Lawmakers yesterday passed an amendment to the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例), which requires the Ministry of Justice to set up a drug-use prevention fund and stipulates a maximum fine of NT$1 million (US$33,198) for proprietors who fail to report drug offenses at their businesses.
According to the amendment, the ministry is to create the fund using its budget, fines or illicit gains it confiscates from people who breach the act, interest generated by the fund, or donations.
The fund should be used to subsidize local governments’ drug-use prevention work; to help the ministry carry out drug inspections or offer rehabilitation services; to provide job-placement programs, education, medication and financial aid for offenders; and to engage in international exchanges on drug-use prevention, the amendment said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
“Certain types of stores” should have signs at their entrances informing people that they are not allowed to bring narcotics into the premises, it said.
Those businesses should send employees to drug-use prevention classes run by government agencies and compile a roster owners and employees, it said.
Business owners who do not comply with the rules or refuse to make improvements after a given period are to be fined between NT$50,000 and NT$500,0000 by local authorities, it said.
These businesses should report drug offenses at their premises and those who fail to do so will incur a fine of between NT$100,000 and NT$1 million, it said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏), who proposed the amendment, said that the businesses would likely include Internet cafes, bars, karaoke bars and movie theaters, with the final list to be determined by the ministry.
The amendment was proposed in response to a recent rise in drug offenses, most notably a drug-infused party at the W Hotel in Taipei that saw a woman die from an overdose, she said.
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