Prevention, care and treatment
From a historic point of view, the focus of the Narcotics Act is not on measures of prevention, care, treatment and rehabilitation but, on the contrary, on legal instruments required for controlling the trade with narcotic drugs. The purpose of the Narcotics Act is, above all, to ensure the medically necessary supply of the population with narcotics (e.g. for pain management), but also to preclude, as far as possible, the abuse of narcotic drugs and the development and maintenance of a narcotics addiction (section 5 subs. 1 No. 6BtMG). Since 1981, the increasing number of drug addicts and drug-dependent offenders has led to the inclusion of detailed provisions on demand reduction and harm minimisation into the Narcotics Act, among them "therapy instead of punishment" (1981), substitution-based treatment and the distribution of sterile disposable syringes (1992), drug consumption rooms (2000) and diamorphine-based substitution treatment (2009).