A Jurisprudential Critique of Prescribing Death Penalty for Drug Crimes

Drug trade has been threatening the human society for many years and the legislators of different countries are in search of the ways for prevention of drug trade and fight with drug traffickers. The legislature of the Islamic Republic of Iran has encountered that criminal matter by adopting an aggressive strategy and passing heavy penalties. One of the punishments enacted for such crimes is death penalty. There are some questions regarding the issue that comes to mind, like: is prescribing a heavy punishment like death penalty for drug crimes in conformity with Islamic jurisprudence? What are its jurisprudential bases? Is such enactment judicially justifiable? The writers analyze this way of legislating criminal law against the narcotic drug in this paper by exploring its legal-judicial grounds and intend to prove that drug trade is of the crimes that entail discretionary punishment. Imposing death sentence as it is pronounced by drug law has no strong jurisprudential support and needs some amendment.