The New Straits Times, July 1, 2001
By Professor Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
As Malaysia grapples with its own problem of drug abuse, more recently the so-called "mystery" disease (NST, June 25), in other parts of the world public opinion relating to the problem seems to be changing.
For examples, the London's police force is contemplating a fresh look at this matter. In a pilot scheme announced recently, police officers are taking a more relaxed attitude towards cannabis (ganja) possession. This is a deviation from current practice where courts can still jail offenders.
Under the scheme to be implemented in Lambert, an area of south London, those caught with cannabis will be given a verbal warning, rather than face arrest. According to a Scotland Yard source, the drug will be seized, and will be signed for by the suspect. Only when the person involved does not accept the warning will he/she be arrested. If the scheme proves useful, it will be implemented force-wide.
Indeed, even for hard drug such as heroin, views are also arguably changing on how the problem should be resolved. Awarding-winning journalist Nick Davies wrote in a recent commentary that criminalisation, and not the drugs themselves, is the cause for drug-related disease and moral collapse.
The commentary, entitled 'Make heroin legal' (The Guardian, June 14), alleged that the "untold truth" about the war against drug abuse, "is that it creates the very problem which it claims to solve".
He reasoned: "The core point is that the death and sickness and moral collapse" are the result of the black market on which they are sold as an outcome of the strategy of "prohibition".
He contended, and rightly so, that addicts frequently, in desperation to sustain or prolong their habits "mix their drug with anything else (like sedatives and alcohol) they can get their hands on", endangering their health further.
Thus, in any event, whether it is poisonous adulterants or injected infection; whether death by accidental overdose or by polydrug use: "it is the black market which lies at the root of the danger".
Interestingly enough, this seems to mirror the statement of the National Anti-Dadah Agency's director-general when he said "inmates mostly took heroin using intravenous injection, often administered using dirty needles commonly shared among addicts" (NST, June 27).
The sources of illicit heroin are often the black market. So the addicts could have been suffering from various ailments, mislabelled as "mysterious", by the time they were admitted to the rehabilitation centre.
In defence of the addicts, the Guardian article suggested that the prohibitionist's attitude make the problem even more difficult to solve, not because of the drug per se, but its illegality. If addicts fail to work, it is because "they spend every waking minute drug hustling".
It they break they the law, it is because they are forced to steal to pay black-market prices. If the addicts are thin, it is because "they spend every last cent on their habit and have nothing left for food".
In short, it is the black market, which has been created by some of the existing policies, that is doing the damage, the article argued.
The bottom-line seems to point at the "confusion between the effect of the drug and the effect of the black market".
In fact some observe heroin is made more dangerous because it is prohibited, rather than prohibited because it is dangerous.
Whether this seemingly "new" attitude will gain acceptance is a matter for conjecture. In the UK, going by a poll commisioned by The Guardian last year, politicians were described as being out of step with such change in public opinion.
In a recent survey, about 80 per cent of Britons reportedly thought drugs such as cannabis should be decriminalised.
In fact, two thirds of the 18 to 34 age group considered cannabis to be "no worse than smoking a cigarette or drinking alcohol". Given that smoking and drinking is a growing problem in this country, it is just a matter of time before the proponents of ganja ask for it to be decriminalised here as well.
Before long heroin too will follow suit, as in some parts of Australia and Europe. After all, tobacco addiction is not much different from heroin, yet tobacco is legal despite the high death rate.
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