Responsibility for the illegal drug trafficking in the Russian Federation and Finland: comparative analysis

This paper examines the criminal liability for the illegal trafficking of drugs and psychotropic substances. Specifically, it analyzes the Criminal codes, laws and regulations of the Russian Federation and Finland. Global drug situation shows a continuing rise in drug usage incidence, and it raises an important question of how drug-related offenders must be punished. In this paper, I draw attention to crimes that are relevant to dangerous social consequences, such as expansion of deadly diseases, rise of crime rate, or depopulation. Due to the lack of adequate research of this issue, this paper actualizes all studies and offers the best hope to improve the legislation and allows practitioners to use it.

The modern global community faces large-scale threats in the field of drug abuse. The growth of drug trafficking demonstrates that our society needs to create and implement the systematic measures against the problem. The Russian-Finnish relations have existed for many years both in the socio-economic sphere and law enforcement co¬operation against illegal drug trafficking. However, each state has its own way of legal regulation, so, this paper aims to compare criminal legislation of the Russian Federation and Finland, including liability for the drug-related offenc¬es. This paper is organized as follows. First part describes the sources and literature used for analysis, next part compares similarities and differences of the legislation of the two countries, and the final part presents conclusions.

Our study is based on different legal acts, including not only laws (e.g. the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and Finland), but also normative acts (Government decrees).Criminal Codes describe the offenses for which there is the criminal liability, as well as sanctions for these illegal actions. Using the Federal Law "On the drugs and psychotropic substances" and the Narcotic Act of Finland, this study elaborates and explains many of definitions and legal institutions in drug-related crimes. Significant, large and extra large quantity of various drugs and psychotropic substances are qualified in accordance with the Government Decree of 01.10.2012 N 1002. This is important, because courts take this information into consideration when imposing the penalty. Although the nature of studying is valuable, unfortunately, there are not enough laws and regulations, scientific articles, official comments and other publications, which could make significant contribution to this analysis.

Finally, our results indicate that Finland and the Russian Federation faces with the problem of drug abuse and drug-related crimes. These countries have its own regulation of drug offences. Law of Russia, in comparison with Finland, is more detailed and complex. We present experimental results demonstrating that legal regulation of drug- related crimes differs from Russia to Finland on the grounds of:
1) amount of penalty - e.g. Russia has life imprisonment for illegal drug trafficking;
2) there are different subjects of criminal liability (in Finland legal entities can be punished);
3) there are specialties of articles constructer. Common feature is that the punishment for crimes against miners is very strict both Russia and Finland. We suggest that international cooperation and joint efforts of the Russian Federation and Finland could offer the best hope to improve problem of drug abuse.

А. О. Носова