Justice on the Debate Stage: Fact-Checking Taipei’s Mayoral Candidates

Election debates are an important forum for scrutinising public policy. Questions concerning the justice system, criminal legislation and crime prevention demand particular care: the discussion must rest on an accurate account of the law and a thorough examination of policy.

Two controversies arose during the televised debate between Taipei’s mayoral candidates on October 31: amendments increasing penalties for drug-impaired driving, and drug policy more broadly. Drawing on legislative records, existing law and relevant research, we examine facts and concepts that are easily conflated and offer our assessment.

We expect electoral competition to leave room for reasoned discussion of public policy. Complex questions of justice should not be reduced to political labels. We address the two controversies in turn.

01 | Amendments on Drug-Impaired Driving

Did Puma Shen “Side with Offenders,” as Chiang Wan-an Claimed? The Legislative Record Says Otherwise

The key point

Not participating in the vote on a particular version of a bill does not amount to opposing tougher penalties for drug-impaired driving.

On October 30, the Legislative Yuan passed, at its third reading, an amendment to Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code. The amendment increased penalties for drug-impaired driving and made certain repeat offences resulting in death punishable by death.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Puma Shen did not participate in the vote on a further amendment jointly proposed by the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). KMT legislator Hung Meng-kai consequently questioned whether the DPP was “tolerating drug-impaired driving.”

During the televised debate, Mayor Chiang Wan-an went further, questioning whether Shen was “siding with offenders rather than victims.”

Yet a close examination of the formal legislative proposals, the voting proceedings and the competing versions of the amendment reveals a crucial distinction: not participating in the vote on a particular version does not mean opposing tougher penalties for drug-impaired driving.

1. Shen Had Already Co-Signed Proposals for Tougher Penalties in April and July

According to the Legislative Yuan’s official bill documents issued on April 8, 2026—Members’ Bill No. 11020463—Shen was among the co-signatories to a proposed amendment to Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code introduced by Chen Ting-fei, Wang Mei-hui, Tsai Yi-yu and 13 other legislators.

The proposal expressly sought to:

• Increase the maximum term of imprisonment for drink-driving and drug-impaired driving from three years to five years.
• Increase the sentencing range for offences resulting in death from three to ten years’ imprisonment to five to twelve years.
• Increase the sentencing range for offences resulting in serious physical injury from one to seven years’ imprisonment to three to ten years.
• Increase penalties for repeat offences resulting in death or serious physical injury, and extend the period within which a previous offence triggers enhanced penalties from ten years to twenty years.

Before the bills reached the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, Shen’s name also appeared among the co-signatories to seven proposals. These included proposals issued on July 8 and introduced by Ho Hsin-chun and other legislators; Chang Hung-lu, Wu Szu-yao and other legislators; and Saidhai Tahovecahe and other legislators. Further details appear in the references below.

2. The Question Was How Much to Increase the Penalties

One point must be clear at the outset: drug-impaired driving was already a criminal offence.

Before this amendment, Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code already prescribed penalties for it.

An offence without resulting death or serious physical injury carried a maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment. An offence resulting in death was already punishable by three to ten years’ imprisonment. Where the conditions for enhanced punishment for a repeat offence within ten years were met, an offence resulting in death could carry a life sentence.

The dispute therefore concerned whether to raise those penalties further and whether, under specified circumstances, drug-impaired driving resulting in death should become punishable by death.

Indeed, as early as June 11, the Executive Yuan had approved a draft amendment prepared by the Ministry of Justice, to be submitted jointly with the Judicial Yuan, proposing increases in penalties across the board.

Positions on increased penalties and the design of death penalty provisions cannot, therefore, be neatly divided along party lines. The proposals put forward by different legislators varied in both their sentencing provisions and the constituent elements of the offences.

3. A New KMT–TPP Proposal Was Put to a Vote Just 27 Minutes After It Was Introduced

The legislative process unfolded as follows:

June 11: The Executive Yuan approved a draft amendment increasing penalties for drug-impaired driving.

July 22: The Legislative Yuan’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee considered the proposals. Legislators from both the governing and opposition parties supported increasing penalties, but reached no agreement on the specific sentences. The provisions were referred to the plenary session without substantive article-by-article scrutiny.

October 28: Negotiations between party caucuses again failed to produce agreement on the proposed provisions. Nor did those negotiations include substantive discussion of the individual provisions.

