from hospitals and refined them into the drug."
"The fight against ketamine in our country is becoming more serious. We found many cases in which defendants injured others or crashed while driving under the influence of ketamine, because it often makes users delusional," Fang explained, emphasizing the need for harsher punishment.
Aside from ketamine, 12 new kinds of illegal drugs were added to the substances that are subject to criminal penalties effective on April 11.
Harsher Punishment
According to DrugAbuse.com, China is known to be among the countries with the harshest penalties for drug offense.
"In China, if you are caught with drugs, you could be forced to attend drug rehab in a facility run by the government," the site explained.
While the Supreme Court review did not define how the punishments for drug-offenders would be, there is room for speculation that the country's top court could ponder on expanding the sentence to as harsh as death penalty.
In fact, according to Harm Reduction International, a total of 240 and 190 drug offenders who were found guilty have already been punished by execution in 2012 and 2013, respectively.