Abstract: The subject of the study is the legislation on illegal actions with narcotic drugs and other substances with generally dangerous properties under the criminal codes of 1922 and 1926 in the context of normative continuity with the Code of Criminal and Correctional Punishments of 1845. A comparative legal analysis of the concepts of poisonous, potent and intoxicating substances as subjects of the relevant crimes of the first Soviet criminal codes and the relevant norms of the current criminal law is carried out. For the first time, archival official documents of the highest state bodies were used to substantiate the high degree of public danger of illegal trafficking of potent and poisonous substances. According to the results of the study, legal science and medicine in the studied period had a developed arsenal of conceptual means of describing illegal trafficking and the consequences of the use of substances that pose a danger to public health. The first Soviet legislator took into account unlimited possibilities in the field of chemical synthesis and therefore considered the list of intoxicating substances to be open, referring to any substances whose qualitative features and actual use corresponded to the literal meaning of their names. The concept of potent substances was generic in relation to the concepts of narcotic drugs and other substances, the defining property of which was the intensity of their effects on the body. The continued use of pre-revolutionary conceptual constructions in modern criminal legislation serves as a normative obstacle to the development of the criminal law institute for the protection of public health based on the norms of international law.

Abstract: Based on the international legal documents, this article presents an extensive description of the concept of new psychoactive substances (NPS), their quantitative and qualitative composition, and relevant classification. The data is provided on the level of illicit drug trafficking, as well as circulation and consequences of their use trough injection in the Russian Federation in relation to other countries. The author discloses the content of measures applied to control illegal trafficking of NPS and criminal liability in accordance with the legislation of foreign countries (peculiarities, differences, classification). Comparative legal method allows reviewing the provisions of the Russian legislation on prevention of illegal trafficking of the new potentially dangerous psychoactive substances. Attention is turned to the problem of the ineffective norms in the Russian criminal law; the approaches towards of its resolution and prevention are proposed. Analysis is conducted on the legislative policy of the use of generally recognized international legal concepts under an alias and with different content, as well as its impact upon the quality and development of criminal legislation.

Abstract: The author examines the political and legal conditions of development and adoption of the draft law on amending the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with the Articles 230.1 and 230.2, containing the completely new subjects of offence. The article considers the conceptual discrepancies of the “Prohibited List” of the World Anti-Doping Agency – WADA, specifying the substances and/or methods banned for use in sports, Order of the Russian Ministry of Sports, and similar list approved by the Government of the Russian Federation. The article provides legal criminal characteristic of crimes stipulated in the Articles 230.1 and 230.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is provided; as well as reveals the essential element of offences. Recommendations are made on the improvement and modernizations of the norms for offences against health of the population in accordance with the regulations of international law. The scientific novelty lies in the detailed description of the essential element of offences, stipulated in the Articles 230.1 and 230.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, based on the normative legal acts of international law and Russian legislation, documents of the supreme judicial authorities with regards to offences against health of the population and public morality.

Abstract: The author examines the political and legal conditions of development and adoption of the draft law on amending the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with the Articles 230.1 and 230.2, containing the completely new subjects of offence. The article considers the conceptual discrepancies of the “Prohibited List” of the World Anti-Doping Agency – WADA, specifying the substances and/or methods banned for use in sports, Order of the Russian Ministry of Sports, and similar list approved by the Government of the Russian Federation. The article provides legal criminal characteristic of crimes stipulated in the Articles 230.1 and 230.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is provided; as well as reveals the essential element of offences. Recommendations are made on the improvement and modernizations of the norms for offences against health of the population in accordance with the regulations of international law. The scientific novelty lies in the detailed description of the essential element of offences, stipulated in the Articles 230.1 and 230.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, based on the normative legal acts of international law and Russian legislation, documents of the supreme judicial authorities with regards to offences against health of the population and public morality.

Abstract: The author provides his classification of the substances, which are dangerous for the health of the population under Ch. 25 of the Criminal Procedural Code of the Russian Federation, based upon the criterion of subjective attitude of a person to the possibility of poisoning with them.  Taking narcotic analogues, the author shows that the primitive adoption of foreign legislative norms for the improvement of the existing criminal legal construction at times makes their practical implementation impossible.  The author supports an idea of developing a more reliable criminal law mechanism in order to guarantee health security of the population in the sphere of unlawful production (construction) of psychoactive substances, which formally do not fall within the closed lists of narcotic substances, such as ("designer" drugs), use of technologies of changing the structural position of atoms within a molecule in order to provide substances with psychoactive qualities, cultivation of narcotic-containing plants based upon the revolutionary achievements in the sphere of agricultural selection; dangerous influence on a brain (such as acoustic influence) in order to achieve a narcotic effect ("digital drugs").

Abstract: This article contains a detailed analysis of the characteristics of drug-related crimes which underpin the provisions relating to the deferred sentencing of drug addicts under Art. 82.1 of the Criminal Code. The author undertook a comparative legal investigation of the mechanism used to reduce illegal distribution and non-medical use of drugs as expressed in the regulations of the drug policy strategy of the Russian Federation until 2020, and the relevant articles of the Criminal Code relating to the imposition of mandatory drug treatment. The results show that the reality of the practice of criminal law reform directed to ensure the health of the population in a target area is significantly different from the ideas proposed by the policy document. The article provides a review of some of the problems experienced by the criminal law institution in deferring the sentences of drug-addicted offenders of drug-related crimes and the ways in which this concept can develop, including in the criminal context. Most important here is how to extend the analyzed standards to persons suffering from substance abuse and alcoholism, regardless of the crime committed by them.