October 30, 12:33 p.m.: Shortly before the vote, the KMT and TPP jointly introduced a new motion for further amendment. Its text differed from the version considered during the October 28 negotiations.

October 30, 1 p.m.: Voting began—just 27 minutes after the joint proposal had been introduced.

The Executive Yuan’s version was defeated by 41 votes to 57. The joint KMT–TPP motion passed with 57 votes in favour, one against and one abstention. Most DPP legislators left the chamber and did not participate in the latter vote.

The central question concerns more than the vote totals: how much substantive scrutiny did the provisions ultimately passed at the third reading actually receive?

4. Why Does a Criminal Law Amendment Involving the Death Penalty Require More Than a Majority Vote?

The amendment makes a repeat offence of drug-impaired driving resulting in death within ten years punishable by death, life imprisonment or imprisonment for not less than ten years.

This is a major change to criminal law concerning the state’s power to take a person’s life. It goes far beyond adjusting the amount of a fine.

At least three issues require thorough consideration.

First, intentionally driving after taking drugs and intentionally killing another person involve different forms of criminal culpability.

A person may knowingly drive after taking drugs and therefore act intentionally in engaging in dangerous driving. That does not, by itself, establish an intention to kill someone who dies as a result.

Whether the death penalty may be imposed for drug-impaired driving resulting in death, where intent to kill is not an element of the offence, requires rigorous examination under the principles of culpability and proportionality.

Second, death penalty provisions must meet the Constitutional Court’s stringent standards.

In TCC Judgment 113-Hsien-Pan-8 (2024), the Constitutional Court required, among other safeguards, that the death penalty provisions for intentional homicide under review be applied only to cases involving the most serious circumstances and in compliance with the strictest requirements of due process.

That judgment did not directly address drug-impaired driving resulting in death. Nevertheless, extending capital punishment to an offence that does not require intent to kill plainly raises constitutional questions demanding careful examination.

Third, a convincing legislative justification is still needed for the claim that harsher penalties will effectively reduce drug-impaired driving.

Punishment serves retribution, general deterrence and specific deterrence. An increase in statutory penalties does not automatically produce a corresponding reduction in crime.

Is there empirical evidence that adding the death penalty will have a preventive effect? What, precisely, are the shortcomings of the existing provisions? Alongside increased penalties, should enforcement, addiction treatment and measures to prevent reoffending also be strengthened?

These questions cannot be overlooked in efforts to punish drug-impaired driving more severely. Precisely because such conduct can cause irreversible injury and loss of life, the relevant criminal legislation requires careful consideration. Political declarations cannot substitute for legal reasoning.

5. Does Shen’s Failure to Support the KMT–TPP Version Mean He Was “Siding with Offenders”?

The legislative record establishes several points.

First, Shen did not participate in the October 30 vote on the joint KMT–TPP motion, but he did vote for the version proposed by the Executive Yuan and Judicial Yuan, which would also have increased penalties. That version failed after receiving 57 votes against it.

Second, Shen had already co-signed a proposal to increase penalties for drink-driving and drug-impaired driving in April. His formal record of supporting tougher penalties cannot simply be disregarded.

Third, the version ultimately passed by the KMT and TPP was introduced on the day of the vote. Only 27 minutes elapsed between its introduction and the start of voting. There are serious concerns about both the adequacy of deliberation and the legal soundness of its content.

Shen’s non-participation in that vote does not establish that he opposed severe penalties for drug-impaired driving. Still less does it substantiate the accusation that he was “siding with offenders.”

Chiang’s public challenge during the televised debate is inconsistent with the objective legislative record.

More fundamentally, protecting victims’ rights and interests should not be reduced to a test of whether someone supports the harshest available statutory penalty. Supporting increased penalties for drug-impaired driving is entirely consistent with demanding proper scrutiny of major amendments involving the death penalty. Questioning the design of a particular punishment does not mean disregarding victims’ suffering.

These issues deserve more serious consideration than a legislative dispute framed as a choice between “siding with offenders” and “siding with victims.”

02 | Drug Policy

Does Describing Illicit Drugs as Pharmacological Substances Mean Supporting Legalisation? What Chiang Wan-an’s Question Leaves Out

The key point

Understanding illicit drugs as pharmacological substances, supporting harm reduction and advocating drug legalisation are three distinct positions.

During the October 31 televised mayoral debate, Chiang challenged Shen: “You used to say illicit drugs should be treated as medicines, yet now you say you have never supported drug legalisation.”

