The country had been enormously influenced by the consequences of the Opium Wars between China (under the Qing Dynasty) and the United Kingdom – which saw significant devastation to Chinese society due to widespread addiction among the populace.
The main purpose of this law is to have the ability to bring criminal charges against doctors and pharmacists, who are receiving illegal drugs.
[4] Previously, the provision of illegal income by pharmaceutical companies led only to judicial penalties, leaving doctors and pharmacists unpunished as recipients.
[5] According to the ESPAD report (Hibell et al. 2009) the male to female ratio is quite small for cannabis use and tie for any other illicit drug use worldwide.
Nevertheless, significantly higher proportions of males than females report illicit drug use in developing countries such as South Africa.
The study from (Perkonigg et al. 1998) found that in various countries, like South Korea, approximately twice as many adult men as women reported illicit drug use.
Even cannabis in the form of electronic cigarettes or edibles, which is legal in many parts of the world, is deemed punishable by the Korean government and if caught a person can be sentenced to prison and fines.
[10] As the population in South Korea continued to grow, the demand for higher quality healthcare services has increasingly followed as well.
Pharmacists had the power to both prescribe and dispense drugs to the public thus “creating financial incentives” [12] for them to sell products/drugs that were marked at “higher margins” [12] despite other medicine alternatives existing.
Physicians soon realized the profit that they could make from pharmaceuticals and thus began overprescribing drugs to patients rather than offering medical services to increase their income.
However this policy left adverse affects on patients with chronic illness and low income status because they could not meet the new out of pocket costs that were placed on medications that didn’t qualify under the country’s covered drug list.
Based on the South Korea population, the more wealthier an individual is the more likely they are to consume prescription drugs despite the high number of ill cases in low-income groups.