EFFICIENCY OF LEGAL NORMS IN THE CONTEXT OF SUPPRESSING THE MISUSE OF NARCOTICS Case study of Serbia and comparative legal review

Misuse of narcotics is more and more our reality and its explicit tendency is increasingly destructive against the existing state of affairs. More precisely, negative consequences of use of narcotics as well as of crimes connected to them, and particularly the organized crime, are spreading around the globe assuming disastrous dimensions. In spite of the fact that international community has reacted to the situation with a determined strategy applying coordinated instruments in the struggle against the misuse of narcotics, the negative trend still continues. There is no doubt that states invest considerable efforts and enormous resources to put under control this negative social phenomenon. Approaches in that respect differ from country to country due to numerous and variable factors (economic, social, cultural…). The question is: repressive or liberal methods? Special attention in the present paper is paid to the explanation, i.e. monitoring and evaluation of appropriate modalities in preventing and suppressing that negative phenomenon. The optics used are, in a way, the September 2009 Law on amending the Criminal Law, and several more important concept innovations (or those implicitly based on a theoretical conception) as well as criticism of certain new incriminations specified in that Law.