31-10-2007 Therapeutic justice for drug consumers The drug consumer has to be regarded as a sick person and this is why authorities in the field have to identify alternatives for their medical treatment outside prisons and at the same time penalties for drug traffickers should be toughened, declared yesterday the president of the National Antidrug Agency, Pavel Abraham. According to him, it is not natural for a sick person to be held responsible from a legal point of view. "I think that, first of all, we should give him a treatment and then enforce a penalty", said Abraham, within an international seminar in the field of drugs. In her turn, the project manager Alina Bocai, representative of the Office of the United Nations for Combating Criminality and Drugs (UNODC), declared that the medical treatment of drug consumers outside prison has a series of advantages, such as facilitating the rehabilitation and social reintegration of respective people, reducing overcrowding of prisons and diseases of prisoners, diminishing maintenance costs (10,000 euros a year – the cost for a drug consumer in prison).