Criminal law mechanisms for combating illegal drug trafficking in the legislation of Russia and India

The subject of the study is the criminal law response to the illegal circulation of narcotic substances conducted at the national level in the Russian Federation and the Republic of India. The object of the study includes not only legislative models but also the real law enforcement practices of the two countries in this area, which allows for an assessment of the effectiveness and direction of legal norms. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the initial legal paradigms, criteria for criminalization and differentiation of liability, including legislative systems for classifying quantities of drugs. The legal qualification of consumption and storage, types and severity of established sanctions, including exceptional punitive measures, as well as institutional mechanisms such as treatment, rehabilitation, and confiscation of property, are also analyzed. Special attention is paid to a comprehensive comparative analysis of the repressive potential of legislation, identifying the imbalance between declared goals and actual punitive orientation, as well as assessing the search for a balance between coercive and medical-social approaches in the formation of national drug policies. The basis of the research is a comparative legal method used for the systematic comparison of legislative norms, legal constructions, and law enforcement trends. The analysis also relies on a formal-legal method and includes elements of critical analysis of statistical data and scientific literature. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the comprehensive comparative legal analysis of Russian and Indian anti-drug legislation, which reveals not only formal differences but also profound similarities in the repressive orientation of both systems, masked by different legal techniques. The main conclusion of the work is the assertion of the dominance of the punitive paradigm in both countries, despite the declared commitment to comprehensive approaches. This is manifested in the focus on criminal prosecution of consumers, low thresholds of responsibility, widespread application of strict sanctions, and the marginal role of treatment and rehabilitation mechanisms. The study demonstrates that India implements this paradigm through direct criminalization of consumption and the retention of the death penalty, while Russia utilizes an indirect model that ties responsibility to the possession of minimal quantities. A common systemic problem recognized is the overload of the criminal justice system with cases of consumers at the expense of combating organized crime.