The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety will strengthen crackdowns, regulations, and support to prevent drug-related crimes. It will expand the component that automatically checks patients' past prescription histories from fentanyl to include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and appetite suppressants, and increase access to treatment and rehabilitation institutions for addiction patients.
On the 6th, the government finalized the '2025 drug control implementation plan' and made this announcement.
This implementation plan is a follow-up to the '1st Basic Plan for Drug Management' established by the government in January. Following the four strategies of the basic plan, relevant ministries jointly developed measures to respond to drug-related crimes, focusing on issues that require urgent action this year.
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, in collaboration with the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office, will strengthen crackdowns on online illegal drug transaction advertisements using artificial intelligence (AI) technology. It plans to introduce a technology referred to as 'AI Cops' in the second half of this year to completely block drug transactions.
To reduce drug misuse, the automation of checking past prescription histories for fentanyl, along with ADHD medications and appetite suppressants, will be implemented. Following the enforcement of mandatory prescription history checks, the prescribed amount of patches has decreased by 14%. This is expected to also help reduce problems associated with the misuse of psychotropic drugs.
Patients will be able to easily check their medical drug prescription histories through the 'National Secretary Notification Service,' which they previously had to search for individually. A medical drug resource center will also be established on the 'Drug-Free South Korea' website to facilitate information searches on misuse and side effects.
Home visit consultations to identify patients needing drug addiction management will begin in July. The targets for home visit consultations include juvenile detention centers, correctional facilities, and youth shelters. Plans also include rapid connections to rehabilitation institutions through 24-hour telephone consultations and expanding the number of integrated support centers for addiction management to three.
A 'fee schedule pilot plan' to strengthen compensation for drug addiction treatment will also be prepared in the second half of the year. Drug addiction treatment has been criticized for having low fees compared to treatment difficulty, resulting in insufficient participation from medical institutions. Following the training of 88 specialists in drug prevention and rehabilitation last year, the scale of training will be significantly expanded this year.
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety will manage new synthetic drugs by immediately designating them as controlled substances upon obtaining relevant information to prevent their spread domestically. Currently, it takes about 40 days to designate a drug through the temporary classification system. For synthetic drugs used for medical purposes, production and import volumes will be controlled to supply only to necessary patients based on demand forecasting. The initial target for implementation is appetite suppressants, with plans to expand the list of items in the future.