<CBD products sold at LA airport duty free shops. Photographed by Sung Seok Kang>

Foreign drug crimes and problems with the order to leave Korea

Hunsoo Kim(public administration lawyer)

In the US, oils can be found at many street vitamin shops with ease. Among those, there are several products that contain CannaBiDiol (CBD), one of the chemical compounds that constitute marijuana. Containing marijuana component itself is a violation of the Narcotics Control Act, but it is in fact not so much different from buying local products or souvenir when we travel overseas.

Cannabidiol (CBD), unlike TetraHydroCannabinol (THC), is not high in addictiveness, and even the FDA approves the sales of Epidiolex, a cure for epilepsy that contains CBD, and the Olympics committee ruled out CBD from the doping test check list. Like this, there is a growing trend of legalizing the use of medical marijuana throughout the world.

The Government, in line with such trend, eventually allowed the import & export, production, and sales of marijuana of medical purposes「under the condition of FDA head’s approval」.

Stiff work process of the Department of Justice

The general public tends to regard various government branches like the Department of Justice, the Department of State, Food and Drug Administration, and etc as a lump of government organizations, not viewing them separately. The reality is that the airport customs, District Attorney’s Office, Court, Immigration, and other organizations have their own standards and criteria for making judgment calls.

For instance, if someone purchased few bottles of oil that contains CBD from overseas and gets caught by the airport customs, even the District Attorney’s Office will view this as a minor incident and will suspend the prosecution. However, if such incident happens to a foreigner, the Immigration will order deportation of the person due to the violation of Narcotics Control Act (marijuana).

Problems with the deviation and abuse of discretionary power

The discretionary power in administrative actions of administrative offices is a double-edged sword. And especially for the situation with Immigration administrative works, some Immigration offices are not granted with such power. Hence, they need to give deportation orders to foreigners according to the Court or DA’s Office’s sentencings, not with their own decisions. This can be viewed as a serious violation of the basic human rights of foreigners. Especially if the deported foreigners are partners of the US citizens or US personnel with foreign nationalities, such a minor incident frequently crashes many people’s lives.

Granted, certain limitations for the use of marijuana are necessary since it possesses negative effects like hallucination or addictiveness. However, an uniform decision for marijuana without considering its beneficial medical effects is not reasonable, and it is especially unreasonable to deport people out of country simply because certain items contain marijuana components because it can be a grave violation of the human rights and deviation and abuse of discretionary power.

Therefore, improvements on such practice should be made at once by having more active transaction of information across multiple government organizations or common work process standards to prevent innocent foreigners becoming victims of unreasonable actions of the Government.