The question implied that Shen’s earlier approach had disregarded the dangers of illicit drugs, that he had even supported legalisation, and that he had only recently changed his position for electoral reasons.

Yet an examination of medical and criminological definitions, Taiwan’s existing law and judicial practice, and Shen’s earlier writing reveals three separate questions: how illicit drugs are understood as pharmacological substances, whether harm reduction should be supported, and whether drugs should be legalised.

1. Does Describing Illicit Drugs as Medicines Disregard Their Dangers?

In a 2014 article, Shen did call for a reconsideration of illicit drug issues through the broader concept of “drugs” as pharmacological substances.

That language may be unfamiliar to a general audience, but the approach is common in medicine and criminology.

In medicine, the term “drug” extends beyond lawful medicines to encompass substances with pharmacological effects. Morphine, for example, is both a controlled drug that may lawfully be used for medical purposes and a Category One narcotic under Taiwanese law. Illicit drugs and pharmacological substances are therefore not mutually exclusive concepts.

The Supreme Court’s Criminal Grand Chamber Ruling 109-Tai-Shang-Da-3826 (2020) likewise recognised that people who use narcotics have characteristics of both patients and offenders. Their medical and addiction treatment needs warrant attention, rather than reliance on criminal punishment alone.

In everyday discussion in Taiwan, illicit drugs are often associated with crime, addiction and dangerous behaviour. Those associations can obscure differences between substances, patterns of use and users’ circumstances, making harm reduction policies harder to implement.

In their 2017 study, “Patients Drinking Poison to Quench Their Thirst,” Taiwanese scholars Chen Wen-ju and Cheng Li-chen interviewed people who used drugs. Some participants reported encountering prejudicial treatment in healthcare settings because of their criminal records and histories of addiction. They gradually withdrew from formal healthcare and turned instead to more dangerous practices, including combining drugs on their own.

A 2024 study by Lin Chun-ju in the National Taiwan University Law Journal further examined Taiwan’s treatment of people who use narcotics as both patients and offenders. It identified problems arising from the overlap between criminal punishment and medical interventions that may undermine treatment and social reintegration.

Understanding illicit drugs as pharmacological substances therefore does not diminish their dangers. It provides a public health framework for considering how addiction can be treated and harm prevented more effectively.

Nor does that approach entail removing legal liability for drug use or weakening the state’s response to serious offences such as manufacturing, transporting and selling narcotics. Whether particular drugs should be legalised is a separate question of law and policy. It cannot be answered merely by pointing to the use of a pharmacological framework.

2. Did Shen Previously Support Drug Legalisation?

In his article published on September 1, 2014, in Thinking Taiwan, “The Ko Chen-tung Case Exposes the Festering Wounds of Taiwan’s Drug Policy,” Shen distinguished three policy approaches.

The first centred on criminal punishment. The second involved decriminalisation, assistance for users and regulation of drugs. The third examined the social causes of drug use, seeking to reduce the reasons people use drugs and provide support.

His conclusion emphasised the third approach: addressing drug use through an understanding of social, economic and class factors, while promoting safer use through active regulation.

As for his specific policy position, Shen publicly stated on October 6 this year that he did not advocate decriminalising drug use. He also said that research conducted with his students about five years earlier had concluded that Taiwan was not suited to pursuing cannabis decriminalisation.

3. The Harm Reduction Approach Shen Discussed Is an Important Part of Taiwan’s Public Health Record

Harm reduction seeks to reduce the health and social harms associated with drug use before a person has stopped using drugs altogether. Medical care and social support can then help people gradually overcome addiction and reintegrate into society.

Providing sterile needles and syringes, for example, reduces the risk of blood-borne infections such as HIV and hepatitis C associated with sharing needles. Methadone maintenance treatment helps people with heroin dependence manage withdrawal symptoms and cravings.

Such measures seek to prevent avoidable health harms while people are still working towards recovery from addiction.

Taiwan began implementing harm reduction policies addressing drug dependence and HIV in 2005, more than twenty years ago. According to information released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare on October 5 this year, the proportion of newly reported HIV infections accounted for by people who inject drugs fell from approximately 72% in 2005 to 1.7% in 2025.

Those figures cannot attribute the entire improvement to any single intervention. They nevertheless reflect significant achievements from Taiwan’s sustained harm reduction and infection prevention efforts.

