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This article examines the principles of drug-user accountability. It examines the broader concepts of accountability in terms of individual responsibility (including criminal responsibility), the actions and the consequences of such actions, in terms of the self and others. Recent and prevailing governmental and public opinions are evaluated and appropriate sanctions are examined. Medico-legal aspects and dilemmas affecting the issues of the pathology of drug addiction and the nature and degree of impairment of responsibility as part of the addictive process, are analysed. A combined approach blending effective treatment, appropriate legal sanctions and community sanctions as an ultimate process to achieve demand and supply reduction universally, is proposed.

Many countries, including the Republic of South Africa, have introduced legislation providing for statutory treatment in cases of chemical substance dependence (addiction). Many more countries, including Canada and the United States of America, have made various attempts at the introduction of similar legislation in the face of an escalating drug abuse problem, only to have such legislation successfully challenged by various civil rights groups protesting about the "infringement of individual rights." This paper will examine some of the practical implications of coercive treatment of chemical addiction against the background of the principles of the rights of the individual. It will examine the feasibility of legal protection for such individual rights with simultaneous insistence on constructive treatment intervention. It will also raise many topics for discussion in terms of the role of the "helping professions", the well-worn tenet of "Am I my brother's keeper?" and the sociological poser of "the benefit of the community."