“No one in his right mind will deny that drugs are easily available in prisons, rehabilitation centres and police lockups,” said Ipoh Barat MP, M. Kulasegaran.
He said it was possible that some of the seized drugs could end up in these facilities.
“At the last Parliament sitting, I asked how much of drugs seized in raids were destroyed,” he said, adding that he was awaiting a reply from the government.
Recently, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the government had failed in its war against drug abuse. He revealed that the number of addicts increased by 14% last year and that 58% of prison inmates were doing time for drug-related offences.
Kulasegaran said a major reason for the difficulty in fighting drug abuse was that policemen lived in barracks and were thus separated from the rest of society.
“During the colonial years, policemen were spread all over town,” he said. “They lived in our neighbourhoods. They knew what was happening on the ground.”
He said enforcement officers must mix with the rest of society by attending marriages and other social functions. “They cannot make decisions just by sitting in their offices.”
He urged the police to think forward in fighting the drug menace, warning that the nation would soon have to deal with locally manufactured synthetic drugs.
“It will no more be a case of authorities dealing with drugs brought in from overseas. The drugs will be made by our neighbours because the raw materials are easily available.”
Criminologist P Sundramoorthy of Universiti Sains Malaysia said the problem of drug abuse would persist until it is seen as a health issue instead of a crime.
He urged the government to follow Portugal’s example by decriminalising drug abuse and sending drug users to medical facilities instead of to jail.
In 2001, Portugal decriminalised the use of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, and began a major public health campaign to tackle addiction.
According to recent government estimates, the number of Portuguese using heroin has since been reduced from 100,000 to 25,000.
Portugal’s drug mortality rate is now the lowest in Western Europe. It is one-tenth the rate in Britain and Denmark.
A recent report said the Portuguese mortality rate is one-fiftieth of the latest number in the United States.
The New York Times, in a report published last September, noted that the US started a vigorous crackdown against drug users at around the same time that Portugal started its decriminalisation policy. It noted that Washington spent billions of dollars incarcerating drug users.
It said the number of Americans who died last year of overdoses was about the same as the number killed in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined.
Zahid: Malaysia won’t heed any UN resolution to legalise drugs
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2011/11/26/is-msia-ready-to-legalise-drugs/