The study found that 1 in 20 criminal cases involved an offense against the Opium Act, and persons convicted under this act are straining prison capacity. The study estimates that 1 in 7 to 8 of the slightly more than 230,000 criminal cases processed each year has involved a drug user. The research identified three main types of drug criminals and the profiles of their crimes: offenders who commit more serious forms of organized crime that pertains to the production, transport, and trade in drugs; offenders against the Opium Act who are not involved in organized crime; and long-term drug users who are frequent recidivists in the commission of property crimes. Over the period 1997-2001, the number and share of registered investigations into organizations that produced drugs increased. At the same time, however, the number and share of registered investigations in which the transport or trade in drugs was discovered declined before beginning to increase in 2001. The number of cases that involved offenses against the Opium Act in combination with Section 140 of the Criminal Code decreased from 450 in 1997 to 248 in 2001. This decline apparently has been reversed recently, as the number of cases is increasing. The chance of punishment in cases brought under the Opium Act in which an offense was charged under Section 140 of the Criminal Code declined from 75 percent to 66 percent over the period 1997-2001. In approximately half of the cases brought under the Opium Act, a partially unconditional prison sentence was imposed (approximately 3,500 custodial sentences each year). Several thousand suspects who are overwhelmingly hard drug users are regularly arrested by the police for a wide range of offenses, primarily for crimes against property. A range of treatment and care services are available for drug addicts in all phases of the legal process. Extensive figures and tables and 37 references