Proposal for the creation of a procedure applicable to drug users in Ecuador. Case study: the procedure of security measures applied to consumers in Venezuela

Abstract

This study seeks to expose the need for a specific procedure within the Ecuadorian legal system for drug users−those dependent on prohibited substances that hardly allow them to control their addiction−who end up being prosecuted as micro-traffickers, since the law that processes them does not have a legal procedure to impose security measures intended to rescue them from addiction. As a result, custodial sentence as a measure of personal coercion has to be applied, which results in an excess in the sanction and in the saturation of prisons with people who should not be treated as criminals, but as drug addicts. For this, the procedure of security measures applied to consumers in Venezuela will be taken as a model. The first contribution of the investigation was the articulation of strategies, whose objective is to avoid the repression of the consumer in the Ecuadorian penal system, as a way to guarantee only their prosecution for the crimes of possession and trafficking, and to avoid impunity through a more effective criminal control system.