Fortson QC, Rudi --- "Policing and prosecution of drug trafficking" [2019] ELECD 2995; in Mitsilegas, Valsamis; Hufnagel, Saskia; Moiseienko, Anton (eds), "Research Handbook on Transnational Crime" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 300

Book Title: Research Handbook on Transnational Crime

Editor(s): Mitsilegas, Valsamis; Hufnagel, Saskia; Moiseienko, Anton

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 22

Section Title: Policing and prosecution of drug trafficking

Author(s): Fortson QC, Rudi

Number of pages: 16

Abstract/Description:

For over a hundred years the UK legislature has enacted a range of measures with the aim of limiting the production, distribution and possession of certain narcotic and psychotropic substances to specified medicinal, scientific, research and industrial purposes. Many of those measures exist within the criminal law sphere. Their combined effect is to create a complex regulatory regime that is enforced by way of a set of law-enforcement ‘tools’ (such as border controls, stop-and-search, intelligence gathering and ‘sting’ operations) as well as by the threat or imposition of coercive penal sanctions (and asset recovery) for non-compliance. UK notions of the supremacy of Parliament and sovereignty ensure that most of its ‘drug laws’ are created under domestic legislation that nevertheless meets the UK’s international obligations to pursue a global strategy to restrict actions, with respect of drugs, to the purposes mentioned above, and to recover the proceeds of unlawful drug trafficking and money laundering. The UK regulatory regime is one of the strictest in the world but its enforcement can be (and often is) tempered by the exercise of administrative, prosecutorial and judicial discretion.