The government’s recent decision to decriminalize drug addicts has won praises from medical bodies and NGOs. The government has agreed that drug addiction is a health issue and the addicts are patients in need of treatment and rehabilitation, not punishment. I believe that this is the right approach to help them rid the addiction and start afresh.
It has been reported that Malaysia sees a terrifying figure of 60 new drug addicts every day. The Home Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin remarked that most of the inmates in our prisons were drug addicts.
Whilst we applaud the government’s move to rehabilitate the addicts, the government may not want to miss the elephant in the room in combating the drugs trade – where are the addicts getting their drugs from? How can they purchase drugs so easily in our country which claims to have imposed the heaviest punishment in the world on drug traffickers?
As rightly pointed out by Muhyiddin, those caught with drugs and sentenced to prisons were either drug addicts or at worst, drug mules. Are the drug warlords so clever in hiding their tracks, or is the burden of proof so heavy that it is almost impossible to get them convicted? Can we look into laws like the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001 (AMLA) to hit them where it hurts?
Furthermore, it is not a secret that money can buy drugs in our prisons and in lockups. We need to clean house at our enforcement agencies. Incentives and protection must be offered to whistle-blowers. Without “cooperation” from the border patrol, customs, immigration, police and other relevant agencies, the drug traffickers and peddlers will find themselves crippled.
We are moving in the right direction in treating the symptoms. Let us not forget to fix it at the root.