Review of judicial practice on cases about drug crime: trends and contradictions

Introduction: the article deals with the problems of qualification of crimes related to drug trafficking, trends in judicial practice, the reasons for changing approaches to qualification, certain imperfections of the legislation and contradictions in the comments of certain criminal law norms. Materials and methods: the normative basis of the research is formed by The Constitution of the Russian Federation, criminal legislation, materials of judicial practice, statistical data. The methodological basis of the study was the general dialectical method of scientific knowledge, which is universal in nature, as well as the methods of logical deduction, induction, cognitive methods and techniques of observation, comparison, analysis, generalization and description. The Results of the study: made it possible to formulate recommendations on the qualification of drug crimes, the difference between individual criminal acts among themselves on more detailed grounds than those proposed today in official explanations. The problems of establishing signs of complicity in drug crimes, as well as the problems of qualifying the actions of individual accomplices, are identified, aggravated by the departure of drug crime into the virtual space. The author's point of view on the qualification of the actions of these persons and the resolution of controversial issues is proposed. Findings and Conclusions: analysis of trends in modern drug crime and approaches to law enforcement made it possible to identify the most problematic aspects and formulate proposals for improving the practice of applying criminal law norms on responsibility for drug crimes, as well as norms on complicity in a crime.