It is also significant that, in early October, Chiang and his team’s descriptions and criticisms of harm reduction prompted public clarification from several medical and social work professional organisations.

After Chiang questioned Shen’s drug policy position in an October 3 post, the Taiwan Medical Association and the Taiwanese Society of Psychiatry issued a joint statement the following day. They stressed that combating illicit drugs and reducing harm are compatible, and that medical expertise should not be used as an instrument of electoral conflict.

Other organisations representing psychology professionals subsequently issued clarifications. Remarks by Lee Yen-hsiu on October 9 also prompted the national federation of social workers’ associations to demand a public apology.

Chiang himself has expressed support for methadone treatment and sterile needle and syringe programmes. The dispute therefore concerns whether he and his team deliberately misrepresented Shen’s earlier article and harm reduction measures in ways that could mislead the public.

4. What Is Wrong with Chiang’s Question?

The material examined above establishes several points.

First, studying illicit drugs as pharmacological substances is a familiar approach in medicine and public health. It does not imply indifference to their dangers.

Second, Shen’s 2014 article principally discussed harm reduction. It did not advocate drug legalisation.

Third, the harm reduction approach he discussed has long informed policy in Taiwan and is supported by medical and public health professionals.

Chiang’s direct equation of “understanding illicit drugs as pharmacological substances” with “supporting drug legalisation” therefore conflates distinct concepts and may mislead the public.

Understanding drug-related harm through a medical framework and supporting legalisation are separate matters. Providing healthcare and social support to people who use drugs does not mean abandoning efforts to combat drug offences.

The substantive question is how effective medical and public health measures can reduce harm to individuals, families and society while the state maintains strict drug controls and combats illicit manufacture and trafficking.

5. Beyond Fact-Checking

The prospect of discussing decriminalisation need not provoke alarm.

“Decriminalisation” generally refers to removing criminal penalties for drug use; it does not ordinarily extend to offences involving manufacture, transport or sale. Nor does it mean abandoning regulation. It generally replaces criminal punishment with administrative controls.

Indeed, under existing Taiwanese law, using Category Three or Category Four narcotics is not a criminal offence. It is instead subject to administrative fines and mandatory narcotics hazard education. Possession at or above specified quantities, however, remains a criminal offence.

Using Category One or Category Two narcotics remains criminalised. In recent years, however, policy has increasingly recognised users as people who may be both patients and offenders, with addiction and medical treatment needs.

The law therefore provides for observation and rehabilitation, compulsory rehabilitation, and deferred prosecution conditional on completing addiction treatment. Eligible users are not invariably subjected directly to criminal punishment. This is the approach described in Taiwan as “depenalisation without decriminalisation.”

Drug-related harms must be taken seriously. Their existence, however, should not foreclose discussion of whether current policies are reasonable and effective.

Treating depenalisation, decriminalisation, harm reduction and legalisation alike as encouragement or tolerance of drug use disregards Taiwan’s existing legal framework. It also obstructs reasoned public discussion of how drug-related harms can actually be reduced.

References

Bills concerning drug-impaired driving co-signed by Puma Shen

1. Legislative Yuan bill documents issued on July 8, 2026: proposed amendment to Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code introduced by Ho Hsin-chun and 18 other legislators.
2. Legislative Yuan bill documents issued on July 8, 2026: proposed amendment to Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code introduced by Chang Hung-lu, Wu Szu-yao and 19 other legislators.
3. Legislative Yuan bill documents issued on July 8, 2026: proposed amendment to Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code introduced by Saidhai Tahovecahe and 17 other legislators.
4. Legislative Yuan bill documents issued on July 8, 2026: proposed amendment to Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code introduced by Hsu Fu-kuei and 16 other legislators.
5. Legislative Yuan bill documents issued on July 8, 2026: proposed amendment to Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code introduced by Lin Yi-chin, Hsu Fu-kuei and 21 other legislators.
6. Legislative Yuan bill documents issued on July 15, 2026: proposed amendment to Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code introduced by Kuo Yu-ching, Chen Ting-fei and 14 other legislators.
7. Legislative Yuan bill documents issued on July 8, 2026: proposed amendment to Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code introduced by Chen Pei-yu and 17 other legislators.

Links to these legislative documents and the debate video are available in the original article.

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Translated from an article by the Judicial Reform Foundation. This English translation is an adaptation of the Chinese original, made available under the same Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.